Swapna Sundari
(First Draft.)
Idyll 3: Capital (18)
In those broad roads I
wandered
where the the huge trees gave shade
baulked again and again
by my own thoughts and nature
and you too, not ready
to yield fully
as I was the barrier
not finding the obstacle or blocks inside me
to let you fully flow
in and through me
Yet no one in the middle of it could make me
forfeit
my poems
Every snapshot
every glance
every fire
of your loveliness never went astray
trapped by me
to make you immortal
so separate from me, you and I will not remain.
(18)
Delhi
New Delhi, in the center of northern India, is the capital of India and one of the 11 districts of the city of Delhi. The National Capital Region is a much larger entity comprising the entire National Capital Territory of Delhi along with adjoining districts. Until 1911 Calcutta (Kolkata), on the east coast, was the capital of the British Indian Empire, though Delhi had served as the political and financial center of several Indian states, most notably of the Mughal Empire from 1649 to 1857. However, during the 3rd Delhi Durbar ("Court of Delhi"), a mass assembly to mark the succession of an emperor or empress of India, George V announced the shift of the capital and laid the foundation stone for the viceroy's residence (now Rashtrapati Bhavan, the residence of the nation's president). Over two decades, Edwin Landseer Lutyens planned much of the central administrative area of the city as a testament to Britain's imperial aspirations, inventing his own new order of classical architecture (the Delhi Order); the columns at the front entrance of the palace have bells carved into them, which Lutyens designed with the idea that their silence indicated that British rule there would never end. Later the foundation stone was shifted to a site atop the Raisina Hill, which was directly opposite the Dinapanah citadel, considered to be the location of Indraprastha ("City of Indra"), the fabled capital of the kingdom led by the Pandavas in the "Mahabharata." Herbert Baker, the other principal architect, designed the the Parliament House and the Secretariat building, the two blocks of which flank the Rashtrapati Bhawan. In 1929, as construction of the Viceroy's House, Central Secretariat, Parliament House, and All-India War Memorial (India Gate) was nearly completed, the construction of Connaught Place, began (designed by Robert Tor Russell, chief architect to the Public Works Department). The new capital was inaugurated in 1931 by viceroy Edward Frederick Lindley Wood (then Lord Irwin, but in 1934 he became Viscount Halifax; as British foreign secretary from 1938 and 1940 he was one of the architects of the policy of appeasement prior to World War II, although after Adolf Hitler's occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 he attempted to deter further German aggression by allying with Poland; when Neville Chamberlain resigned as prime minister in May 1940, despite widespread support across the political spectrum, he declined the prime ministership, feeling that Winston Churchill would be a more suitable war leader.)
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