First published in 1885, Bazm-i Aakhir, or The Last Gathering is a rich and lively first-hand account of life in the royal court of the last Mughal emperor in Red Fort, Bahadur Shah Zafar. From meticulous details of the day-today happenings inside the fort-palace and the royal protocols, to the celebration of festivals such as Eid, Navroz, Diwali, and even Rakshabandhan, this gives us a glimpse into the Delhi of the early nineteenth century.

Leisure is a corollary to pleasure. Essays in this historical exploration trace how leisure and recreation were often imagined and celebrated during premodern times, from the ancient to the precolonial period. This book takes into account the differential access to leisure and pleasure based on class and gender where masculinity is projected through manly sports and femininity though beauty and indulgence in the projection of recreation, entertainment and luxury. The counter-discourse representing labour for those who cater for this leisure is invisibilized as is their transactional nature. The volume dwells on the attitudes, prescribed and proscribed, and brings to the fore the differences across religious ideologies such as Brahmanism, Buddhism, Jaina and Muslim in various periods. Further it looks at leisure in the various classes and cultural spaces such as the elite, women, the king in the bed chamber, the court with dancing girls, public areas such as orchards and gardens and performance spaces.

Rashmi Sadana is Associate Professor of Anthropology at George Mason University and author of English Heart, Hindi Heartland: The Political Life of Literature in India.

Dinesh C. Sharma is a New Delhi-based award-winning journalist and author with over thirty-five years’ of professional experience. He has written extensively on science and technology, climate change, health, environment and innovation for national and international media, including The Lancet and Wired. He has been Science Editor at Mail Today, and Managing Editor at India Science Wire and is currently the Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow (2020-2021). His book The Outsourcer: The Story of India’s IT Revolution was awarded the Computer History Museum Book Prize in 2016. He has also been a visiting faculty at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and Ateneo de Manila University, Manila. Dinesh Sharma tweets at @dineshcsharma

Mirza Asadullah Khan (1797–1869), popularly, Ghalib, is the most influential poet of the Urdu language. He is noted for the ghazals he wrote during his lifetime, which have since been interpreted and sung by different people in myriad ways. Ghalib’s popularity has today extended beyond the Indian subcontinent to the Hindustani diaspora around the world. In this book, Gopi Chand Narang studies Ghalib’s poetics by tracing the archetypical roots of his creative consciousness and enigmatic thought in Buddhist dialectical philosophy, particularly in the concept of shunyata. He underscores the importance of the Mughal era’s Sabke Hindi poetry, especially through Bedil, whom Ghalib considered his mentor. The author also engages with Ghalib criticism that has flourished since his death and analyses the important works of the poet, including pieces from early Nuskhas and Divan-e Ghalib, strengthening this central argument. Much has been written about Ghalib’s life and his poetry. A marked departure from this dominant trend, Narang’s book looks at Ghalib from different angles and places him in the galaxy of the great Eastern poets, stretching far beyond the boundaries of India and the Urdu language.

'A riveting resurrection of the city of poets, the city of history, Saif Mahmood's learned and evocative book takes us to the heart of Delhi's romance with Urdu verse and aesthetics.'--Namita Gokhale Urdu poetry rules the cultural and emotional landscape of India--especially northern India and much of the Deccan--and of Pakistan. And it was in the great, ancient city of Delhi that Urdu grew to become one of the world's most beautiful languages. Through the 18th and 19th centuries, while the Mughal Empire was in decline, Delhi became the capital of a parallel kingdom--the kingdom of Urdu poetry--producing some of the greatest, most popular poets of all time. They wrote about the pleasure and pain of love, about the splendour of God and the villainy of preachers, about the seductions of wine, and about Delhi, their beloved home. This treasure of a book documents the life and work of the finest classical Urdu poets: Sauda, Dard, Mir, Ghalib, Momin, Zafar, Zauq and Daagh. Through their biographies and poetry--including their best-known ghazals--it also paints a compelling portrait of Mughal Delhi. This is a book for anyone who has ever been touched by Urdu or Delhi, by poetry or romance.

In The Forgotten Cities of Delhi, book two of the Where Stones Speak trilogy covers historical trails in Siri, Jahanpanah, Tughlaqabad, Firozabad, Din Panah, Shergarh and Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti.In her trademark style, Rana Safvi combines narrative history with Sufi couplets and takes you on a walk across the first city of Mehrauli and Firozabad. This period was a major step towards integration of two distinct cultures towards a culture called Indo-Islamic by many historians. In the latter half of this volume, she tells us stories from an area and an era that's perhaps the richest in Delhi's archaeological history - Shahjahanabad and Firozabad on one end, and Jahanpanah and Siri on the other - a stretch that's today dotted with tombs, dargahs and the ruins of the Purana Qila. This area also houses the famous Humayun's tomb and the center of Delhi's spiritual trail: the Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah.

What is today the overcrowded, neglected city of Old Delhi was once the magnificent capital of the Mughal Empire. At its heart was the spectacular Qila-e-Mubarak, now known as the Red Fort. Commissioned by Emperor Shah Jahan in 1639, the beautiful city of Shahjahanabad was built around the spectacular Qila-e-Mubarak (Red Fort), on the banks of the Yamuna. Almost a decade later, in 1648, Shah Jahan entered through the river gate and celebrated the completion of this 'paradise on earth' filled with gardens, palaces, water bodies, mosques and temples. About two hundred years later, the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, left the fort by the same gate after the failed Mutiny against the British in 1857. Subsequently, both the fort and the city fared badly, as they faced the wrath of the British.The final instalment in Rana Safvi's informative, illustrated series of books on Delhi, Shahjahanabad: The Living City of Old Delhi describes the magnificence of the fort and the city through its buildings that are a living monument to the grandeur and strife of the past.

'This is a work of love, skill and scholarship that reflects the vast, complex riches of the Urdu ghazal tradition. A must-buy for any lover of poetry!' - Tabish Khair The ghazal is a literary curiosity, a quintessential form of poetic expression, known for its infectious appeal. This volume brings you the first ever comprehensive collection of Urdu ghazals from its very beginnings in the late sixteenth century to the present times. Sixty-five poets from seven literary periods and diverse locations come together in this collection to showcase a rich fare of ideas and styles. They represent the secular and the sacred, the pious and the profane, the plebeian and the patrician in manners as diverse as life itself. Here is an ever-moving kaleidoscope of the Urdu ghazal that authenticates the literary form. This volume is made richer with the inclusion of the Roman transliteration of the originals in Urdu alongside their English translations.