Picture Focus: Old Delhi Before New Delhi By WSJ Staff / Nov 3, 2011 In conversation with India Real Time, historian Narayani Gupta takes us on a visual journey of Delhi, as part of our series on the city. The first stop is Chandni Chowk in the second half of the 19th century – long before New Delhi was even conceived. Chandni Chowk, or moonlight square, was the city’s main bazaar and cultural hub. Old Delhi’s most famous avenue is now layered with haphazard building extensions and a thick netting of electricity cables, resembling little what it once was – but it remains one of the city’s most vibrant commercial hubs. Edited excerpts. So what’s going on in this picture? As you can see this is suspiciously empty. I can’t imagine it looked like this, with three men standing in the middle. Photographs took a long time to complete so I think there was time for the photographer to decide how many people he wanted in the picture and then have them pose for it. The lef...