Ahmedabad: City with a Past

There are many legendds round the founding of Ahmedabad. One has it that some time in 1411 AD, a dog was looking for some easy prey on the banks of the Sabarmati when a hare attacked him and drove him away. Sultan Ahmed Shah witnessed the scene and, impressed by the hare's spirit, decided to build a city right there. Six hundred years later, Ahmedabad is a city at the intersection of the old and the new. Centuries-old dargahs and havelis stand alongside high-rises and glitzy shopping malls inhabited by an affluent class rooted in tradition. Once known for its textile mills, it is now one of the world's fastest developing cities. But while the fortifications of the original walled city crumbled long ago, divisions between its varied groups have come to the fore, violently pulling them apart. Esther David, a member of Ahmedabad's small Bene Israel Jewish community, is a wealth of city stories. In Ahmedabad: City with a Past, she takes the reader on a whimsical rickshaw ride through a city full of life and wondrous contradictions.