Bicycle rickshaws squeeze through the narrow Delhi road leading to the Jama Masjid. (Mariana Martinez Estens)

Delhi is a city in perpetual motion. Early in the morning, monkeys parade along the walls of government buildings like people, and young children dressed in rags handspring and somersault across the sidewalks as nimble as little monkeys. Bicycle driven rickshaws compete for space on the roads with honking motorcycles.

India’s capital city was built eight times and destroyed six, leaving Old and New Delhi as the two surviving remnants of the many dynasties come and gone. As tour guide Muzaffar Shah said, the city holds a curse: No one will own Delhi forever. The one constant in the city’s history, its streets and its culture, is that it never seems to stand still.

After arriving at the hotel at 2 a.m. the previous morning, the group of jet lagged Columbia journalism students began our first day in India with a tour of New Delhi. Having been warned of overcrowding, we were pleasantly surprised to see the spacious yards and manicured gardens that surrounded the diplomats’ bungalows and the former viceroy’s palace, a benefit of the eight million trees bequeathed to Delhi by the British colonizers. But even at the India Gate war memorial, where army officers in orange and gold turbans formally laid a garland to commemorate the country’s fallen soldiers, there were signs of the other, poorer side of the city. A little beggar girl twisted herself into a human pretzel. Elsewhere, men and women swept the streets with brooms; a man tried to sell slingshots propelling whirling plastic toys.

L.K. Advani, the controversial leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), spoke to the group at his home about the intersection of politics and religion in India’s secular democracy.

But, like so much else in Delhi, politics and religion shift depending on who is speaking. Explaining Advani’s remarks, journalist and member of parliament Chandan Mitra talked about the Muslims as a voting bloc, often economically disadvantaged, who comprise 16 to 17 percent of India’s population. Later in the day, Sohail Hashmi, a Delhi-based documentarian, expert on Islam and our guide at Old Delhi’s principle mosque, Jama Masjid, stressed that Muslims are far from a monolithic group-they have class and cultural distinctions that outweigh their religious commonality. “If the Imam said vote for this candidate, I’d be surprised if anyone pays attention,” he said.

After Advani’s talk, the group headed to Old Delhi and finally found the bustling city streets about which we had been warned. Motorcycles cut off rickshaws, which formed lanes in each direction. Smells of food and spice from local shops filled the air. Children pushed carts of cardboard boxes and begged at the windows of the bus.

Even in Jama Masjid, a 1,200-square-meter courtyard with majestic domes, archways and minarets, it was hard to find a still spot. Worshippers waiting on the red sandstone terrace for prayers overlooked a bustling bazaar, as pigeons flew around eating the seed left for them by tourists and devotees.

In the area around the mosque stands the Red Fort. With its red sandstone wall 2.4 kilometers in circumference, the fort, visible from Jama Masjid, is a power center. Whichever empire’s flag flew from the fort controlled the city. Its story of kings, saints and violence, retold by Hashmi, are a reminder of the power struggles that have caused Delhi to rise and fall over the centuries. The Fort is a testimony to the story of this ever-changing city, a story that continues to unfold each and every day.