Delhi’s urban villages are paradoxical spaces-at once ancient and evolving, marginalized yet central to the city’s modern economy. These are places where centuries-old traditions coexist with pop-up cafés and start-ups, and where the past is never quite past.
Born out of state-led land acquisitions from the early 20th century, these villages were thrust into transformation through urban expansion. What emerged was not a seamless integration, but a complex in-between: part city, part village, part memory, part reinvention. This book journeys into those spaces-exploring how people remember, resist, and reimagine their place in a city that’s always on the move.
Through stories of place, identity, and power, Sheher Mein Gaon uncovers how these neighbourhoods reflect the deeper tensions of modern urban life-between tradition and progress, belonging and exclusion, history and ambition.

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