India, April 19 -- There are so many Delhis, piled one on the other, or jostling for room: the walled city, the modern-era capital, the city of poets, city of traders, city of mantris, city of. washermen?

In a new book, social anthropologist Subhadra Mitra Channa tells the story of Delhi's many transformations through the eyes of one of its oldest and least-studied communities: the dhobis of Old Delhi.

Channa, 73, remembers first engaging with this community in 1974, when she was pursuing a PhD in urban anthropology. Her now-late husband Vardesh Chander Channa, also an anthropologist, suggested it.

"He had conducted research of his own in Old Delhi, and had befriended a dhobi called Omi Pehlwan, who was a prominent figure in the commun...