Yugcharan News / 13-11-2026
Sonia Gandhi’s memoir Belonging: A Journey of Love offers a nostalgic account of Delhi as she encountered it after arriving in India in 1968. The city described in the book bears a striking resemblance to the capital portrayed in Sai Paranjpye’s 1981 cult film Chashme Buddoor — a Delhi of quiet roads, crowded bicycle routes, historic ruins, open spaces, roadside food stalls and leisurely evenings at India Gate.
The connection between the memoir and the film goes beyond their shared locations. Both capture a particular period in Delhi’s history, before rapid urbanisation, expanding traffic, large-scale infrastructure projects and worsening air pollution transformed the capital.
In an account published by NDTV, journalist Aarish Chhabra explores how the two works preserve different perspectives of a city that has largely disappeared. While Paranjpye’s film presents Delhi through the carefree lives of three young friends, Sonia Gandhi’s memoir recalls the capital through personal experiences, family life and the changing political circumstances surrounding the Gandhi family.
Released on November 10, Belonging is primarily a personal memoir, with politics forming the backdrop to its narrative. Its account of Delhi begins at 5:15 am on January 13, 1968, when a young Italian woman who had met Rajiv Gandhi in Cambridge arrived in the Indian capital.
The Delhi she encountered was a city where bicycles dominated office-hour traffic, jackals could be heard near the Ridge at night, and popular destinations were surrounded by open spaces. It was also the Delhi that appeared on screen in Chashme Buddoor, where three friends travelled around the capital on a motorcycle, enjoying a lifestyle that now seems distant.
A Capital of Quiet Roads, Bicycles and Jackals
Sonia Gandhi’s first impressions of Delhi describe a city that was considerably less crowded and less developed than the modern capital.
She recalls arriving at an airport that looked like a poorly lit hangar. At night, the howling of jackals from the forested Ridge nearby would sometimes wake her. The experience reflected how close parts of the city remained to natural and relatively undeveloped surroundings.
During the day, bicycles were among the most visible features of the capital’s roads. Gandhi describes office-hour traffic as being filled with large numbers of bicycles, a sight that was unusual for her.
Her early journeys also introduced her to everyday aspects of Delhi’s street culture. During a three-wheeler ride to Connaught Place, she noticed blood-red stains on walls at street corners and initially wondered what they were. She later learnt that they were stains left by people spitting betel juice.
The same everyday culture appears in Chashme Buddoor through the character of Lallan Miyan, played by Saeed Jaffrey. His paan stall becomes a familiar meeting point for the film’s three central characters, who frequently visit it and run up a tab.
Paranjpye placed the stall on Mathura Road in Nizamuddin, which she remembered as being on the outer edge of Delhi and difficult to reach. The road, which once marked the city's outskirts, now runs through a heavily developed part of the capital.
The contrast illustrates how dramatically Delhi’s urban boundaries have expanded over the decades.
Two Wheels and the Freedom to Explore Delhi
For Sonia Gandhi, two-wheelers were an important part of everyday life in the capital. In her memoir, she recalls travelling on a Suzuki moped to an institute in Green Park while learning Hindi.
Her friend Sabina would ride the vehicle while Gandhi sat behind her. She describes those journeys as hair-raising experiences, with pedestrians, scooters and bicycles appearing from different directions and often ignoring traffic regulations.
Later, she and Rajiv Gandhi began using a Vespa scooter, a vehicle associated with her native Italy.
Gandhi remembers those years with nostalgia, particularly the freedom to travel around the city without extensive security arrangements. She writes about riding the small grey Vespa that Rajiv's mother had given him and being able to move around Delhi with relative ease.
That freedom gradually disappeared as Rajiv Gandhi's public responsibilities increased and security requirements began restricting their movements.
The young men in Chashme Buddoor enjoy an even more carefree version of the same experience. Siddharth Parashar, Omi and Jomo travel together on a motorcycle, moving through the capital while singing and enjoying their youth.
The film, starring Farooq Sheikh, Rakesh Bedi and Ravi Baswani, captures shaded avenues, India Gate, Purana Qila and the old neighbourhoods of Delhi. Their journey eventually ends when a policeman issues them a traffic challan.
The motorcycle scenes provide a visual record of a city where travelling across familiar landmarks was possible without the congestion and infrastructure that define much of Delhi today.
