Khushwant Singh on Delhi

"It has grown out of all proportions, extending from Alipur to Faridabad, from Ghazibad and Noida across the Yamuna in Uttar Pradesh to Gurgaon in Haryana," Singh says in his just-published autobiographical account, "Khushwantnama: The Lessons of My Life".

Luytens had planned a city for a few thousand civil servants and staff; it now has a population of 16 million; he had planned roads for a few thousand cars, tongas and bicycles; now almost every family has a car or two or three and the roads are jammed from sunrise to sunset - and even after, Khushwant Singh says of the metropolis that his father Sobha Singh, a pioneer architect, had laid out with Lutyens and his crew.

"It is a city in which more than twice as many women get molested and raped than in Mumbai...I don't go out any more. The last time I had to step out to visit the doctor, I found the roads clogged," Khushwant Singh says.

The author's soul-searching of the city, where he lived and worked for most of his adult writing life, is steeped in memories, nostalgia and umbilical cords that tie him to the growth of modern Delhi with blood. There is a wistfulness about his reflections that borders on mourning - the blues of a man suspended on a thin thread between living and passing away.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/books/Lost-in-New-Delhi-at-98-Khushwant-Singh-muses/articleshow/19397016.cms