The Last Light of Delhi: Glimpses into a

Farhatullah Baig imagines a mushaira as it might have been in the last glory days of Delhi during the mid-nineteenth century lit by the glowing embers of the dying Mughal empire.The Last Light of Delhi is the story of a last grand mushaira held in the city of Delhi circa 1845. Though the mushaira is fictional the book is a cultural document of the age taking the reader on a journey in time to a past when poetry flowed through the streets of the city. It paints a portrait of a lost world of the life and living styles of the upper classes of Delhi in the decade before the fateful year of 1857. Baig takes the reader into the sitting rooms of some of the most iconic people of the time from Mirza Ghalib to Bahadur Shah Zafar giving us a glimpse into their private lives describing their homes their manners their ways of dressing and talking filling his portraits with colour and detail so that the poets appear vividly before us-and when they begin to recite their poems in the mushaira it seems as if each poet is speaking out from the pages of the book. About the Author Mirza Farhatullah Baig (1885-1947) was a prolific writer of the early twentieth century particularly renowned for his witty and evocative portraits of Delhi and its people. His works include classics of Urdu prose such as Dilli ki Aakhri Shama Phool Waalon ki Sair and Maulvi Nazeer Ahmad ki Kahaani.Sulaiman Ahmad is an ex-banking executive who decided post-retirement to indulge in his passion-Urdu poetry and prose. He has adapted the story of Tilism-e-Hoshruba for children in Amar Aiyyar: King of Tricksters and combined a re-telling of two satirical works by Krishan Chander in A Tree on Its Head. His own anthology of Urdu verse is titled Khama-e-Mani.Parvati Sharma is a Delhi-based author. Her debut was a collection of short stories called The Dead Camel and Other Stories of Love. She has also written a novel Close to Home; a historical biography Jahangir: An Intimate Portrait of a Great Mughal; and two books for children The Story of Babur and Rattu & Poorie's Adventures in History: 1857.