The bungalows of the Ridge were smallish and low laying, draped with grass woven mats kept sodden with water to cool the dark interiors in summer and also deep cool rooms dug deep underground. Delhi was torn between nostalgia for the Mughals who ruined Delhi and the new rich who wanted Western modernization and global trade to kick-start Delhi. Delhi knew that by 1818 it’s economy was bust and since 1818 the British brought money, income, and the scary promise of a railroad to Delhi in 1859 to link Delhi to Calcutta. Delhi reflected the irony of Mughal Rule which never invested in infrastructure other than forts and palaces and the British who brought infrastructure, metalic (tarmac) roads, steel bridges, canals, and offers to build sewers (rejected by the Delhiwallahs). In 1857 the British would ironically besiege their own rebuilt walls and artillery guns. The British rebuilt city wall was some 30 feet tall, plus a dry moat, and narrow bridges under bastions with artillery. Cricket greens and polo fields were in this area. The Westerners tended to cluster in districts around banks and mostly clustered outside the British built city walls on the ‘Ridge’ or high rise of land where they built bunglaows and georgian cottages and follies. Westerners were expected to obey segregation and apartheid which was both religiously enforced by the Vedas of Varna Caste and sharia law as well as culture and unspoken understanding. The British even had to create the Bridge of Boats across the river and complete the crucial canal to bring fresh water which Akbar started but no other Mughal bothered to complete.The city was segregated with strict apartheid to placate prickly religious and racial elite castes who religiously and ritually could not endure contact even upwind by degraded racial and religious inferiors. Delhi smelled of rot and sandalwood and stench and rosewater. Delhi at the start of 1857 was a picturesque town of decay and ruins less than half the size of Lucknow and a fraction of the size of Calcutta.
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