NEXT STOP: DELHI NCR
Please alight for:
Mughal monuments — lots of them
Qutab Minar – the tallest brick minaret in the world
Khari Baoli – Asia’s largest spice market
the largest urban conglomeration in the world’s most populous country
Car 1 is now a global IT hub
Car 2 is reserved for diplomats and government officials
दिल्ली में आपका स्वागत है – Welcome to Delhi
Delhi has never just been one city. Over the past millennium, at least eight capitals have risen and fallen on its soil. . .
DELHI
Hin: दिल्ली Dillī (National Capital Territory)
‘Dhilu’s City’
Delhi is wrapped in myth, poetry, politics, and urban layers—each successive incarnation built upon the rubble of the last. As an Urdu poet sighed, “There used to be a city by this name in the land of Hindustan.” Yet Delhi lives on, irrepressible, worn and reawakened, the heart and heat of India.
The name, like the city, resists a single origin story. It is a palimpsest of myth, mockery, dynasty, and empire. To speak of Delhi is to invoke both the shifting ground beneath its streets and the shifting meanings carried in its names.
The Name and Its Origins
One explanation traces the name to King Dhilu or Dilu, a possibly apocryphal Mauryan ruler from the 1st century CE. According to a medieval Persian chronicle, he ordered the construction of a city in his name, giving rise to Dilli. Founder-as-namesake is a common pattern in Indian toponymy, but there is no surviving Mauryan record of such a king—only literary mentions centuries later.
Another theory lies with the Tomaras, 12th-century Rajput rulers who are said to have called their city Dhillika or Dhilli. Later Jain and Persian sources tell of an iron pillar that refused to stay firmly in the ground. The pillar, erected by an earlier king—possibly Anangpal Tomar—was meant to symbolise permanence, but it wobbled. The Hindi word dhila (ढीला), meaning “loose” or “wobbly,” was applied to the pillar and, by extension, the city itself. The name may have started as a joke, but it stuck.
The Iron Pillar still stands today in Mehrauli, near the Qutub Minar. At over 7 metres high and weighing more than 6 tonnes, it has stood for 1,600 years without rusting, its metallurgy still a subject of study. It symbolises Delhi’s endurance through the centuries.
A third reading comes from Sanskrit: dehalī (देहली), meaning “threshold” or “gateway.” In geographical terms too, Delhi sits at a natural crossroads on the Indo-Gangetic Plain — a passage between the fertile river valleys of the Ganga to the east and the drier plateaux of the Punjab and Rajasthan to the west, and on the route by which invaders entered India from the northwest. From ancient times to the present, it has been a gateway for armies, traders, refugees, and empires. The related Persian/Urdu word dahliz evokes the entrance to a home, the liminal space before arrival. Delhi has long been that kind of space.
Numismatic evidence reinforces this. Silver coins called dehliwal, issued by the Tomara and later Chauhan rulers (11th–12th centuries), show the name was already in recognised use by the early second millennium.
Capital of Capitals
Delhi has never just been one city. Over the past millennium, at least eight capitals have risen and fallen on its soil — Lalkot, Siri, Tughlaqabad, Jahanpanah, Firozabad, Dinpanah, Shahjahanabad, and New Delhi — each leaving behind walls, tombs, markets, and names. In that sense, Delhi is less a city than a palimpsest.
Lalkot, built by the Tomaras in the 8th–9th century, was the first fortified city. Its sandstone ramparts still circle parts of Mehrauli, where kites wheel above ancient walls.
Siri, founded by Alauddin Khilji around 1303, was a military settlement. Legend says its foundations were filled with the severed heads of Mongol invaders; today only broken walls and earthworks remain, hidden near the modern Siri Fort sports complex.
Tughlaqabad, begun by Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq in 1321, was a fortress of massive stone bastions, more wall than home. Local lore says it was cursed by the saint Nizamuddin Auliya, and even now its ruins feel abandoned and eerie.
Ruins of Tuglaqabad Fort Jahanpanah, Muhammad bin Tughlaq’s attempt to connect Delhi’s older settlements, is mostly memory now, though scattered gates survive. Its name — “Refuge of the World” — seems poignant in retrospect.
Firozabad, raised by Firoz Shah Tughlaq in the 14th century, included gardens, palaces, and the still-standing Firoz Shah Kotla. He moved Ashokan pillars here, proof of his fascination with antiquity. Today the site is a haunt for cricket fans and quiet seekers of djinns.
