Neel Chakravarti
Chapter 1 – The Arrival
The airplane touched down at Indira Gandhi International just before dawn, the windows fogging from the sudden change of air. Kabir Malhotra leaned his forehead against the glass, watching Delhi’s tarmac blur into a pale mist. The stewardess announced the temperature outside—five degrees—and Kabir almost smiled. Five degrees in Delhi was a different world altogether, neither the shivering Himalayan frost nor the coastal damp of Mumbai, but a peculiar kind of stillness: the city wrapped in a shawl of its own smoke and silence.
By the time he collected his single suitcase and camera bag, the terminal was stirring with its winter rhythm. Men in mufflers clasped steaming paper cups, women huddled into their coats, taxi drivers rubbed their palms and exhaled into them as if their breath might light a fire. Kabir stepped into the cold with the familiar unease of a visitor: he was both drawn in and held at a distance by Delhi, as if the city had decided long ago that outsiders were allowed only fragments of her.
The cab ride to Connaught Place was slow. Fog pressed against the windshield, swallowing entire buildings, leaving behind shadows of neon signs and half-visible flyovers. The driver spoke little, but at one red light he muttered, “Dilli ki sardi… sheher ko sabse zyada khoobsurat bhi banati hai, aur sabse zyada tanha bhi.” Delhi’s winter makes the city the most beautiful—and the loneliest. Kabir nodded, though he wasn’t sure if the man was speaking to him or to the fog itself.
His hotel was an old colonial building near Janpath, its corridors lined with sepia photographs of the Raj. The receptionist barely raised his eyes when handing over the key. In his room, Kabir unpacked slowly, setting the camera lenses on the table like surgical instruments, pulling his woolen scarf tighter around his neck. He had come on assignment: an eight-page spread for a travel magazine that wanted “Delhi under its winter veil.” He had shot snow in Kashmir, rain in Kerala, drought in Rajasthan, but Delhi in December was something different—it was not weather alone, but atmosphere, mood, memory.
That first morning he forced himself out despite the biting air. He walked through Connaught Place’s colonnades, where shop shutters rattled open one by one. The white pillars emerged and disappeared into fog, and in the distance the tricolor at Central Park barely stirred. He photographed the silhouettes of pigeons lifting off from the roundabout, the glow of a tea seller’s stove, the hesitant footsteps of office clerks clutching files to their chests.
Later he found himself at India Gate. The monument loomed like a ghost, its sandstone blurred until it resembled a half-drawn sketch. Families huddled under wool blankets, hawkers sold roasted peanuts, children blew smoke from their mouths as if they had suddenly become dragons. Kabir crouched to take his frames—the symmetry of the arch, the wreaths of smog curling past its crown, the lonely figure of a guard half-lost in vapor. Yet as he clicked, he felt the strangeness of it: no photograph could truly capture this winter, because winter here was not merely seen. It was inhaled, it clung to the skin, it entered the throat like an old memory one could not cough out.
By afternoon the chill deepened. Kabir slipped into an Irani café near Lodhi Road, the kind with glass jars of biscuits and rickety fans that hung uselessly from high ceilings. He ordered a bun-maska and chai. The tea arrived steaming, fragrant with cardamom, and he held the glass for warmth more than thirst. At the next table, two university students argued about poetry—one reciting Ghalib under his breath, the other countering with Nida Fazli. Their words floated into the fog-filtered sunlight that crept reluctantly through the windowpanes.
He scribbled notes between sips. Delhi breathes differently in winter. Every corner is a half-visible story. The city reveals and conceals itself in the same gesture.
When evening fell, the temperature dropped again. Kabir wandered toward Rajpath, drawn by instinct. The grand boulevard stretched out like an endless corridor of mist. The Rashtrapati Bhavan was a suggestion in the distance, its dome faint as a mirage. Streetlamps formed glowing orbs, each circle of light immediately swallowed by darkness beyond. His footsteps echoed on the empty expanse. The air smelled of smoke from burning leaves, sharp and almost bitter.
Standing there, Kabir raised his camera again. He shot the nothingness, the way the fog layered itself like gauze upon gauze. Each click seemed to capture silence more than image. For the first time, he felt what the cab driver had said—beauty and loneliness braided together, inseparable, inevitable.
It was there, shivering slightly under his jacket, that he heard a voice behind him.
“You won’t find Delhi in that fog.”
He turned. A woman stood a few steps away, her figure wrapped in a dark shawl, hair escaping in curls dampened by mist. She wasn’t smiling, not exactly, but her eyes held a glint that was almost challenge.
Kabir lowered his camera. “And where should I look then?”
She gestured toward the invisible city. “In its stories. The fog only hides. The streets remember.”
Before he could ask more, she was already walking away, her silhouette dissolving into the winter haze. He stood frozen, unsure if she was real or some trick of tiredness, a mirage conjured by Delhi itself. Yet something about her voice, low and steady, remained with him, lingering longer than the photographs he had taken.
Back in his hotel, Kabir replayed the day in fragments—the smog-draped monuments, the tea seller’s fire, the poetry of strangers, and finally, that voice that had told him to look beyond the fog. He lay awake listening to the muted hum of traffic, wondering if Delhi had already begun her game with him, revealing only what she chose to.
