NEW DELHI, INDIA—Transported in plastic bags or clasped between hands, the birds arrive 30 to 40 a day. In the summer, they are often dehydrated; in the winter, they suffer from pneumonia. Whether wounded by a passing auto-rickshaw or a whirling ceiling fan, the injured fowls arrive at the Charity Birds Hospital inside the Digambara Jain Temple compound, seeking a remedy for everything from pigeon pox to the common cold. One thing is for sure at this, the only hospital of its kind: The patients never admit themselves.

The Charity Birds Hospital located inside the Jain Temple. (Amanda Millner-Fairbanks)

Opposite the historic Red Fort and situated amidst the noise and chaos of Chandi Chowk, a bazaar in the old quarter of the capital city, the three-story hospital, founded in 1929, treats nearly 30,000 birds each year. The birds are first held in the intensive care unit and eventually transferred to the general ward, where they regain wing power and eventually take flight.

Fed a vegetarian diet of bread and cheese, treatments are free of cost and funded by Jain donations. The hospital separates its vegetarian patients from their non-vegetarian counterparts. Carnivorous predators such as eagles, hawks and falcons are housed exclusively on the first floor. Every Saturday, a section of the roof is opened and the recovered birds fly away. The hospital follows a central tenet of Jainism—a commitment toward enabling the freedom of all living beings, no matter how small or insignificant. And once the birds are admitted, they are never returned to their owners for fear of likely confinement.

“People bring the birds here, Jain or not,” explains veterinarian Dr. Vijay Kumar, who has worked at the hospital for nine years and while not a Jain himself, quickly mentions that he is a vegetarian. One of India’s smallest religious communities who comprise approximately one percent of India’s one billion people, Jains are, first and foremost, vegetarian.

“Just like us, a pigeon will never eat another animal. Even if it is very hungry,” says manager Sri Kamal Kishore Jain, as he describes the folk-art mural in the hospital’s second-floor entrance. It's shows a scene from a famous Jain and Buddhist tale: A king whose hand and foot have been cut off is pictured next to a scale that balances his bleeding foot and hand on one side and a bird on the other. The mural reads: “Brave and merciful king put pieces of his own flesh and finally his whole life in exchange to save a pigeon from prey of hawk.”

Walking barefoot through the bird hospital, two words come immediately to mind: bird flu. The U.S. Embassy in New Delhi warns on its website: “Currently, direct contact with infected poultry, or surfaces and objects contaminated by their feces, is presently considered the main route of human infection.” In response to a question about whether children should visit zoos, the website warns: “Yes, but it is recommended that they do not visit the aviary sections.”

Dr. Kumar assures, “Since the bird flu we’ve taken extra precautions and care with migratory birds. No poultry.” After the outbreak of the avian H5N1 influenza virus in mid-February in Navapur, a city in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, the government ordered the culling of hundreds of thousands of birds.

Some expected the Jains, a small, but often wealthy minority group, to publicly oppose the cullings. While they have yet to galvanize their voices, the issue personifies the group’s struggle to gain a steady, political foothold in India. As millions of birds are being slaughtered worldwide to squelch a possible epidemic, some Jains are contemplating how or if to voice their dissent.

“If a human being is suffering from HIV or AIDS, would you kill them?” asks Vinod Daryapurkar, creator of Jainworld.com, one of the most comprehensive websites on Jainism. “If you wouldn’t kill humans, why would you kill the birds?” As a Jain, Daryapurkar does not distinguish between animals and birds. He views both as living, equal beings. “A lot of people talk of compassion and then go and eat animals,” Daryapurkar explains, “The compassion is false.”

Many Jains attempt to manage their lives in a way that causes the least amount of harm to others. When asked whether the Jain community might organize a public response, Daryapurkar says, “The Jain community is small, tiny. Our sphere of influence is very limited.”

Anne Monius, professor of South Asian religions at the Harvard Divinity School, who specializes in the religious traditions of India, mentions the fact that religiously- organized social movements are relatively new in India. “Jains have not responded perhaps because of their deep commitment to the idea that our own human condition can only be cured by one person at a time.” Monius further articulated that historically, Jains needed to establish themselves as a separate, specifically not Hindu community.

“Now to be not Hindu is to invite the kind of unwanted political attention by the BJP,” she explains, referring to the Bharatiya Janata Party, the powerful Hindu nationalist party. “By not putting themselves out there, the Jains are trying hard to melt into the Hindu woodwork and not backpedaling on 150 years of trying to differentiate themselves.”

