Delhi has always been a city that gathers wanderers the way the Yamuna gathers light at dawn. People have come from far flung lands and ancient shores, carried first by stories and then by a longing they cannot quite name. Emperors once strolled through its scented gardens searching for a glimpse of eternity. Poets pressed their ears to its walls and heard verses rise like birds at daybreak. Writers let its dust settle on their pages until the city itself began to speak. Saints paused beneath its ceaseless sky and felt their hearts loosen in its warmth. Even now immigrants step into its vastness with only a suitcase and a hope, soon discovering that Delhi has already carved out a quiet corner for them.
To write of this city is to feel the old chorus stir again. Delhi does not simply hold its people. It entwines itself with them, softly and inevitably, like a memory that refuses to fade. And yet the city keeps finding new ways to reveal itself. Today it is young creators who teach us to look again, offering fresh perspectives shaped for a digital world where Delhi’s everyday poetry travels farther than ever before.
I have been following Neha Dubey for a while now, a Delhi NCR resident whose storytelling feels like a familiar melody on a warm evening. Her photographs and videos romance the city in a way that is tender rather than theatrical, nudging you to notice the beauty tucked inside ordinary corners. Online she goes by Stories With Neha, and nearly fifty thousand people linger over her work.
“Delhi, for me, is a culmination of culture and chaos, the kind that invites you in. People see crowds and assume they know the city, but what I see is the quiet hope within them. You can arrive with almost nothing and still begin again,” she tells me.
One of her reels shows her and her husband at Humayun’s Tomb, captured in soft, film-like cuts that glow with afternoon light. Nothing is overdone. It feels like glimpsing a couple gently moving through a space that has long been part of their personal map.
When I ask what guides her lens, she smiles. “I am drawn to earthy colours, the red and ochre walls, the green fences, the old brick textures around Mandi House and Lodhi Estate. They carry a quiet nostalgia. And I chase light, especially the 3 to 3.30 p.m. sun that creates long, gentle shadows. It transforms the most ordinary frame.”
We drift to food, Delhi’s favourite language of memory. This city loves to remember itself through taste, from Old Delhi recipes murmured across generations to the snacks of childhood and those unmistakable winter cravings. So I ask her how she honours nostalgia without romanticising the past into something it never was.
“For me, nostalgia comes from the food I still return to. I often go back to the thalis at the different Bhavans. We call it Bhavan hopping, not out of sentimentality but because the taste and the familiarity have been a constant since my college and post college years. And Delhi really does have some of the best chaats, whether it is the palak patta chaat from Lota or the samosa aloo sabzi chaat from BK Snacks. But nostalgia does not stop me from embracing what is new. Every winter brings its cravings like gajar ka halwa, and now there are newer places that satisfy that too: Ikk Punjab in GK2 for that warm homely sweetness, or Nimtho in GK1 when I want momos that feel just right. Delhi holds its old flavours close, but it keeps making space for new ones, and that is the kind of balance the city naturally has.”
Has the digital world changed how we explore our city? “Absolutely. People navigate by mood, not map. We search Instagram for where to walk or eat. We follow lived experiences in real time. In my own series A casual day out with me in Delhi, people asked for exact spots and timings. They want a feeling and then pick places that match it.”
In her words and her images, Delhi feels ever alive, ever unfolding. A city that once spoke through emperors and poets now speaks just as tenderly through the lens of a young creator, reminding us there is always another way to see it.
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