The assignment, he realized, would not be just about images. It would be about following that voice, those streets, and perhaps, the stories that the fog refused to release easily.
And so, in the quiet of his room, Kabir made his first note for the series: “Delhi is not a city in winter. It is a riddle in white. I have only begun to read its first line.”
Chapter 2 – The Walk
The next morning dawned no brighter than the last. From his hotel window Kabir watched the city struggle to wake—figures wrapped in shawls drifting like shadows, cycles rattling over cobblestones, the faint clang of a temple bell carried on mist. He wondered if the woman he’d seen at Rajpath had been real or an illusion born of fatigue. The city had a way of playing with perception; Delhi never told the same story twice.
Still restless, he checked his notebook for leads. The magazine editor had underlined “capture Delhi beyond monuments—people, corners, unseen.” Kabir decided he needed a guide. Not one of the scripted tourist guides who rehearsed the same histories of dynasties and domes, but someone who breathed the lanes of the city.
At breakfast in the hotel dining room, he overheard two travelers discussing a heritage walk in Old Delhi. “Starts from Jama Masjid gate… run by a woman named Meera,” one of them said. “Knows the alleys like a secret map.” Kabir almost smiled at the coincidence. Meera. Could it be her?
By mid-morning he was on the metro, camera bag slung across his shoulder. The Yellow Line carried him north, carriages packed with commuters muffled in scarves, their eyes glazed from cold and routine. At Chawri Bazar station he climbed the narrow escalator into a crush of rickshaws, spice carts, and the sharp scent of winter—smoke, fried oil, cardamom, damp stone.
The group had gathered near Jama Masjid’s gate, shivering, stamping their feet, adjusting mufflers. A woman stood at the center, speaking with quiet assurance. She wore a simple woolen kurta and shawl, her voice steady against the surrounding clamor. Kabir recognized her instantly—the same eyes glinting under the Rajpath fog.
“…this lane has seen centuries of footsteps,” she was saying. “Merchants from Central Asia, poets of the Mughal courts, freedom fighters hiding messages during 1857. Each wall has its scars, each balcony its whispers.”
Kabir slipped into the group, unnoticed at first. She guided them through a labyrinth of alleys where the sun barely touched the ground. At every turn she stopped, pointing to an arch, a fading fresco, a crumbling jharokha where pigeons had claimed ownership.
When they paused at a chai stall, Kabir finally caught her eye. She looked at him as if she had known he would appear, no surprise, only recognition.
“You,” he said quietly, stepping closer. “Last night at Rajpath.”
Her lips curved into a half-smile. “Delhi has a way of sending people where they need to go. So you found the stories instead of the fog.”
“I’m not sure I’ve found them yet,” Kabir admitted. “But I want to.”
“Then listen,” she said, handing him a steaming clay cup of tea. “Photographs are not enough. You must listen to the city. It speaks in broken bricks and forgotten songs.”
The group moved on, and Kabir walked beside her, not asking too many questions, content to let her words weave the air. She spoke of havelis where courtyards still held echoes of ghazals, of hidden stepwells where time collected like stagnant water, of families who had lived here for ten generations yet carried the city like a wound.
In Ballimaran she stopped before a modest house with peeling paint. “Here lived Ghalib,” she said, touching the wall as though it were skin. “Not the grand mansions of emperors, but this—one poet in one narrow street. And yet his words outlived them all.”
The fog had begun to lift slightly, though the light was still diffused, soft as parchment. Kabir raised his camera, framing Meera against the fragile backdrop of Ghalib’s doorway. For once, he didn’t worry about the perfect shot. The city, through her, had already begun composing itself.
Later, as the walk ended near Fatehpuri Masjid, the group dispersed with murmurs of thanks. Kabir lingered. “Do you always guide strangers?” he asked.
Meera tightened her shawl. “Strangers are only strangers until they listen to Delhi. After that, they belong to her, whether they want to or not.”
“And you?”
“I was born here. I can’t escape her, so I’ve made peace by telling her stories.” She glanced at his camera bag. “And you—you’ve come to take fragments home. But the city will not let you leave so easily.”
Her words unsettled him, as if Delhi itself had spoken through her. He felt the strange weight of the fog again, not just around his body but within, wrapping his thoughts.
When she finally walked away into the crowd, Kabir didn’t follow. Instead, he sat at a nearby bench, scribbling furiously. Delhi is not a city you capture. It captures you. Perhaps that is why I am here—not to take images, but to lose myself long enough to be seen.
That night, back in his hotel, he uploaded the day’s photographs. The frames glowed on the screen—arches dissolving into mist, children chasing kites through alleys, Meera’s silhouette near Ghalib’s haveli. Yet none of them felt complete. Something was always beyond the edge, out of reach, as though Delhi refused to be reduced to pixels.
He stared at one particular shot—Meera handing him the clay cup of tea, her hand steady, her eyes unreadable. Perhaps, he thought, she was right. The fog was only hiding what mattered. The real story was waiting for him to listen.