Dr. Dilip Mukhtyar, former chairman and current trustee of the Jain Temple in Elmhurst, Queens, questions why, if only a handful of birds are infected, hundreds of thousands are sacrificed. “Suppose tomorrow one cow got sick, would you kill 100,000 cows next week?” Mukhtyar advocates for more humane ways of dealing with the possible epidemic and questions to what extent the current practices will actually be effective.

A Jain lobby, according to Mukhtyar, was not effective in their recent opposition to Indian slaughterhouses. “They weren’t that successful,” he says, “Because the people who were running the slaughterhouses were more concerned by the profits.”

Spiritual leader Gurudev Shree Chitrabhanuji, who is the founder of the Jain Meditation International Center in Manhattan, considers the cullings emblematic of a larger problem. “Inconvenience bothers us more than the injustice we do to others,” Chitrabhanuji said last week in New York at a talk aimed at Jain youth, “What you give to the world, it is going to come back sooner or later.” When the issue of the bird flu came up, Chitrabhanuji questioned, “And now you are warned about the disease, but why do you eat them?” he paused and then smiled. “Their vibrations may just eat you some time.”

Toward the end of the evening, Chitrabhanuji handed out a series of cartoon advertisements promoting vegetarianism. Included was a chicken saying, “The one thing I hate is to end up on your plate.”

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PAHAR GANJ, INDIA -- Shai Levi spent three years in the Israeli army, a mandatory requirement for all Israeli citizens. As soon as his service was over, he fled Israel and spent the last five months traveling in India, a popular post-army activity for an estimated 30,000 young Israelis every year.

Levi, 23, came to India to unwind, relax, and forget the horrors he witnessed during the height of the Palestinian intifada, when blood stained the streets of Israeli and Palestinian neighborhoods on a regular basis. He came to escape responsibility and the stress of Western life.

Pahar Ganj bazaar, where Israelis have formed a distinct enclave (Carolyn Slutsky)

Inside the Chabad House in New Delhi, a Jewish community center set up by the Lubavitcher sect of Orthodox Jews, Levi looked calm. He wore a red zip-up sweatshirt, warm-up pants and sandals even though it was raining outside and the unpaved roads of the Pahar Ganj bazaar had turned into a slippery maze of mud. He hadn’t shaved in days and his shoulder-length brown curls were in disarray.

It was Friday afternoon and two Orthodox Jewish men were bustling around preparing a Sabbath dinner for the unknown number of Israeli tourists that would be dropping by that evening for a taste of home. A huge pot of Matza Ball soup was simmering on the stove while one of the men kneaded a bowl of dough for the challah, a rich bread eaten on the Sabbath. The Chabad House serves as a meeting place for Israelis, who travel to India alone or in pairs, but hope to link up with others along the way. The religious center also provides meals, advice and prayer services.

“I started to pray here in India,” said Levi, who admitted that he rarely goes to synagogue in Israel. “You start missing Shabbat dinners when you’re away from home,” he said in Hebrew. “You miss feeling Jewish.” He has come across other Israelis during his travels across northern India who had the same experience of rediscovering their religious connection.

As for the connections they make with the Indian culture, Levi characterized them as mostly superficial. Although he found the people to be very open and easy to get along with, he noticed that Israelis tend to keep to their own kind, only interacting with Indians in matters of business. They communicate with Indians in English and barter, sometimes aggressively, over goods. His impression of Israeli-Indian relations was one of mutual respect and warmth. “Indians love Israelis,” he said. “We’re noisy and crazy. They love our energy.”

Ramesh Choudharg, a room service attendant at the Hare Rama guest house where the Chabad center is located, had mixed feelings about the Israeli guests he encounters.

“Sometimes they make big balagan,” he said, using a Hebrew word meaning “mess.” He was reluctant to elaborate on the specific problems that Israelis cause, except to say that they are sometimes loud and difficult to handle.

The Hare Rama is known for housing Israelis; if you ask an Indian rickshaw driver to take you to the Israeli area of Pahar Ganj, he will most likely take you to this guest house. Word of mouth keeps young tourists coming to the cheap and bustling part of the market, located within walking distance of the New Delhi railway station.

Israeli tourists have so firmly established their presence in the area that signs in Hebrew have been set up outside many shops and the Indian shopkeepers have picked up a few key Israeli words. They call out “Shalom! Shalom!” to passers-by who look Israeli. One woman ran her finger above her upper lip, saying “safam,” – mustache – meaning she waxed facial hair, and “gabot” – eyebrows. The book store around the corner from the Hare Rama guest house displayed 20 or 30 books in Hebrew.