The 1982 Asian Games Changed the City's Landscape
Both Sonia Gandhi’s memoir and Chashme Buddoor treat the 1982 Asian Games as an important dividing point in Delhi’s transformation.
The film was released in May 1981, just before the major infrastructure development associated with the sporting event began changing the capital.
In her memoir, Gandhi recalls the scale of construction required for the Asian Games. New stadia, hotels, roads and flyovers had to be built within a limited period.
Rajiv Gandhi, who was part of the organising committee, was closely involved in the preparations.
The infrastructure expansion brought significant changes to the city's physical landscape. Flyovers and new roads altered the way people travelled, while the development of sports facilities and hotels contributed to Delhi’s growing urban character.
Paranjpye’s film, by contrast, captured the capital just before this transformation. Its roads, open spaces and relatively simple traffic conditions now serve as a record of a Delhi that existed before the Asian Games-driven construction boom.
The two works therefore offer complementary accounts of the period: one through the experience of a newcomer building a personal life in the city, and the other through the fictional adventures of three young residents.
India Gate, Ice Cream and the City's Open Spaces
The Delhi of the late 1960s and early 1980s also offered a different experience of public leisure.
Sonia Gandhi recalls spending evenings at the lawns of the Central Vista, with India Gate forming a major attraction for families. She and Rajiv Gandhi frequently drove there and stopped at an ice cream vendor's cart for vanilla cones.
India Gate also features prominently in Chashme Buddoor. The film's motorcycle sequence begins at the monument, while food and ice cream become part of the romantic atmosphere surrounding its characters.
One of the film's memorable settings is the cafe at Talkatora Garden. When Siddharth visits the cafe with Neha, played by Deepti Naval, he asks the waiter what is good there. The response is that the atmosphere is good — expressed through the Urdu word mahaul.
The scene reflects the relaxed social environment that Paranjpye wanted to capture. The characters are not in a hurry, and their interactions are shaped by ordinary moments rather than major events.
The cafe itself has since disappeared, as have many of the familiar surroundings shown in the film.
Beyond central Delhi, Gandhi’s memoir describes the family farmhouse at Mehrauli, where an orchard of mango trees and shisham trees formed part of the landscape. Some of the shisham trees had been planted by Feroze Gandhi, the husband of Indira Gandhi.
The city's historic monuments and open areas also remained accessible during that period. Tughlaqabad Fort, built in 1321 by Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, was then considered to be on the outskirts of Delhi.
Sonia Gandhi recalls family excursions to the fort, often organised by her brother-in-law Sanjay Gandhi. Paranjpye also used the fort's slopes for the kidnapping climax in Chashme Buddoor. Her film unit expected the area to be deserted, but a large audience arrived from nearby villages to watch the shooting.
Those villages have since been absorbed into the expanding urban landscape.
The Monsoon, Rooftop Rooms and Everyday Life
The two accounts also preserve details of domestic life in an earlier Delhi.
Chashme Buddoor opens in a rooftop room known as a barsaati. Derived from the Hindi word barsaat, meaning rain, the room was designed to face the monsoon directly.
The film's much-loved song, Kahan Se Aaye Badra, reflects the atmosphere of the rainy season and the setting in which the three friends spend much of their time.
Sonia Gandhi’s memoir describes her first experience of the Delhi monsoon in the government bungalow she shared with Rajiv Gandhi.
She recalls being surprised by the intensity of the rainfall. The garden would flood, the sky would disappear behind the rain clouds and sunlight would remain hidden.
Her description provides another glimpse of a city where the rhythm of everyday life was closely connected to the changing seasons.
However, the domestic environments in the memoir and the film were not identical. While Paranjpye's characters lived in a modest South Delhi colony, Sonia Gandhi's experiences were shaped by government accommodation.
She describes the government bungalows as depressing, recalling their discoloured terrazzo floors, small windows and cold, dimly lit rooms.
Two Different Worlds Within the Same City
Although the memoir and film share many locations and visual details, their deeper perspectives on Delhi are different.
Chashme Buddoor focuses on the lives of three young men and their relationships, friendships and everyday adventures. Its Delhi is largely free of politics. The film was intended as a feel-good story without a social message, according to Paranjpye's account in her memoir A Patchwork Quilt.
Sonia Gandhi's Delhi, meanwhile, is shaped by family relationships, political circumstances and the experience of living close to the centre of power.