Chapter 3 – The Echoes of Ghalib
The next few days unfurled like pages of an old diary, yellowed and stubbornly incomplete. Kabir found himself returning to Old Delhi, almost without thought, as if some invisible thread pulled him back through the crowded arteries of Chandni Chowk. Each morning he carried his camera, but the lens began to feel less like a tool of work and more like an apology—an attempt to hold on to things that did not want to be held.
Meera never asked why he kept showing up. She would glance at him once, acknowledge his presence with a nod, and continue guiding her group as though he had always been there. Her voice carried in the fog like a thread of warmth: describing havelis where the plaster flaked like old skin, shrines hidden behind collapsing doors, courtyards where children’s laughter echoed against walls built three centuries ago.
One afternoon, after the group had dispersed, Kabir followed her silently into Ballimaran again. The alleys narrowed until the walls seemed to lean over them, conspiratorial. She stopped before the modest haveli of Ghalib, the small plaque barely visible under soot and dust.
“Here,” she whispered, almost to herself, “the air is still heavy with his couplets. You can feel them in the silence.”
Kabir looked at the cracked walls, the fading paint, the barred windows where pigeons cooed indifferently. “It doesn’t look like much,” he admitted.
Meera’s eyes flashed. “It never does. That’s the point. Empires collapse. Palaces fall. But a poet’s line survives. Hazaron khwahishen aisi, ke har khwahish pe dam nikle…” Her voice trembled slightly on the syllables. “Even now, people come from across the world to stand here and whisper his words. Do you see? This is Delhi. Fragile walls and immortal echoes.”
Kabir lifted his camera and then lowered it again. It felt wrong to photograph. Instead, he took out his notebook. “Tell me more,” he said softly.
They sat on the worn stone steps. Meera spoke of the Urdu poets who had once filled these streets with music, of mushairas where words were more powerful than swords, of how Old Delhi was not just brick and dust but memory layered over memory.
As she spoke, Kabir realized she wasn’t simply guiding him through monuments. She was guiding him through time—showing him the city as both ruin and resurrection. He scribbled furiously, but no sentence seemed enough.
At one point, she grew quiet. “Do you know why I do this?” she asked suddenly.
“Because you love Delhi?”
“Because I can’t leave her. My family lived here for generations, and after Partition half of them vanished across the border. The city changed, but she never released us. So I stay. I tell her stories, hoping one day she will forgive us for surviving while others didn’t.”
Her voice cracked, but only for a second. Kabir wanted to say something—comfort, perhaps—but he stopped himself. Instead, he looked at the crumbling haveli and thought: perhaps some silences are more honest than any reassurance.
As the winter sun slanted across Ballimaran, Meera finally rose. “Come,” she said. “You need to taste Old Delhi, not just see it.”
She led him to a tiny sweet shop tucked behind Fatehpuri. The owner recognized her instantly, offering bowls of steaming kheer without asking. The sweetness clung to Kabir’s tongue, warm against the biting cold. Around them, families huddled over plates, their laughter rising like defiance against the season.
For a moment Kabir lowered his camera and simply breathed it in—the warmth of shared food, the glow of lanterns in fog, the weight of centuries folding into a single mouthful.
Later, walking back toward the metro, Meera turned to him. “You came here with your camera to take Delhi away. But you’ll leave with Delhi inside you instead. That’s how she works.”
Kabir didn’t answer. But in his notebook that night, he wrote:
Delhi is a city that resists being framed. You can only carry her in fragments—voices, flavors, silences. And sometimes, in the eyes of someone who belongs to her in ways you never can.
Chapter 4 – The Yamuna in Winter
Two days later, Kabir met Meera before dawn. The city was still half-asleep, the fog heavier than usual, the air sharp enough to sting the throat. She waited near the Red Fort gates, shawl drawn tight, a thermos in hand.
“You’ll never see Delhi until you’ve seen the Yamuna in winter,” she said, without greeting, as if the plan had been written into the fog itself.
They walked down toward the riverbanks, the lanes thinning until they opened into desolate stretches of sand and broken ghats. Here, the city seemed far away—no neon lights, no markets—only silence, punctuated by the distant bark of dogs and the slow churn of water hidden beneath mist.
Kabir raised his camera but lowered it again. What was there to photograph? The river was barely visible, its surface blurred like an unfinished sketch. Yet he felt its presence: patient, ancient, carrying the weight of empires and ashes alike.
“This river,” Meera said softly, “was once the heart of Delhi. Shahjahan built his city beside it. Poets wrote odes to its moonlit waters. Even the British couldn’t ignore her. And now—look.” She gestured to the gray, sluggish current. “Choked, forgotten, surviving out of sheer stubbornness.”
They stood on the crumbling steps of an old ghat. The stones were slick with dew, carved with names long faded. Kabir crouched, brushing his fingers against the surface, feeling centuries pressed into each crack.
“Do people still come here?” he asked.
Meera nodded. “Fishermen at dawn. Lovers at dusk. Devotees on festival mornings. The city pretends she doesn’t exist, but she still holds its breath.”
The fog thickened, and out of it emerged a boatman, rowing slowly, his silhouette bending and straightening with each pull. Kabir lifted his camera instinctively, catching the figure in the pale wash of light. For once, the frame felt right—not because it was perfect, but because it was incomplete, leaving space for absence.
