Delhi-ghtful perspective

A Day In Delhi, a new video by Delhi, I Love You seeks to look at the capital through a fresh lens and focus on its brighter side

What if we looked at Delhi with new eyes When they talk about Delhi again and again they say the same thing. We wish that they say something more, they see a little more. Come let’s see the things that tickle our hearts. The things that touch our heart and soul. Come and look Delhi through the eyes of Delhiites.

This is the basic premise of a recently released video titled A Day in Delhi by Delhi, I Love You (DILY) — a 30-month long movement aimed at spreading love for the national capital.Elaborating on the idea behind the movement, Aastha Chauhan, director of DILY puts forth, “The idea is to focus on the positives of the city and to try and create collaboration between the private sector, the public sector and the government.

We realised that there are a lot of great initiatives, people, artists, writers, musicians, entrepreneurs, and social workers working towards the betterment of the city. We decided to promote them, connect them and work towards a common goal — making the capital more livable and lovable.

”When quizzed about what is so special about Delhi that the team decided to dedicate the whole movement around the city, Aastha says, “Delhi is a great city that has voted an amateur, young party to power not once, but twice. It is a city that is emphatic; she goes out on the streets for not their own octroi attacks or for Amma getting arrested or coming out of jail; she goes out for the Talwars and for Jessica Lal; she keeps India in a reflective mode...the city has the capacity for a lot of intellectual discourses unlike Mumbai, which is caught up with its monetary flow.

She goes on, “In terms of creative practices and artistic freedom, you see that the work in Delhi is edgier and, of course, it is green and beautiful. One can’t forget the Ridge area which is so huge and is, in fact, like the green lung for the city. It is also responsible for earning Delhi the tag of the world’s second most bird-rich capital city. So we decided to look at all those positive things that one seems to have forgotten about Delhi. What if we focussed on what we truly like about our city Its initiatives, its creativity, its history, its food, its stories, its biodiversity and its people That is the whole idea behind Delhi, I Love You.”

Delhi mostly hits the headlines for notorious reasons and so, it has lost a good amount of credibility in the last few years with people often talking about its darker side. However, Thomas Ellis, producer of DILY, holds a different opinion. He says, “Is the glass half empty or half full We are aware that there are lots of things to be changed in the city, but sometimes let’s try to also look at the positive side. Delhi is a cosmopolitan city with people coming from across the country and abroad — it is a great city for cultures, social initiatives and above all, it is a city with great energy and amazing potential. Keeping this in mind, we shot this video to discover Delhi once again while having fun. We knew we couldn’t cover the complete city, and that was not really the goal. But we wanted people to feel Delhi, to look at it with fresh eyes, to feel proud of it.

More than the particular places that we discovered while shooting the video, the most interesting part was the people we met, the stories they had and the love they have for the city.” From old monuments and modern architecture to colonial era buildings, Delhi has it all. It is impossible to not fall in love with the city. Enthralled by the beauty of Delhi, earlier too several videos, documentaries, short films and social media pages have been created by different artists and groups like Go Delhi Go, Humans of New Delhi etc. Ayush Dinker, an artist from Bengaluru also thought Delhi had much more to offer when he moved to the capital in 2014.

His love for the city has now been channeled into a hyperlapse video titled Go Delhi Go that spans everything from the city’s Mughal past to its Lutyens-built present. Dinker concludes, “I now know a bit more about the city and its history and these learnings will continue. Thanks to all these videos and interesting documents on Delhi including my own project, I have enough material to fall in love with the city all over again and look at the brighter side of the capital.”