From the author's introduction to Twilight in Delhi

My purpose was to depict a phase of our national life and the decay of a whole culture, a particular mode of thought and living, now dead an gone already right before our eyes. Seldom is one allowed to see a pageant of History whirl past and partake in it too. Already, since its publication, the Delhi of the novel has changed beyond recognition. For its culture had been nourished and born within the City walls which lie demolished today; and the distinction between the language of the city and outside world has disappeared in the rattle of the many tongues, even as the homogeneity of its life has been engulfed by the tide of democracy.