Meera poured tea from her thermos into two steel cups. They drank in silence, steam rising between them, blending with the fog. Kabir thought of Mumbai, of the sea’s endless roar, and realized how different this silence was: not emptiness, but memory refusing to vanish.
After a long while, Meera spoke again. “Do you know why winter in Delhi feels heavier than elsewhere?”
Kabir shook his head.
“Because it carries the weight of everything the city has seen. Blood, poetry, betrayal, resilience. The fog is the city’s way of holding it all in, so we don’t collapse under it.”
Kabir scribbled in his notebook. The fog is memory turned visible.
When the sun finally broke through, weak and reluctant, the ghats revealed themselves more clearly: stray dogs curled into stone alcoves, a broken temple tower leaning precariously, offerings floating half-sunk on the river. Kabir photographed nothing. He wanted to remember it raw, as his eyes had seen, without the filter of a lens.
As they walked back toward the fort, Meera slowed her pace. “Kabir, you came here as a visitor. But the city is already holding you. You can leave Delhi, but Delhi won’t leave you.”
Her words echoed in him long after. That night, alone in his hotel room, Kabir stared at the images on his laptop: silhouettes, shadows, fragments. He realized he was no longer taking photographs for the magazine. He was taking them for himself—for proof that he had once stood inside the city’s breath, inside its memory.
And though he had known Meera for less than a week, he understood something unspoken: she was no longer just a guide. She was Delhi’s voice, and he had begun listening.
Chapter 5 – The Bookshop in Daryaganj
Sunday in Delhi meant Daryaganj. Even in winter, when the city curled into itself, the mile-long stretch of the Sunday book market refused to sleep. By mid-morning, pavements overflowed with secondhand paperbacks, history tomes with crumbling spines, Urdu poetry anthologies smelling of mildew and ink. Vendors squatted behind makeshift stalls, rubbing their palms together against the cold, shouting prices above the honks of rickshaws.
Meera led Kabir through the crowd with ease, her steps quick, shawl pulled close, her hand brushing against stacks of forgotten worlds. “This is my temple,” she said. “Not Jama Masjid, not Akshardham. Here, among dust and paper, Delhi still breathes.”
Kabir trailed behind, camera forgotten. The air smelled of old glue, damp pages, and roasted peanuts from a cart. He watched her sift through books as if she knew exactly which pile contained the heart of the city.
At one stall she pulled out a slim, weathered volume: Diwan-e-Ghalib. She opened it carefully, the Urdu script curling like vines across yellowed paper. She held it out to him. “Here. Feel this. Not just words—centuries pressed into ink.”
Kabir touched the page, his fingers trembling slightly. “Do you collect these?”
“Not collect. Rescue.” Her voice was quiet. “Every week I come here to find pieces of the city’s memory before they vanish into scrap heaps.”
He smiled faintly. “You sound like an archivist of ghosts.”
“Maybe I am,” she replied, her eyes locking with his for a second too long.
They moved deeper into the market. Children tugged at sleeves, selling pirated exam guides. Old men bargained fiercely for Marx and Premchand. Kabir felt the pulse of the city here more than at India Gate or Rajpath—messy, stubborn, alive.
Meera stopped at a corner shop, one of the few with an actual roof. Inside, wooden shelves sagged under the weight of books, the ceiling fan still and dust-laden. The owner, a bespectacled man in his seventies, greeted Meera warmly. “Ah, beti, you’ve brought a new recruit today.”
Kabir bowed slightly. “Photographer,” he explained.
The man chuckled. “Then you must learn—Delhi is not photographed, it is footnoted.”
They spent hours inside. Meera leafed through out-of-print gazetteers and memoirs of Partition. Kabir wandered between shelves, pausing at one corner where a stack of old photographs lay unsorted—faded sepia shots of Connaught Place in 1930, Jama Masjid lit for Eid in 1952, Rajpath during Republic Day parades. He held them carefully, as though they might crumble under breath.
“This city is an archive,” Meera murmured beside him, “but one that hides its catalog. You stumble upon its truths by accident.”
When they finally stepped out, the winter sun was sinking. The fog had begun to return, folding itself around lamp posts and rickshaws. Kabir carried a paper bag with a book Meera had insisted he buy: City of Djinns by William Dalrymple.
“Read it tonight,” she said. “It won’t give you Delhi. But it will tell you how impossible she is to capture.”
As they walked toward the metro, Kabir asked, “Why do you stay here, Meera? You could go anywhere, live anywhere.”
She stopped. For a moment, her breath clouded in the air between them. “Because Delhi holds my family’s story. And my grief. If I leave, I leave them behind.” She turned away quickly, blending into the crowd before he could answer.
That night in his hotel, Kabir opened the book. The first page spoke of Delhi as a city of ruins, where every civilization had left behind layers of ash and stone. He closed it after a few pages, restless. Instead, he opened his notebook and wrote:
Meera is not showing me Delhi. She is showing me herself, stitched into Delhi’s fabric. And I am beginning to wonder if my photographs are just excuses to keep walking beside her.