Choudharg is a Hindu and has been working at Hara Rama for two years. He said the Friday night gatherings on the rooftop of the hotel occasionally get rowdy, but he has enjoyed learning about the Jewish religion and the Israeli culture. He’s even learned some of the Sabbath songs. Just as he was starting to sing one in the third floor hallway outside the room Chabad rents, he was drowned out by a much louder singing. A circle of five young Israeli men had formed inside the Chabad House. Their arms around each other, they danced and jumped and sang joyously:

“Mishe, mishe, mishe, mishe
Mishe, mishe, mishe, mishe,
Mishenichnas Adar.
Mishe, mishe, mishe, mishe…”

Singing group of Israelis (Carolyn Slutsky)

Two young women who were rolling dough into mini challahs stopped their work and clapped along. The song was in honor of the Jewish holiday of Purim, which celebrates the deliverance of the Persian Jews from persecution in ancient times. The words were about the happiness of the Jewish month of Adar when Purim falls. Choudharg remained in the hallway, watching the boisterous group from the doorway.

Naresh Fernandes, the editor of Time Out Mumbai, has been observing Israelis in India for almost 10 years. An article he wrote several years ago for Man’s World, an Indian publication, explored the relationship between Indians and Israelis: “Paradoxically, while Israelis came to India to seek peace and spirituality, Indian tourism industry workers came to regard Israelis as being loud, unruly and possessing a healthy propensity for aggressive bargaining.”

Asaf Shema, a 23-year-old Israeli traveling in India with his girlfriend, Maria Samyonov, 22, thinks that the only reason Indians might dislike Israelis is because unlike American or European tourists, Israelis love to haggle over prices. Picking up the glass of water in front of him as he sat at the Chabad House in Mumbai, Shema said, “If a European buys this glass for 20 rupees, I can buy it for 10 rupees.” He explains that bargaining is not as much about saving money as it is about not being a friar, or fool. Israelis hate feeling like they’ve been swindled.

Fernandes discussed his research on Israelis with several visiting students from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism at a reception in Mumbai. Driving a hard bargain at the bazaar, he said, is the least of Israelis’ offenses in India. According to him, the perception Indians have of Israelis is that they are only interested in drugs and parties. The post-army twenty-somethings alternate between being lazy idlers, he said, and violent aggressors.

Gavriel Holtzberg runs a Chabad House in Mumbai that caters mainly to Israelis on their way to party hotspots such as Goa and Rajasthan. Three flights a week bring hundreds of them from Israel to Mumbai and Holtzberg recognizes the nature of their needs.

A silver menorah marks the location of the Chabad House in Mumbai (Dikla Kadosh)

“They need relief,” said the young rabbi who grew up in Brooklyn, from the army, from work, from real life. “They come here to do everything the army didn’t allow them to do. Their shoes had to be polished and tied – here they wear sandals. They had to cut their hair – here they grow their hair long.”

Holtzberg is not excusing their behaviour. He just understands the reasons behind it better than the Indians that come into contact with the hordes of escapists.

Itzick Sabag, a 23-year-old Israeli who came to the United States after completing his army service and now lives in New York, is not surprised that Israelis have such a negative reputation in India. The type of person who goes there, he said, has no ambition or direction and is mainly interested in doing nothing. India is the perfect place to do just that.

“People go to different places for different reasons after the army,” he said. “They go to South America for hiking, climbing, outdoors stuff. They go to America to work or go to school. And they go to India to do drugs.”

An article in the Los Angeles Times in 2003 reported that the “post-army India meltdown has become so common that the government is crafting a policy to respond. Weary of organizing teams to scoop the wayward soldiers out of the backwoods hospitals, Israel is negotiating with the Indian government to install treatment outposts…”

The Israeli government may be aware of the problems Israeli tourists are causing and Israelis in other parts of the world may be aware of the reputation their countrymen have, but it seems that the thousands of revelers who flock to the subcontinent are completely unaware of the situation. At a time when Israeli-Indian political relations are just beginning to warm up, it is unfortunate that on the ground – at back-alley bazaars and beachside cafes – it is more of a love-hate relationship, with the Israelis doing most of the loving and the Indians doing most of the hating.

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DELHI, INDIA --Sadness and rain filled the faces of about 200 Tibetans, their cheeks painted with the rising sun flag of the country they long to see again.

Hands chained together and their voices raised aloud, school children, monks, elders, women and teenagers sang songs remembering the 47th anniversary of Uprising Day, March 10 1959, when, after nine years of occupation by the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), the revolt against communist rule failed and tens of thousands of people where killed as a result.

Tashi Tobgyal, a 25-year-old Tibetan photographer was there too, but expressed his doubts about the purpose. “We manifest every Uprising Day but it is repetitive, not effective,” he said.

