A city, the late American journalist Herb Caen once said, should not be "gauged by its length and width, but by the broadness of its vision and the height of its dreams". A careful reading of a new book, Delirious City: Polity and Vanity in Urban India (Niyogi Books) by Delhi-based architect Gautam Bhatia, shows how Caen's words were lost on the scriptwriters of the great Indian metropolises. The book as Bhatia writes in his preface, doesn't follow a linear narrative, but unfolds in multiple ways: "Like a sea voyage from Mumbai to London undertaken a century ago—two months on the high seas, with stops at Aden, Alexandria, Naples and Lisbon".

Delirious City could have easily been a handbook or manifesto on the making of the perfect urban square. Bhatia instead fuses his personal commentary with diaryentries, sketches, digital art and sculptures that "bleed together without any planned order" to weave a satire on urban planning. "The book is without a plan, without coherence and certainly without a clear intent. It is a private expression of public ideas," says Bhatia. "The problem is that the city usually cannot be expressed clearly in one medium. You can write about it, photograph it, draw it, even build it, but its complexity is always elusive. So, for me, the real thrust of the book was to present a multiple reading simultaneously."