Chapter 6 – The Café at Hauz Khas
The fog rolled heavier that evening, the kind that turned headlights into blurred halos and wrapped Delhi’s avenues in a silence broken only by the cough of passing scooters. Kabir had spent the afternoon revisiting India Gate for more shots, but his photographs seemed pale compared to the ones the city had etched in his mind through Meera’s stories. He texted her—just a hesitant line: “Coffee?”
Her reply came minutes later. “Hauz Khas. Eight. Don’t bring your camera.”
By the time he reached the village, the lanes were glowing with fairy lights strung above cafés and boutiques, though the fog softened them into muted orbs. Couples strolled arm in arm, groups of students huddled around shawarma stalls, and in the distance, the ruins of the medieval madrasa loomed like forgotten sentinels against the night.
The café Meera had chosen was tucked behind a graffiti-splashed wall, dimly lit, filled with mismatched chairs and the hum of indie music. A wood stove glowed faintly in one corner, releasing the scent of burning pine. She was already there, at a window table overlooking the darkened lake, her shawl wrapped loosely around her shoulders.
“You came,” she said simply, as if she had known he would.
Kabir sat opposite, suddenly aware of the absence of his camera, how exposed his hands felt without it. “You told me not to bring it.”
She smiled. “Sometimes you see better without a lens.”
They ordered kahwa, and for a while they watched the lake through the fogged glass. Ducks stirred faintly on the water, their movements blurred. Beyond, the ruins of the madrasa seemed to lean closer, listening.
“Do you ever leave Delhi?” Kabir asked quietly.
Meera shook her head. “I’ve traveled. Jaipur, Kolkata, even London once. But I always return. The city holds me like gravity. Even when I hate her.”
“Hate?”
She leaned back, eyes drifting. “Yes. When the smog chokes, when the power cuts in summer, when the city devours its own history to build malls. Delhi can be cruel. But she’s mine. She’s the last place where my family’s names are carved into stone. Even grief feels like belonging here.”
Kabir listened, the weight of her words sinking into him. “And yet, you carry her gently. Like you’re always protecting her.”
Her gaze flickered toward him. “And you—you carry her like a question. You think Delhi will give you answers, but she only gives riddles.”
Their tea arrived, fragrant with saffron. The steam curled upward, mingling with the fog outside. Kabir sipped, feeling the warmth burn down his throat. “Maybe riddles are what I came for,” he admitted.
The conversation slipped into softer spaces—childhood memories, first books, the odd comfort of Delhi’s winter sun when it finally broke through the haze. She told him of her grandfather, a Partition survivor who never left Old Delhi even as his world fractured. Kabir spoke of Mumbai, of monsoon seas and a city that ran too fast to leave space for silence.
Hours blurred. The café emptied, but neither of them moved. When she laughed—sudden, unguarded—Kabir felt something shift inside him. He realized he had stopped thinking of Delhi as his assignment. It had become his mirror, and Meera was its reflection.
When they finally stepped outside, the village was cloaked in near-white fog. The ruins rose ghostly behind them, their arches dissolving into mist. For a moment they stood still, their breath mingling visibly in the cold.
Meera adjusted her shawl. “Remember this night,” she said softly. “Not because of the lake or the ruins. But because Delhi lets her secrets out only in fragments. Tonight was one.”
Kabir wanted to ask what she meant, but she was already walking away, her figure slipping into the fog. He followed, knowing instinctively that he would keep following—into alleys, into stories, into the riddle that was no longer just Delhi, but her.
That night, back in his room, he didn’t even open his laptop. He lay awake, the scent of saffron still in his throat, replaying her laughter. In his notebook he wrote only one line:
Delhi has stopped being the city I came to photograph. She has become the woman I am trying to understand.
Chapter 7 – The Night in Lodhi Gardens
It was near midnight when Meera called. Her voice was quiet, almost conspiratorial.
“Come to Lodhi Gardens. Don’t ask why. Just come.”
Kabir didn’t hesitate. The city was a blur of headlights and fog as his cab crawled past India Gate, then Khan Market. By the time he reached the wrought-iron gates of Lodhi Gardens, the world felt emptied of people. A stray dog lifted its head, then curled back into itself.
She was waiting under the arch of the gate, her shawl pulled close, her breath rising visibly in the winter air. Without a word, she gestured for him to follow. They slipped into the garden’s pathways, their footsteps muffled by mist and dew-heavy grass.
The ruins emerged gradually, like secrets. The tomb of Sikandar Lodi loomed first, its dome shrouded, lanterns at its base throwing pale circles of light. Trees leaned low, branches skeletal against the fog, their shadows spreading like ink across the ground.
“Why here?” Kabir whispered.
“Because Delhi speaks loudest when the city sleeps,” she replied.
They walked in silence until they reached the Sheesh Gumbad. Its facade was broken, yet in the moonlight it seemed regal, defiant. Meera ran her fingers along the cool stone. “Do you know why I love this place? Because it carries time without apology. Centuries collapsed here, and yet—look—it still stands, cracked and beautiful.”
Kabir studied her profile in the pale light. Her words weren’t about the monument alone.
“Do you bring everyone here?” he asked softly.
“No,” she said. “Only those who might listen.”
The air grew colder. Kabir exhaled, his breath white against the dark. “And do you think I’m listening?”
Meera turned, her eyes catching the faint glow of the lanterns. “Yes. But the question is—are you ready to hear what Delhi does not forgive?”
