India, Feb. 15 -- In the heart of the capital, the Lodhi lanes have shed their grey skin to become a living garden of public art.

"The world will be saved by beauty." Dostoevsky wrote that down, probably never thinking a quiet corner in Delhi would actually prove him right, one brick at a time. For the longest time, Lodhi Colony was a sea of bureaucratic grey. It was a rigid, symmetrical leftover from the 1940s built to house the cogs of the British Raj. For decades, those arched gateways were there. They were functional. They were nothing more than the background noise of a city always in a rush.

But that heavy silence has finally broken. Today, it is replaced by a permanent, defiant explosion of colour. It is like a never-ending Holi ...