Bombay

Shobhaa De
Writer, social commentator

"The uncouthness begins at the airport itself where some fifth-grade politician's cousin eight times removed will strut around with three attendants behind him and throw weight at the check-in counter. Delhi guys need one man to handle their cellphones, another to hold papers, a third to carry the overnighter. And here in Mumbai, even someone like Ratan Tata walks by himself and checks in at the counter. That tells you everything."

Gerson da Cunha
Theatre and ad personality, civic activist

"Delhi is all about power. Power wielded by individuals at will and for their own exclusive benefit. Power flows from where you live and who you work for. Such is the spectrum of the power network that it tends to be used for the smallest of things, in a most irresponsible manner. That power is best typified by that man R.K. Dhawan, a typist who basked in the glory of power and even ran the country for a bit. This would be unthinkable in Mumbai."

Milind Deora
Politician, rock musician

"I find Delhi a lot less diverse than Mumbai. It's still a North Indian city and shows the typical attributes of one. Maybe because of this lack of diversity and plurality, there's a lot less tolerance in Delhi and that extends to social and cultural tolerance. The creative space is probably as vibrant as in Mumbai but there's an underlying sense of power play there, about who's in and who's at the top."

Bangalore

Girish Kasaravalli
Award-winning filmmaker

"I find Delhi very frightening. It has a very inhuman and arrogant look to it. I feel very insecure when I walk on the deserted streets of Lutyens' Delhi. The indifference of the place rubs on you when you walk in front of those huge sarkari bungalows. I am generally good at topography, but in Delhi nothing registers. It is a strange place that does not create a visual memory in my mind. I just can't read the place."

Kalyan Raman
Space scientist, telecom professional

"There is a void at the moral core of Dehi that is frightening. Even more than its fearful aspect, its brutalising effect is all-pervasive. It is not just the dodgy politicians but also that psychotic army of thin-faced, broad-belted, terylene-attired, bell-bottomed bad actors all over Central Delhi and visibly up to no good. These day-time migrants come from the badlands surrounding the city, preferring anonymous crime and petty larceny in the big city because they do not have the clout or the nerve to play the game at home. From here to the very top, there is collective reinforcement of a nihilist spirit, of moral bankruptcy."

Calcutta

Amit Chaudhuri
Novelist

"The early '80s saw the beginning of the move to reinvent Delhi as a centre for everything—academics, culture, the arts, trade and commerce et al.... Today, Delhi is engaged in an obsessive and 'un-self-critical' quest for power and I don't mean just political power. What I find most disturbing about Delhi is that the so-called liberal and secular class there is deeply hierarchical and non-egalitarian. The liberal, thinking elite of Delhi is embedded in a self-perpetuating culture that does not encourage either debate or introspection."

Jogen Choudhury
Artist

"I lived in Delhi for 15 years and I can say it has two distinct classes of people—a cultured and refined minority and the vast, vocal majority which is brash, crass and vulgar. The latter class is made up almost entirely of migrants from Haryana, Punjab and western UP, parts of India that are not really known for their high cultural, social or academic standards. An auto driver or bus conductor will refer to a passenger as 'tu' instead of 'aap'. It'll take Delhi another 50 years to become a Mumbai or Calcutta. Even the city's young people are imbibing this unfortunate culture: they're brash, money-minded, materialistic and vulgar. (But) Delhi's emergence as a centre for business, arts, academia and culture will act as a magnet for the elite from other parts of the country to gravitate towards the city, thus transforming it into a liveable one."

Madras

Theodore Baskaran
Historian, nature writer

"It is not the climate or the infrastructure that keeps me off Delhi. It is the human factor. In office buildings, before people can come out of the lift, you see a group pushing to get in. This is symbolic of the Delhi ethos.... Their abysmal ignorance of the South confounds the situation. I did a one-year course in Delhi when the war in Sri Lanka was on; my coursemates thought that all the Tamils in Sri Lanka were immigrants from Tamil Nadu."

A.R. Venkatachalapathy
Historian, associate professor, Madras Institute of Development Studies

"Delhi disproves the popular Tamil saying, 'The way to Madurai is in your mouth'. My roadside enquiries on Delhi's streets always resulted in the scratching of the balls and being shown the wrong way. Civility was sadly missing. Rudeness was the armour, aggression the primary form of engagement. So, I stayed cocooned in jnu which, compared to the big bad city outside, was 'the heart of a heartless world, the sigh of the oppressed', until it became the opium of intellectuals. The exile ended with the turning in of my doctoral thesis. I fled to Tirunelveli. But there was poetic justice. My wife turned out to be from Delhi. The only point of discord in an otherwise blissful marriage!"

Hyderabad

Ananda Shankar Jayant
Well-known Kuchipudi and Bharatanatyam dancer

"The cultural czars and czarinas living in Delhi do not look beyond their city. Anything that happens in Delhi in terms of art is presumed to be of national import. South Indian artistes are doing brilliantly, but recognition comes only if one performs in Delhi, and in Delhi, it's not talent that counts but the right connections. Delhi audiences always have this attitude of been there, seen that and done that. Audiences in Hyderabad, or anywhere in the south for that matter, are much more receptive. And Delhi is the most unsafe place for a woman. I would never take an auto, taxi or bus after 7.30 pm. In Hyderabad, I can travel safely on my own at 11 pm."

Iqbal Patni
Urdu and Hindustani Poet

"The culture of a society is governed by its geography and history. Delhi was constantly invaded from the northwest and the years of strife and war appear to have had an impact on the people of Delhi. Often, South Indians are ready to adjust, but North Indians do not budge an inch. Maybe history also has something to do with the fact that the people of Delhi are so loud, superficial and flashy."

Inputs from Smruti Koppikar, S. Anand, Sugata Srinivasaraju, Madhavi Tata, Jaideep Mazumdar