Before he could ask, she began walking again, slower this time, as though carrying the weight of what she had not said. They stopped at a bench under a neem tree, the fog wrapping around them like a veil.
She sat, clasping her hands together. “Kabir, you see ruins and call them history. I see them and remember my family’s grief. My grandfather hid in these gardens during ’47, when the city burned and neighbors turned on neighbors. He survived, but his brothers didn’t. Even now, every time I walk here, I feel their shadows. Winter makes them louder.”
Her voice faltered, but she didn’t look away. Kabir sat beside her, silent, letting the chill settle into his bones. He wanted to reach for her hand, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “Maybe the city keeps us here because it doesn’t want us to forget.”
Meera’s lips curved faintly, a half-smile, half-wound. “Or because it wants us to carry its burden.”
They sat without words, the garden vast and empty around them. The fog pressed close, hiding the pathways, erasing the horizon. Kabir felt as if they were alone in the world, two figures suspended between centuries.
Finally, Meera rose. “Come. It’s late.”
They walked back to the gate, their footsteps slow, reluctant. At the entrance, she stopped, turning toward him. For a moment, the silence was sharper than the cold.
“Remember, Kabir,” she said, her voice almost a whisper, “Delhi is not a city. She is a witness. And once she shows you her memories, you can never leave untouched.”
Then she walked into the waiting fog, leaving him at the gate, her words echoing louder than the night.
That night, Kabir could not sleep. He sat at the desk in his room, scribbling furiously.
Delhi is no longer an assignment. She is a mirror of loss, and Meera is its keeper. To photograph her is impossible. To love her might be the only way to stay.
Chapter 8 – Rain on Connaught Place
The city surprised them the next evening. Winter rain, sudden and sharp, swept across Delhi just after sunset, striking the pavements of Connaught Place with the sound of a thousand impatient drums. The fog thickened with the downpour, turning headlights into blurred streaks, dissolving outlines of the colonnades into trembling shadows.
Kabir had been waiting outside a shuttered bookshop, scarf pulled tight, camera tucked away to keep dry. Meera arrived running, her shawl damp, hair plastered against her forehead. She was laughing—genuine, breathless—as though the rain had peeled away layers of grief and memory.
“You chose a fine evening,” Kabir said, offering his umbrella.
She shook her head. “No umbrellas. Delhi’s winter rain comes only once in a while. You have to feel it.” And before he could protest, she pulled him by the wrist into the open circle of the downpour.
They stood at the center of the roundabout, water pooling around their shoes, neon signs bleeding into the puddles. Rickshaw pullers huddled under tarpaulins, chai sellers shielded their stoves, but the two of them remained, drenched, laughing at nothing and everything.
“This,” Meera shouted over the rain, “is the city I love—the chaos, the surrender. She reminds you that nothing is permanent. Not monuments, not seasons, not even grief.”
Kabir looked at her, the drops glistening on her skin, the defiance in her voice. He wanted to answer, but words felt smaller than the moment. Instead, he reached for her hand. This time he didn’t hesitate.
She didn’t pull away. Her fingers curled into his, steady despite the shiver of cold. For a long minute they stood like that, silent against the hammering rain, holding not just each other but the weight of the city itself.
When the rain eased, they ducked into a café under the colonnades. Inside, the windows fogged instantly from the sudden warmth. A waiter brought two cups of adrak chai, steam rising in fragrant curls. Kabir could still feel her hand in his, as if the city had fused them together under its storm.
Meera sipped slowly, her gaze lost in the blurred glass. “You know, Kabir, Delhi doesn’t allow forever. She teaches you to live in fragments—moments stolen before the fog swallows them again.”
“And yet,” he said, leaning closer, “some fragments refuse to fade.”
Their eyes met, steady, unflinching. Something unspoken shifted between them, heavier than the rain, gentler than the fog. For the first time, Kabir felt he wasn’t just listening to Delhi’s stories—he was becoming one of them.
Outside, the rain slowed into drizzle. Connaught Place glistened like a half-lit stage. Inside, the silence between them deepened—not distance, but closeness without need for words.
Later, when they stepped out, the air smelled of wet earth and coal smoke. Meera wrapped her shawl tighter. Kabir offered to walk her home, but she shook her head.
“Not tonight. Tonight is enough,” she said softly, almost as if to herself.
He watched her disappear into the dampened glow of the streetlamps, her figure dissolving once again into fog. Yet this time, the city felt less lonely. It felt like it had conspired to bind him closer, thread by thread.
Back in his hotel, Kabir scrolled through the day’s photographs. The rain had blurred most of them—streaks of light, half-seen faces, watermarks across frames. But in one shot, caught by accident, he saw her: Meera, head tilted back, laughing as the rain fell. It was imperfect, hazy, out of focus. And yet it was truer than any picture he had taken.
In his notebook, he wrote only one line:
Some cities you visit. Some cities you survive. Delhi, you fall into—like rain you never meant to stand under, and never forget once you’re soaked.
