Gopal Krishn's sketches in 'Delhi in Two Days'

 

I came across some fascinating sketches of Delhi’s transport forms from the 1940s in a guidebook, the cover of which is featured above. This was authored by Gopal Krishn and published by ‘Odel press’ in Delhi. It’s from the 1940s because the foreword mentions American soldiers arriving in the city during the Second World War and so the guidebook was perhaps capitalising on a new market (this is a timely released third edition). I have mentioned about the impact of these new visitors to Delhi in earlier posts.  

 

Anyhow to return to the sketches featured by Gopal Krishn, these include myriad forms of transport such as trams, buses, ekkas (one horse carriages) and rickshaw pullers which are dotted through the guide. These are featured alongside the more conventional pictures of ancient monuments and architectural pieces and I suspect that these fed into a broader impulse of cataloguing transport forms and trades which travellers were interested in at the time. Delhi’s own modernity on full display. 

 

The guide is also pretty standard in terms of its categorisation of Delhi’s history into ‘Hindu’, ‘Muslim’ and ‘British’ periods which was  commonplace by the 1940s. 

 

Here's leaving you with some of these images (below). See you next Friday.