Cities often get reduced to cliches: Delhi’s pollution, Mumbai’s rush, Chennai’s heat, Kolkata’s time-warp, and Bengaluru’s traffic congestion. But beyond these definitions, there are more layers to discover within Indian urban sprawls.

Neha Sinha does precisely that in her latest book Wild Capital, taking the reader on a voyage of discovery into Delhi’s flora and fauna. Like her earlier book Wild and Wilful, a sense of wonder permeates her outings that sample nature’s myriad hues, this time specifically in India’s capital.

The writing resonates with the style usually associated with Ruskin Bond, and in her specific arc, a conservation biologist’s rigour is evident. Just like Bond and other gifted authors, Neha makes you pause and peer outside the window. In India, nature-writing can at times do the grand-standing trick of only following the tiger. But Neha begs to be different.

Nothing escapes her attention, be it leaf-litter, long grass, flowers, bugs, gnarled trees, birds and animals. Even water bodies and scrub jungles are highlighted. There are references to her life, and how in enmeshing it with nature, she finds stillness and joy. When she loses her dog Gypsy, the dark shroud of grief dissipates slowly through her forays into the outdoors.

In this era of cramped living spaces and designer lawns, Neha’s anguish is evident when she writes: “Manicured gardens look to erase the needs of time, privileging the fast-growing over the slow and patient. Standing in a centuries-old forest, I wonder if we can appreciate where we are and how we must spread the seeds of the old.”

Be it the Central Ridge, the Hauz Khas lake, the land around Mughal-era monuments, and near the Yamuna river, Neha dips into the respective terrain’s present, broods over the past and highlights nature’s evolution, be it loss and growth, and the constant flux.

Delhi’s naturalists

Just as the book throws light on Delhi’s tryst with the elements, and Neha’s odd health scares, it also offers a warm embrace to its naturalists. Be it Pradip Krishen, Vallari Sheel or Vijay Dhamsana, they all find a generous mention in the tome. Their pithy lines, and insights into forests that fringe Delhi, reveal people placed far from the rat-race.

“It might seem daunting to find such people, but more often than not, people who share similar interests are people you can get along with,” Neha writes. Later she adds: “Going into nature has meant a going out of comfort zones, and a growing inward for rootedness.”

The semal tree is often a reference point, an anchor that whips up some terrific lines: “Semals are the bays that the crashing waves of a kite’s flight dock in; semals are the bays that have protected us from the high tide of negative thoughts.” Neha finds naughty squirrels and coppersmith barbets upon this tree, and diligently she notes down their quirks and charms.

Nature’s surprises 

The finest of nature’s prose can be culled from the backyard, it doesn’t necessarily demand a trip to the Nilgiris Biosphere or the Himalayas. Our cities do have their own spaces of grace, and Neha does yeomen service to Delhi, just like other wordsmiths in the past, be it Khushwant Singh or William Dalrymple.

That nature, if allowed, heals itself and us, is a theme that runs through this book. Army veteran Colonel Pankaj Sharma tells Neha: “I tell others, the moment you can settle into life a bit, look at birds. They will soothe you.” It is also a book that is like a hangout zone for fellow writers. Robert Macfarlane, Salman Rushdie and Amitav Ghosh, are all quoted.

Neha stresses that Delhi, with its myriad environmental issues, can still revive itself. There is hope lingering in the last few pages. “Nature doesn’t ask us for reports, payments or untruths,” she writes. This is non-fiction with the finest of literary flair and a gorgeous hat-tip to India’s capital.

The reviewer is Sports Editor, The Hindu

Check-out this book onAmazon

Published on March 29, 2026