Chapter 9 – A Warning in the Fog
The days after the rain carried a strange lightness, as if the city itself had softened. For Kabir, every walk with Meera felt like peeling back another layer of Delhi—chai stalls glowing like lanterns at dusk, qawwalis swelling at Nizamuddin dargah, pigeons rising in slow spirals over the Jama Masjid dome. Yet beneath the beauty he sensed a tension in her, a hesitation that flickered like shadow behind her words.
One evening they walked together through the narrow lanes of Kashmiri Gate, the air thick with the smell of frying bread and wood smoke. The fog pressed so heavily that even the street lamps seemed uncertain. Kabir reached for her hand casually, as he had in Connaught Place, but this time she pulled it back.
“Meera?”
She stopped, turning toward him, her eyes unreadable in the mist. “Kabir, you need to understand something. Delhi doesn’t give without taking. If you stay too long, she will claim you.”
He frowned. “Claim me how?”
“She weaves you into her stories until you forget where you end and the city begins. People come here chasing photographs, assignments, even love—but Delhi doesn’t allow outsiders. She remakes you, whether you want it or not.”
Kabir searched her face. “And you? Has she claimed you?”
Her smile was faint, bitter. “I was born claimed.”
They walked in silence until they reached Nicholson Cemetery, its gates locked for the night, its gravestones barely visible through the iron bars. Meera rested her hand on the gate. “Look inside. Every stone is a witness—British soldiers, Indian poets, nameless children. Delhi holds them all. No one escapes untouched.”
Kabir leaned closer. “But what if I don’t want to escape?”
For a moment, something raw flickered in her eyes, then vanished. She stepped back. “Wanting doesn’t matter. The city decides.”
The cold seemed sharper now, the fog heavier. Kabir felt the distance between them like an unspoken wall. Yet the more she warned him, the deeper he wanted to stay—not for Delhi, not for the assignment, but for her.
As they parted that night near Kashmiri Gate metro, she said quietly, almost to herself, “Don’t let Delhi trick you, Kabir. She makes you believe you’ve found belonging. But what you’ve really found is another way to be lost.”
He watched her descend into the metro station, her shawl vanishing into the crowd. For the first time since arriving, Kabir felt the fog not as memory but as threat, wrapping itself around him, testing whether he was strong enough to remain.
Back in his hotel, he stared at the day’s photographs. None of them mattered. What mattered was the line he scrawled into his notebook:
I came to Delhi to capture her. But now it is she—and Meera—who are capturing me. If this is how being lost feels, perhaps I no longer want to be found.
Chapter 10 – Republic Day Fog
The morning of Republic Day broke with drums. Even through the closed windows of his hotel room, Kabir could hear the distant roll of parades, the military bands rehearsed into precision. He pulled on his coat and stepped into the street—half out of duty to his assignment, half out of restlessness that no sleep could cure.
Connaught Place was already thrumming with crowds moving toward Rajpath. Families wrapped in blankets carried tricolor flags, children clutched balloons, police barricades channeled the surge of people into narrow lanes. Above all of it, the fog hung like a shroud. The great parade would march, the tanks would roll, but the city’s breath would blur it all.
Kabir threaded his way through, camera at his side. He felt the pulse of Delhi more urgently than ever: chants rising, drums echoing, the sheer weight of thousands of footsteps pressing into the earth. At Rajpath, the grand avenue of his first night, he stopped. The Rashtrapati Bhavan was invisible, its dome swallowed whole. Even India Gate loomed like a half-forgotten dream, emerging only when the fog thinned for seconds.
Soldiers marched in rigid lines, their boots cracking against the asphalt, rifles gleaming faintly. Floats followed—bright, chaotic bursts of color swallowed almost immediately by the gray. The crowd cheered anyway, their voices fierce against the muffling air.
Kabir lifted his camera, shooting frame after frame, but the images felt hollow. The fog devoured detail. What remained were fragments: a child on his father’s shoulders, her face painted saffron-white-green; an old woman clapping, her eyes shining; soldiers’ silhouettes dissolving into mist. The grandeur was gone—what remained was intimacy, the small defiance of people insisting to be seen through the haze.
Then, through the crowd, he saw her.
Meera stood near the barricade, shawl drawn tight, her face pale but steady. She wasn’t watching the parade. She was watching the fog, as though waiting for it to reveal something.
Kabir pushed through the crowd until he reached her side. “You came.”
She didn’t turn. “Of course. Delhi writes her stories loudest on days like this.”
They stood together, pressed by the bodies around them, the sound of the anthem swelling, jets roaring overhead unseen. Kabir wanted to speak, but the city drowned him out. Instead, he listened—to drums, to voices, to the silence that followed every burst of sound.
Finally Meera said, low enough only for him to hear: “Do you understand now? This city doesn’t belong to you. You belong to her. The moment you think you can leave, she will remind you she’s already inside you.”
Kabir looked at her, at the fog, at the crowd. He realized she was right. His assignment was long forgotten. What had begun as photographs had become obsession, then surrender.
He reached for her hand again, not in hesitation this time but with certainty. She allowed it, her fingers cold but unyielding in his. Together they stood as the fog thickened once more, hiding even the tricolor that fluttered above.
For Kabir, it was no longer about capturing Delhi. It was about accepting that he had been captured. By the city. By the fog. By her.
