Ghosted: Delhi’s Haunted Monuments
Praised by William Dalrymple as 'a haunting addition to the literature of Delhi', Eric Chopra's Ghosted is a richly layered exploration of a city that simply cannot let go of its past. Delhi, it turns out, is less a place than a conversation, one conducted across centuries between the living and those long gone. Chopra, historian and storyteller, takes the reader through some of the capital's most atmospheric sites, including Jamali-Kamali, Firoz Shah Kotla, Khooni Darwaza, the Mutiny Memorial, and the crumbling Malcha Mahal. What you get is not a guidebook. It's something stranger and more rewarding than that. Sufis interceding for kings, jinn receiving petitions, a begum holding court in a derelict hunting lodge. The ordinary rules of time feel pleasantly unstable here. Chopra weaves together archival sources, folklore, myth, and personal reflection to build a portrait of a city perpetually in conversation with its earlier incarnations. Through waves of conquest and renewal, he argues that Delhi's true character lives not in its stones but in the invisible presences hovering around them. The writing has real warmth and a poetic quality that never tips into indulgence. Short, sharp observations sit alongside longer, more ruminative passages, giving the book a pleasing rhythm. Ultimately, this is a meditation on why human beings are drawn to ruins, and on how ghost stories quietly carry the weight of collective memory. As Ira Mukhoty notes, it's part travelogue, part spiritual quest, and part irreverent romp through centuries of myth. Readers with any curiosity about Indian history, urban memory, or the strange persistence of the past will find plenty here to keep them turning pages.
- Author: Eric Chopra
- Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
- Genre: Architecture
- ISBN: 978-9363363601
- Pages: 296 pages