“Diverse, rich in history, chaotic—but with a rhythm that works.” That is how this week’s fixer, long-time editor Jamal Shaikh, describes his city. Over the past twenty years Jamal has immersed himself in New Delhi’s city life through a career as an editor of a variety of the country’s leading publications, including seven years leading the team at the Sunday magazine of the Hindustan Times, called HT Brunch, the country’s largest-circulating lifestyle magazine, with a weekly readership of 4 million.
Originally from Bombay (his preferred term), he’s lived in New Delhi for the last two decades and has witnessed his adoptive city’s rebirth, growth, and rejuvenation: “The two cities are age-old rivals—something like New York and Washington DC, or Sydney and Melbourne. Bombay is India’s creative and entertainment capital; Delhi is where politics, power, and government meet.”
“Before I moved to New Delhi back in 2006, everyone I spoke to told me I’d hate it,” says Jamal. “That it was pretentious, showy and fake. All true. But I’ve spent most of my adult life here, and I’ve seen it evolve.”
New Delhi (colloquially called Delhi by locals) is the political capital of one of the world’s biggest democracies. Some 1.4 billion people live in India, and with at least 22 million inhabitants, its capital is one of the world’s most populous cities. The region, including the expanded sub-cities of Gurgaon and Noida, is referred to as the National Capital Region (NCR), and all together is home to well north of 45 million people. This is what you need to know in order to make sense of the vastness of it all.