The Delhi Walla

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Photo Essay – I Want Your Smile, Around Town

Photo Essay – I Want Your Smile, Around Town

April 26, 2011 · by The Delhi Walla · in Photo Essays

Looking for Delhi delights.

[Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Some think of Delhi as a city where people don’t have time to acknowledge each other and where nobody smiles. Wrong. Every Delhiwalla is as curious about the other as any small town person and almost all Delhiwallas smile. Here’s the proof.

Sardar Patel Marg

Scindia House

Daryaganj

Nizamuddin Basti

Kuchha Faulad Khan

Vikaspuri

Khidki Extension

Ajmeri Gate

Curzon Road

Near Golcha Cinema

Lodhi Road

Connaught Place

Paharganj

Humayun’s Tomb

Rose Garden

Pahari Bhojla

Connaught Place

Nizamuddin Basti

Jangpura

Khan Market

Outside Statesman Building

Mehrauli

Near Dilli Gate

Khan Market

Smiling Delhi

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2 Responses

notrelevantnow · April 26, 2011 at 09:25:08 · →

I recognise the Bahrison’s shop manager (with the pen in hand). He has all the books on his fingertips. Is the friendly (Gurkha/Pahadi(???)) watchman no longer there?
Ron Lussier · April 27, 2011 at 05:58:47 · →

I love this, Mayank. It *is* difficult to make people smile when you’re taking their picture, especially if you don’t speak their language. I’d pull out the camera and folks would stiffen up and look as serious as possible. It was a fun challenge to try to tell them that I wanted to see them smile.

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The New Yorker on The Delhi Walla

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/the-delhi-wallas-visions-of-a-possibly-vanishing-india

“Soofi says that Proust is his favorite writer, and his project has, over the years, taken on an increasingly Proustian quality. He has been passing in and out of the same neighborhoods for more than a decade, documenting the minutest social and cultural changes… “–The New Yorker

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Biography of The Delhi Walla

Since 2007, Mayank Austen Soofi has been collecting hundreds of stories taking place in Delhi, through writing and photography, for his acclaimed website The Delhi Walla. Every day, Mayank walks around the city with his camera and notebook to track down the part of extraordinary that exists in the seemingly mundane aspects of urban lives. By exploring and documenting the streets, buildings, houses, cuisines, traditions and people of Delhi, his work is also an attempt to give the megalopolis an intimate voice, and to capture the passing of time in this otherwise restlessly changing city.

Mayank is also a daily columnist for Hindustan Times newspaper, and the author of ‘Nobody Can Love You More: Life in Delhi’s Red Light District’ (published by Penguin) and the four-volume ‘The Delhi Walla’ guidebooks (HarperCollins).

Mayank Austen Soofi compulsively publishes texts and photos on his website, Facebook and Instagram. Follow him:

http://www.thedelhiwalla.com/
https://www.instagram.com/thedelhiwalla/
https://www.facebook.com/mayankaustensoofi

Write to mayankaustensoofi@gmail.com

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