New Delhi, May 28 -- In a temperature-controlled room inside the Delhi Legislative Assembly, time settles in the fibres of paper browned by age; in ink that has faded yet refuses to disappear; and in the delicate creases of manuscripts that have outlived governments. Here, history is being remembered, handled, restored and, now, reborn.

Today, more than a century and a half later, the Delhi Assembly has launched a monumental exercise aimed at preserving over 5,00,000 pages - digitising records into thematic volumes that narrate Delhi's legislative evolution.

At the centre of this effort lies a fragile, handwritten record from 1861: the proceedings of one of the earliest meetings of the Delhi municipality. The document - its edges frayed...