That night, when he returned to his hotel, he didn’t even glance at the photographs. He opened his notebook and wrote:
Delhi is not a place you visit. She is a storm you stand inside, waiting to be remade. And on this Republic Day, in the fog and drums, I finally stopped resisting. I belong—not to the city I came from, but to the one that has claimed me.
Chapter 11 – The Departure Ticket
The parade had ended, but its echo lingered in Kabir’s bones. For days afterward, Delhi felt both fuller and emptier—as though the city had offered him its loudest song, and now demanded silence in return.
His editor’s emails grew sharper. “Deadline this week. We need the images. Where’s the draft?” Kabir ignored them, leaving his laptop untouched. He had folders full of photographs, but they seemed irrelevant, shadows of a truth he couldn’t frame. How could he explain to his editor that Delhi was no longer an assignment but an ache?
At New Delhi Railway Station, he bought a ticket to Mumbai one morning, almost without thought. The act itself felt surreal—handing over rupees, receiving the thin slip of paper with departure times. The date glared back at him: three days later.
When he told Meera, she didn’t look surprised. They were sitting in a small café near ITO, sipping filter coffee while the fog pressed against the glass.
“Of course you’re leaving,” she said quietly. “Everyone does.”
Kabir bristled. “I’m not everyone.”
Her eyes softened but her tone didn’t. “Kabir, Delhi isn’t gentle. She will love you, but she will break you. Maybe it’s better you leave before that happens.”
He stared at her, searching for the hint of irony, but found none. “Is that what you want? For me to go?”
Meera hesitated. “What I want doesn’t matter. The city chooses who stays. And if you’re asking me—yes. A part of me wants you to leave before you lose yourself here.”
Her words cut deeper than she intended. Kabir left the café restless, walking the length of Rajiv Chowk until neon lights blurred into exhaustion. For the first time since arriving, he considered the possibility of going home. Mumbai meant familiarity—salt wind, monsoon trains, deadlines that at least made sense.
But that night, lying in his hotel bed, he couldn’t shake the sound of her voice, both warning and plea. He looked at the railway ticket again, folded in his notebook. It felt heavier than it should, as though Delhi herself had pressed her thumbprint on it.
Outside, the fog deepened. Somewhere in the silence, Kabir felt the city waiting, watching, deciding whether to let him go.
Chapter 12 – The Last Walk
The evening before his departure, Kabir met Meera one last time. She had chosen Lodhi Gardens again, as though the city itself insisted their circle close where it had first truly opened. The fog was dense, swallowing the pathways, leaving only fragments of stone domes and leafless trees visible in the pale lamplight.
She walked beside him in silence. No guided stories tonight, no fragments of history. Only the rhythm of footsteps pressing into damp earth.
Finally, near the Sheesh Gumbad, she stopped. “So,” she said, her voice almost lost in the mist, “you’re leaving tomorrow.”
Kabir looked at her, at the shawl wrapped tightly around her, at the way her eyes avoided his. “That’s what the ticket says,” he replied.
“Then this is where we end.” She tried to smile, but it faltered. “Delhi doesn’t keep people. She lets them pass through like fog itself.”
Kabir stepped closer. “You’re wrong. Delhi keeps them—inside scars, inside ruins, inside people like you.”
For the first time, her eyes flickered with something raw, almost fear. “Don’t say that.”
But Kabir couldn’t stop. “Meera, I didn’t come here for this. I came for photographs, for a story on winter. And yet—everything I’ve written, every image I’ve taken, it’s you. You’ve become the city for me.”
The fog pressed tighter around them, a hush that felt like listening.
Meera lowered her gaze. “Kabir, if you stay, Delhi will claim you. She’ll strip away your past until you don’t remember who you were before. And I—” she broke off, steadying herself. “I can’t be responsible for that.”
He reached for her hand. This time she let him. Her fingers trembled, but they didn’t pull away.
“Maybe that’s the point,” he whispered. “Maybe I need to be claimed.”
They stood there, two shadows stitched into the winter night. Somewhere beyond the gardens, the city hummed—horns, chants, silence. Kabir felt as if Delhi herself held her breath, waiting for his decision.
When the fog grew heavier, she finally spoke again. “Then walk with me. Tonight. One last time.”
They walked until dawn, through ruins and narrow lanes, across bridges where the Yamuna lay unseen beneath mist. They passed tea stalls lighting their first stoves, children rubbing sleep from their eyes, old men coughing smoke into the air. Every step felt both ending and beginning.
By the time they reached India Gate, the sun was breaking weakly through the fog, painting the arch in pale gold. Kabir stopped, his suitcase waiting in his hotel room, his train waiting at the station.
He turned to her. “If I don’t leave today?”
Meera’s eyes met his, steady at last. “Then you are no longer a visitor. You are Delhi’s now.”
The fog thinned just enough for the tricolor to show faintly above the monument. Kabir exhaled, long and certain.
The train ticket remained folded in his notebook, never used.
Weeks later, Kabir’s editor received his submission. Not photographs, not captions. A manuscript instead. Its first line read:
Delhi is not a city you visit. She is a storm you surrender to, a riddle spoken in fog. And sometimes, if you are very lucky, she answers back—not with monuments, but with the sound of a woman’s voice in the winter night.
***