Tobgyal´s parents where amongst the 85,000 people who fled Tibet in 1959 and sought refuge in India. The Indian government gave them land to found 36 settlements, including Dharamsala, where the 14th Dali Lama,--spiritual and political leader of Tibet, now heads the government in exile.

About 2,000 Tibetans flee their country every year. Since then, the Tibetans in exile, scattered in communities mainly in Nepal, India and the United States have lead a relentless fight to regain autonomy from the PRC.

The deeply rooted tradition of Buddhism amongst Tibetans has been the driving force behind their struggle, as the values of compassion, nonviolence and the rejection of extremism, -called Middle-Way approach, as a way to end suffering are clearly put into practice.

In his address on the 47th Uprising Day Anniversary, the Dali Lama said in his statement that:
“The basic principles of the Middle-Way Approach for resolving the issue of Tibet, trusting that a time must surely come when we would have the opportunity to engage in talks with the Chinese leadership.” Reinforcing his commitment with values consistent with Buddhism.

“The exile government has worked hard to maintain the traditions,” said Prof. Geshe Ngawang Samteu, director of the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies in Sarnath, India.

“[It has done so by] founding schools for Tibetans where there’s a large community in exile and maintaining cohesion through teaching of Buddhism,” he said in his office on the university campus, witch is in the town where Buddha gave his first sermon.

Tobgyal had just seen Motorcycle Diaries, a recent film about Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Argentinean freedom fighter and one of the fathers of the Cuban revolution.

“When Che was in a march of coal miners, he threw a stone at the soldiers and said “can’t you see they’re thirsty, give them some water!”…Well, I feel we don’t have anyone to throw a stone at China and say that,” said Tobgyal.

Ahimsa, the Sanskrit term for avoidance-of-violence and central belief in Buddhist practice, has been evoked constantly in the evolution of the freedom movement.

But the practice and understanding of ahimsa is not set in stone, and the Buddhist teachings of accepting destiny, even if it means endless exile are challenged.

Tobgyal’s concerns and need “to throw a stone” are part of growing frustration and sense of urgency amongst young Tibetans, most of whom, now in their 20s and 30s, where born and raised in exile.

Whereas the Dali Lama rejects even hunger strikes as part of his understanding of ahimsa, this practice is increasingly used by protesters and is bound to play a role in the numerous protests sprouting around the world leading to the 2008 Olympics hosted by China.

Most of the protesters on this day in Delhi belong to the Tibetan Youth Congress, deemed as the major organization for Tibetan independence and claiming to have over 10,000 members all over the world. They are convinced hunger strikes and civil disobedience are acceptable means of protest, not contrary to ahimsa.

“Buddhism is the correct path to freedom,” said Tendin Kalden, 32, president of the Tibetan Youth Congress in New York and New Jersey.

“Gandhi borrowed the Buddhist value of nonviolence, ahimsa to free its country thru nonviolence and he did it,” said Kalden.

Addressing the questioning of ahimsa’s effectiveness in the 21st century, Kalden added, “even if the world has changed since then, and Tibet is in a different circumstance than India, the path is the same, the midway approach [taught by Buddhism] is the way most Tibetans want to fight for the freedom of their nation.”

Kalden was one of the organizers of a Tibetan Festival in New York, hosted at the Diocese Armenian Church, located at 630 2nd Ave in Manhattan.

The mood was festive; the women dressed in their traditional outfits, very colorful pieces of cloth tied around their waists, their long black hair came down the back framing their round faces with deep black eyes.
Little girls where walking around smiling at the crowd and selling CDs of Tibet’s musical sensation, Phurbu T. Namgyal, who played latter that night.

Half the public where also performing, so the crowd was filled with costumes with yak skin and dangling hair adornments.

Around 100 families, young and old performing together.

Sonam Chonzom, 29, born and raced in Darjeeling, India, came to New York five years ago to be a babysitter. Until recently Chonzom served as president of the Tibetan Woman Coalition, refugee women’s organization working for Tibetan freedom.

Chonzom is also a teacher in a Tibetan Sunday school, where she sees the children and parents trying to maintain their Tibetan identity while immersed in a different culture. “I just wish to get to see Tibet in my lifetime” she said as her happy eyes turned watery but never stopped her smile.

A fight in the line to get food broke out and quickly security escorted two men outside.
The crowd seemed shocked and several people followed them outside, reprimanding the men.
One of Chonzom’s students, six-year-old Sonam, came running and hugged her around the legs.

“I’m sure they’re fighting because of something stupid,” she said. “Fighting is always stupid, right?”
Chonzom hugged her and shock her head in approval, while her eyes drifted of to the land she longs to see. She never cried.

