India, March 13 -- So weird. The mosque's gigantic signage is calling it Masjid Irvin Road. A masjid sure is standing on the spot, but Delhi has no road of such name. And yet here is worker Omvati (see photo) washing anew the municipality signage that confidently bears this non-existent road name.
Actually, Irvin Road is today known as Baba Kharak Singh Marg. Irvin was a British administrator in colonial India. Kharak Singh was an Indian anti-colonialist. And stuck between these two is this mute roadside landmark forgetting to update its name. This is how a city's identities sometimes get flummoxed-when new times rawly reinterpret the olden times into a contemporary context. What was in vogue yesterday becomes archaic today. It was exactly...