Spinning tales of memories past

When it comes to writing on Delhi, there are few writers who manage to infuse into their works, a sense of real, lived memories and personal insights the way Ronald Vivian Smith does.
The flaneur's newspaper columns, which are a chronicle of decades he spent exploring Delhi, have been compiled into a new book 'Delhi- Unknown Tales of a City'.
Composed of 73 of his columns, Smith's latest follows his previous books such as The Delhi that No-one Knows (2005), Capital Vignettes (2008) and Delhi Rambles (2014).
A veteran teller of tales, Smith first came to Delhi in the late 1950s from Agra. He soon grew to love its dusty lanes, its diverse people and its age old monuments as much as his home town.

His initial days were spent living in inexpensive hotels in the vicinity of Jama Masjid in old Delhi- a place, in his words, with a character, whose byzantine lanes he knows like the back of his hand.
On the walled city, he endearingly writes how the place "...Developed a heart of its own, one that breathed in unison with the inhabitants" when Mughal emperor Shah Jahan shifted the capital here from Agra, bringing along with him a diverse population comprising of all classes of people including nobles, artisans, scholars, fruit sellers, children, general merchants, gold and silversmiths besides the general hoi polloi.

In an age of internet search engines and rapidly changing landscapes, Smith, perhaps, is an anachronistic anomaly. He shuns newfangled gadgets and gets about on DTC buses. He writes on his father's old typewriter and gets it typed and printed for 20 rupees a page at an internet cafe. He gathers information the old-fashioned way- by talking to people.
"I have to write two columns a week. So whenever I have to write, I sit down and keep thinking of the past and the people who I have met. And I never maintain any sort of record my meetings. I rely on my memory. It is all stored in my mind," he says.

In all his years spent wandering the city, Smith's writings draw from a well of accumulated experiences- ranging from the mundane to the supernatural, from a beggar's wedding in Nizamuddin Basti to the ghost of a Raj-era soldier haunting the Delhi Gate.