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In 1848, Emily Metcalfe climbed hundreds of steps in the 12th-14th century Qutb Minar to eat mangoes and oranges in seclusion and wild abandon because her father Thomas Metcalfe felt that these juicy fruits should not be eaten publicly by women.
During the 1903 Delhi Durbar, a certain Mrs Thompson, wife of a British government official, described a picnic at the Qutb mosque complex explaining that she was very fearful and nervous when “crowds of natives” went up the minar behind her husband who had gone up alone.
During the same durbar’s State Ball, held at the 17th-century Lal Qila’s (Red Fort) Diwan-i-Am, Vicerine Lady Curzon dazzled in what was described as a kinkhwab diamond-studded dress with a peacock feather trail.
A few years later, in 1906, Colonel Osborne refused to follow the rule of wearing shoe coverings before entering the Jama Masjid and got into an altercation with the khadims at this 17th-century mosque – an event certainly not represented in the idyllic postcards he must have purchased as a tourist.
During the next Durbar in 1911, when Delhi was announced as the capital of British India, King George V and Queen Mary replicated a Mughal performative gesture by displaying themselves on the jharokha-i darshan (balcony with a curved bangla roof),...