India, April 13 -- Few figures are as deeply imprinted into the built fabric of Delhi as Sir Sobha Singh, fondly remembered as "aadhi Dilli ka maalik". His rise from a sub-contractor to one of the principal builders of imperial Delhi is inseparable from the making of the city. In 1903, while engaged in the Kalka-Shimla railway, he was summoned by Edwin Lutyens to undertake what would become one of the most ambitious architectural projects in India: the construction of Rashtrapati Bhavan. The task was urgent, complex, and tied to the symbolic deadline of the Delhi Durbar of 1911. This moment onward, Sobha Singh's legacy would expand across Delhi and beyond. It was during the construction of Rashtrapati Bhavan that Sobha Singh recognised the ...