History is what first springs to the mind of Rudrani 'Chiki' Sarkar, the Tolstoy-reading publisher of Penguin India, when she imagines Delhi. However, from the sound of it, those probably weren't her first thoughts five years ago when she first arrived back in India from Britain.
Sarkar had left a publishing job at Bloomsbury Publishing in London, where she had worked for several years after obtaining a degree from Oxford University, but things didn't get off to a rosy start.
'I missed London terribly the first year and cried every day. I still miss London,' she says.
Of course, that hasn't prevented Sarkar from energising her native country's publishing scene. When she went to India as the new editor-in-chief of fledgling Random House India, Sarkar quickly began to build a reputation for publishing the award-winning debuts of new novelists, such as Muhammed Hanif's A Case of Exploding Mangoes and Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Wonders. She became publisher at Penguin India, the country's largest and most prestigious book company, last year.
'I had no idea whether India was going to be the final destination. It's hard to read the future, but I am happy to have got here,' Sarkar says.
Dating to 1450BC, Delhi's past is found all over the city: from tombs standing on congested roundabouts, 15th century stone structures on golf courses to shrines of poets and saints opposite garden centres. Once the capital of two powerful empires - British New Delhi and Mughal Old Delhi - the city's imperial past has sculpted much of its current-day geography.
Lutyens' Delhi, named after the Edwardian architect of its design, is an ordered reminder of colonial authority from spacious tree-lined promenades to quietly grand bungalows for then imperial officials (now populated by India's business and political elite). It is also India's seat of government (also built by the British) and where many iconic government structures are located. To its north, Shahjahanabad (Old Delhi) was constructed around the mid-17th century by Emperor Shah Jahan. Today, visitors can view the Jama Masjid, the largest mosque complex in Asia, and the Red Fort, the expansive Mughal palace complex, while pottering about with a kebab (brave stomachs required) in front of crumbling Mughal palaces and butchers and carpet shops.