Rinzin Dolka, 31, Tibetan Women Coalition accountant, is organizing the protest, taking place on April 21, during the visit of China’s Prime Minister to New York. Dolka expressed both hope and urgency for a peaceful resolution of the Tibetan conflict.

“[I hope] nobody gets hurt or killed,” she said. “Our nonviolent way it’s working but I’ll take a while.”
After a long pause, and a glance at the room filled with children that have never seen Tibet, Dolce added, “I hope for the best, because we are running out of time, so many Chinese are coming in to Tibet and diluting the culture… the culture is vanishing.”

Dolce, like many others, hopes to go back to Tibet, even if the latest peace talks with the government in exile do not lead to Tibet’s full autonomy.

“The culture is dying in our country, “said Dolce. “In America we can tell them stories, we can sing in public, in Tibet we would be killed. We are running out of time.”

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The national flower of India is the lotus, and today our team of spiritual reporters literally stepped inside one. Built with over 10,000 slabs of white Italian marble, the Baha’i House of Worship, here in Delhi is modeled after India’s symbol of worship and religion.

Past the immaculately manicured lawns, dissected by red brick pathways and carefully tended flora, our group was met by guide Subha Mohan, one of the many volunteers that live and work on the premises. With her was fellow Baha’i member Munireh Bayly, Mona, as she is called by friends, who took special interest in our arrival and was eager to meet us.

“Buenos dias,” she said in nearly perfect Spanish, which she perfected in her time working in Latin America. Mohan and Bayly had initially assumed that our delegation was from Colombia, the South American country.

Mona joked that her name in Spanish means monkey. After she spoke a few more Spanish phrases, our bewildered group realized the misunderstanding.

***

Known commonly as the Lotus Temple, the Baha’i House of Worship in Delhi is more visited than even the Taj Mahal. A little more rested—though still jetlagged from a marathon first day— we were among the 35,000 visitors expected to walk through the well-secured facility today, explained Subha.

Following our brief, but enlightening introduction we sat under the vaulted ceiling of the open prayer space in time for the 10:00 a.m. service. From behind the simple podium a man chanted words from the Qu’ran.

In keeping with Baha’i practice, each of the three younger men who followed took a verse from a different religious book. The last to the podium, Manu Chandran sang from the Baha’i book, “God is sufficient unto me. He is the all suffering…” His angelic voice bounced from the marble slabs filling the immense space, each verse trailing in echo forming its own chorus.

“My mother told me that to sing is to bring people closer to God,” Chandran said.

Baha'i chanter Manu Chandran, outside the Lotus Temple's visitor center. (Sophia Chang)

For Chandran, singing is a family affair. On each visit to Kerela, the southern city where his family is from, his uncle takes him to a pool of water where he stands submerged to his collarbone. There he practices the breathing that helps him sing. “Singing comes from here,” he says pointing just below his ribcage to his diaphragm, “…but you must stand very still [in the water],” explaining that it is easy to tip over.

Manu’s mother is also a singer and devotee of Baha’i. One of 8 siblings, his mother was the first in her family to learn of the religion. And together as group, the entire family, including her parents, converted. Chandran is the first born as a Baha’i.

Quiet and beautiful, it seems the universe conspired to impart us with a mellow morning. “It’s the first sense of calmness I’ve felt since we got to Delhi, in contrast to the frenetic crowds in Delhi,” Aili shared on the bus ride to our next destination, Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Cathedral.

***

On the steps of Sacred Heart, renowned Indian journalist, Satish Jacob, met our group to share his thoughts on the convergence of Indian tradition and religion and the society’s history of religious tolerance. Where Christmas is nationally recognized, so are holy days for religious minorities such the Zoroastrians and Muslims in a country that is 80 percent Hindu. “India is a country of religious holidays,” he said, garnering a collective chuckle.

A remnant from the British Raj (the period during which India was a colony), Sacred Heart was built in 1930, but was banned to natives, as Jacob explained. Still, the Catholic Church has created a legacy of providing an elite education for many of the Hindu students enrolled in their schools.

***

What was a decidedly less strenuous day of visiting religious sites, the class parted ways to pursue story leads. Erik watched his first match of cricket, India’s national pastime and passion. Bruce and Michal interviewed Shabnam Hashmi of Act Now for Harmony and Democracy (ANHAD), a social advocacy group promoting religious unity. Ari Paul met with a human rights lawyer working to secure the rights of Muslim women. Aili and Amanda returned to the Jain Bird Hospital, while Mariana feverishly pursued Tibetan refugees, after unexpectedly stumbling upon their protest, proving that at any turn in India, a story awaits the ready and intrepid reporter.

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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.

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