The growth of modern Delhi- good, bad or indifferent-has not obliterated its rich historical heritage. Not that there were no attempts to run it. The insensitivity of some of the present –day rulers and so –called planners and developers has to be seen to be believed. The historic walls of the city ad the incomparable Turkman Gate were all but demolished. Some Philistines had earmarked even the house of Ghalib, perhaps the greatest Urdu poet that ever lived, for the hammer. On this occasion, as on several others, Jawaharlal Nehru’s personal intervention aloe prevented the vandalism.
The Oberoi intercontinental hotel
But by and large mush of history’s luminous legacy survives. Nothing perhaps illustrates the fusion of the ancient and the modern in Delhi than that the magnificent Humayun’s tomb should co-exist, almost across the road, with the Oberoi intercontinental hotel. Equally, it is a symbol of change with continuity that people living in a lower-middle –class tenement in Nizamuddin have both the pleasure of looking at the blue dome under the shadow of Human’s mausoleum and the Khankhana’s tomb, on the one hand, and the pain of having to bear with the stench of nullah which remains uncovered since Humayun’s reign on the other.