Enduring Places and Excavating Memories: Biographical Narratives of Delhi in Malvika Singh’s Perpetual City (2013)

ABSTRACT

This article explores the narrative and memory patterns that underlie the evolution of city biography as a genre in the Indian literary context. The late 1970s and early 1980s witnessed a ‘spatial turn’, emphasising the ‘re-assertion of space’ across disciplines. This paradigmatic shift was characterised by a renewed focus on the concept of space in various fields of study. Besides, the publication of Nora’s lieux de mémoire marked the second wave of memory studies, and enabled the world to remember and reconstruct the national history tied to ‘sites’ of memory. However, in the Global South, especially in India, the memory lens did not affirm national history. This study delves into common thematic tropes within city biographies, contending that they offer narratives of resistance to mainstream city writings. Biographers draw on autobiographical memory, shaping narratives of reconstruction, marginality, and absence/presence as everyday forms of resistance. Furthermore, by analysing Perpetual City: A Short Biography of Delhi (2013), the article posits ‘superposition’ alongside the prevalent way of approaching the city as palimpsest. This textual exploration shifts the focus from the city’s physical or represented aspects to the city biographer’s simultaneous awareness of several historical layers, presenting Delhi in a continuum marked by both ruptures and continuities.

KEYWORDS:

• City biography
• autobiographical memory
• palimpsest
• superposition
• narratives of resistance
• India
• Delhi

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The leftist and Communist-driven popular uprising in West Bengal during the late 1960s aimed to politicize the Indian peasantry, and its cultural and symbolic ramifications have ingrained themselves in collective memory. Roy (2012) presents an in-depth exploration of its diachronic reception in Remembering Revolution: Gender, Violence, and Subjectivity in India’s Naxalbari Movement.

2 Tickell & Rana Sinha (2020) reiterate that 1990–1991 became the point when Delhi, with economic reforms and a population above 10 million, became a ‘megacity’ and coincided this with the ‘Urban Turn’ in the social sciences from the late 1990s. For an extensive discussion on ‘Urban Turn’, see The Urban Turn: And the Location of Economic Activities (2008).

3 Donohoe (2014), in her exploration of cities and memory, introduces the concept of palimpsest. Drawing an analogy from Medieval times when linen parchment was employed, reused, and layered for writing, she notes the intriguing possibility of discerning earlier and diverse inscriptions beneath and through the more recent writing. This phenomenon bears a striking resemblance to contemporary cities where, despite ongoing construction and reconstruction, the remnants of razed and demolished structures persist, enduring as ruins.

4 Baviskar argues how these mega-events, for the working class, ‘have redirected resources away from them besides causing extensive development’ (Baviskar 2013, 138–161).

5 The initial abrupt and sudden rupture corresponds to the transformation observed by Malvika in architectural demolition, reflecting alterations in the physical landscape of Delhi. The second, of a figurative nature, corresponds to the consequences arising from shifts in political, economic, and ideological dynamics within the city and its populace.

6 Swati Chattopadhyay in her work Unlearning the City: Infrastructure in a new optical field (2012) problematizes the way urban vocabulary gets conventionalized, and rigid and thus restricts and limits the meaning-making. The author uses the inadequacy and gaps as possibilities to re-situate, re-fashion, and re-orient the discourse to make it contemporary urban, open, and relevant.

7 The term ‘historical rupture’ as used here denotes temporal markers commonly identified as watershed moments, pivotal occurrences that significantly alter the course of history. Noteworthy examples include 1857, representing the first war of Independence against colonial rule; 1911, signifying the relocation of India's capital from Calcutta to Delhi; and 1947, marking India’s liberation from British rule, among others.

8 Usage for a defining break in the pattern of how people, individuals engage with the world or even society leading to a shift in the dynamics of a particular society at large.

9 The usage designates how with every subsequent and different political party coming to power, the corresponding driving ideology for the country did change and very clear evidence of it was reflected in the goals for every 5-year plan.

10 The escalating demand for ‘the imagined nation of Khalistan’ met a forceful response through an orchestrated military intervention at the Golden Temple by the Indian Army during ‘Operation Bluestar’ in 1984 (Chopra 2010, 121–123). The resultant ‘hurt’ to the Sikh community led to a subsequent retaliatory response, a dimension that Malvika Singh reports, albeit initially omitted in the account of the interconnected events.

11 The term ‘memory box’ is employed in this context to signify individual memory, distinct from collective memory. It encapsulates the practice of assembling keepsakes, ranging in medial nature from postcards and artefacts to toys and a spectrum of associated tangibles, occasionally extending to intangible elements, within a designated box. The objective is to remember, to come to terms with some kind of loss. For an extensive discussion on the way the concept has been used within memory studies, see Frohlich & Murphy (2000).

12 A north Indian delicacy that is usually eaten as breakfast in the morning. The word ‘nihari’ originates from the Perso-Arabic word ‘nahar’ meaning ‘morning’. It became an integral part of the nawabi food culture in late 18th century Lucknow. Soofi (2010) observes that ‘a true nihari uses the upper thigh of a cow. In its absence, one must resort to buffalo or goat meat. Stewed in spices, turmeric, and chillies, the meat comes off the bone and the marrow enhances the succulent gravy’.

13 With regard to the term ‘qawwali’ and its application, Qureshi (1986) explains that it pertains to both the musical genre and the setting in which it is performed – the devotional gatherings of Islamic mysticism, also known as Sufism, in India and Pakistan. He comments on the content for Qawwali as music as ‘mystical poetry in Farsi, Hindi, and Urdu in a fluid style of alternating solo and group passages characterized by repetition and improvisation’.

14 In the introduction to Delhi Noir, Hirsh Sawhney (2009) delineates noir as a genre adept at unveiling ‘the inequity and cruelty inherent to modern societies.’ He contends that noir is often considered trivial despite its significant thematic weight. Sawhney posits that the deliberate absence of noir, or crime fiction, in the capital city is not incidental but rather intentional. Such intentional omission is attributed to its potential disruption of the prevailing ‘bubble of nationalistic euphoria’ and its challenge to the overarching narrative of the ‘Great Indian Novel.’

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Neha Kumari

Neha Kumari is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Humanities & Social Sciences in Himachal Pradesh, India. She is pursuing her research in English Literature. She holds her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in English Literature from Banaras Hindu University, India. Her research interests are Contemporary Indian English Literature, Spatial Memory Studies, Urban Cultural Studies, and City Writings.

Manoj Kumar Yadav

Manoj Kumar Yadav teaches at the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Hamirpur, India. He holds a Ph.D. in Translation Studies from the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. He is the recipient of the Charles Wallace India Trust (CWIT) Research Grant for the year 2023–2024. His research interests include Translation and Intercultural Studies, Adaptation Studies, Urban Literary Studies, and Language Politics in India.