Dinpanah, founded by Humayun, was partly destroyed by Sher Shah Suri, who built the Purana Qila over it. Its ramparts still stand beside Delhi Zoo, their stones warm in the winter sun.
Shahjahanabad, created by Shah Jahan in 1639, was the Mughal emperor’s last great capital — a walled city with fourteen gates, caravanserais, gardens, and the ceremonial avenue of Chandni Chowk. At its heart rose the Red Fort, Jama Masjid, and noble mansions designed to embody imperial splendour. Much survives in Old Delhi’s streets, where poetry once drifted through the air.
Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi New Delhi, raised by the British from 1911, was a city of avenues, domes, and imperial ambition — meant to outlast empire, yet soon claimed by independent India as its capital.
An old saying goes that Delhi has been destroyed fourteen times and repopulated fifteen. Fires, famines, conquests, and uprisings have regularly hollowed it out. But it keeps returning, in new shapes. Poets have long noted this cycle of ruin and renewal. One observed that there is little difference between dil (heart) and Dilli (Delhi), for both have been broken and healed many times.
Ghalib’s City
The Urdu poet Ghalib, writing after the revolt of 1857, gave that truth a human voice. He watched the city he loved fall to British retribution. The Mughal court dissolved. Streets emptied. Whole neighbourhoods vanished. In a letter, he mourned:
What do you ask? What should I write?
Five things kept Delhi alive – the fort, Chandni Chowk, the daily crowds at the Jama Masjid, the weekly walk to the Yamuna Bridge, and the yearly fair of the flower-sellers.
None of these survives, so how can Delhi survive?
Yes, there used to be a city of this name in the land of Hindustan.
And yet, Delhi survived. It always does.
Delhi Today — The Living Capital
The modern city is divided into two main parts:
Old Delhi, the Mughal court’s last great statement of power and beauty: a walled city of narrow lanes, havelis, and bazaars, built around the Red Fort and Jama Masjid.
Jama Masjid, Old Delhi New Delhi, a British project, designed as an imperial capital after the transfer from Calcutta in 1911. Built to the south of the old city, it came to life in the 1920s and 30s, with wide boulevards, gardens, and ceremonial architecture laid out by Lutyens and Baker.
Skyline at Rajiv Chowk, Connaught Place (New Delhi)
Even now, these two Delhis sit back-to-back, like mismatched heirs to a throne: one dense, chaotic, and lived-in; the other ordered, planned, and official. Together they form the Delhi National Capital Territory (NCT).
Surrounding it is the National Capital Region (NCR) — Noida, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Ghaziabad — satellite cities that merge into one vast sprawl. Over 30 million people live here, making it India’s largest city-region and the second largest in the world.
Yet Delhi is more than numbers. It is a migrant city, speaking dozens of tongues: Hindi and Urdu, Punjabi and English, Bhojpuri, Bengali, and many more. It is Sikh gurdwaras and Jain temples, Sufi qawwals at Nizamuddin and Sunday picnics at India Gate.
I lived in Delhi for a year. Winter could bite — foggy mornings giving way to bright, chilly afternoons — but never ice or snow. The city sits on the edge of a desert, and its cold is dust-dry, not icy. Then comes May, and with it the searing heat. And you wonder why you flinched at the cold. Festivals crowd its calendar: Diwali lamps glow, Eid prayers fill Jama Masjid, Republic Day parades sweep Kartavya Path. The Yamuna River, often forgotten, runs quietly to the east, its banks lined with settlements and shrines.
Power and Continuity
Delhi is also a political abstraction. It is the seat of central power, where decisions are made for 1.4 billion people. Its governance is split between local, state, and national levels, often described as a permanent turf war. Yet beyond politics, Delhi is continuous: temples and mosques, shrines and markets endure. Sufi dargahs, British bungalows, Punjabi migrant colonies, Mughal gardens, Tibetan settlements, Dalit activist centres—all exist side by side.
Delhi’s name carries all of this: myth, history, migration, aspiration, loss. To walk through the city is to cross thresholds — from past to present, from old capitals to new dreams, and sometimes, from one Delhi to another.
For more on Indian place names and history - see Place Names Wallah
For a journey through tribal India & Sri Lanka see - Headhunting with Marguerite