In 1980, after Indira Gandhi returned to power, the family was expected to move back into the government residence on Safdarjung Road. Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi initially considered renting a small flat so they could lead a more normal family life away from politics.
The years when the Congress was out of power had brought disagreements and heated arguments between Rajiv and Sanjay Gandhi. The couple believed that moving into a separate home would provide a better environment for their children.
Indira Gandhi reportedly urged them to remain with the family and enlisted relatives to persuade them. Eventually, Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi agreed to stay.
The decade that followed brought major political changes and personal tragedies. Sanjay Gandhi died, Indira Gandhi was assassinated, and Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister.
These events transformed the family's circumstances and reduced the freedom that Sonia Gandhi remembers from her early years in Delhi.
The contrast is particularly striking because the film deliberately keeps such political developments outside its fictional world.
A Shared Language and Delhi's Cultural Identity
The memoir and the film also offer glimpses of Delhi's linguistic and cultural character.
Sonia Gandhi writes that the Gandhis spoke Hindustani at home, a mixture of Hindi and Urdu. This was the language of everyday expressions such as Lallan Miyan's aadaab and Omi's interest in Urdu poetry.
Outside their home, Punjabi was widely heard on the streets.
The article places this linguistic character in the context of the migration that followed Partition in 1947, when refugees from Punjab helped reshape Delhi's population and culture.
One of the people who introduced Sonia Gandhi to Indian folk music and handlooms was Usha Aunty, who had fled Lahore during Partition.
The memoir touches on this history through personal relationships, while Chashme Buddoor captures the cultural atmosphere through its characters, conversations and use of Urdu poetry.
From Clear Skies to Delhi's Pollution Crisis
Perhaps the most striking difference between the Delhi of the memoir and the capital today concerns air quality.
In Chashme Buddoor, the skies above India Gate appear clear. The film was shot during months that now mark the beginning of Delhi's annual smog season.
Sonia Gandhi also recalls visiting the family's Mehrauli farmhouse in December 1990 and finding blue skies and clean, crisp air. The surroundings were quiet, with birdsong providing much of the background.
The city's population, however, grew substantially over the following decades. Delhi had approximately 60 lakh residents in 1981 and nearly 1.7 crore by 2011. Its population is now estimated at more than 2.3 crore, excluding the wider National Capital Region cities such as Gurugram, Noida, Ghaziabad and Faridabad.
The growth of the urban population, alongside the expansion of infrastructure and traffic, has transformed the capital's environmental conditions.
In her memoir, Gandhi writes that the air becomes oppressive during autumn and is often described as hazardous or toxic by December.
The contrast between the clear skies shown in the film and the pollution associated with modern Delhi gives the article its central theme: the disappearance of not only familiar places but also the environmental conditions that once shaped everyday life.
The title Sai Paranjpye initially considered for her film was Dhuan Dhuan, or Castles of Smoke. She eventually chose Chashme Buddoor, a Persian-origin expression meaning protection from the evil eye.
Looking back at Delhi's worsening air pollution, the earlier title takes on an unintended significance.
A Delhi Preserved Through Film and Memoir
Sonia Gandhi’s Belonging and Sai Paranjpye’s Chashme Buddoor preserve two different but overlapping memories of Delhi.
One recalls the city through personal experiences, family life and the changing circumstances of the Gandhi family. The other presents it through friendship, romance, humour and the freedom of young people exploring their surroundings.
Both capture a capital of shaded roads, historic monuments, roadside stalls, open lawns and relatively clean skies — a city whose character has changed significantly through decades of urban expansion.
The connection between the two works also lies in their attention to ordinary details. A paan stall, a scooter ride, an ice cream cart, a rooftop room during the monsoon or an evening at India Gate can reveal as much about a city's history as its major political and infrastructure developments.
The article also notes a shared appearance by Amitabh Bachchan in the two accounts. In the film, he appears as himself alongside Rekha. In Sonia Gandhi's memoir, he is referred to as Rajiv Gandhi's friend Amit, before becoming the major cultural phenomenon he is today.
Ultimately, the Delhi remembered in Belonging and Chashme Buddoor is more than a collection of old landmarks. It represents a way of life that has gradually disappeared as the capital expanded, became more crowded and faced growing environmental challenges.
The waiter at the Talkatora cafe once described the atmosphere simply: mahaul achha hai. The question raised by these memories is whether the modern city can still offer the same sense of ease and openness.
