City Food – Delhi Belly, Around Town Food by The Delhi Walla - June 29, 2011September 16, 20161 The capital shame. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Messy, smelly and non-stop, Jane Austen would have described it as a continual state of inelegance. Delhi’s biggest embarrassment, it is also the title of a Bollywood film. The phrase Delhi Belly, according to the Hanklyn-Janklin dictionary, is “a stomach disorder sometimes afflicting newcomers to the capital”. Infectious amoebic agents such as Entamoeba histolytica enter the body, the intestine reacts and throws out all infection through frequent motions. In September 2016, Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal who was staying in Delhi’s Hyatt Regency pulled out of match due to... well, Delhi belly! It’s not Al Qaeda, but Americans take Delhi Belly seriously. According to a US diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity since
Mission Delhi – Zubeida Bano, Pahari Bhojla Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - June 27, 2011June 9, 20152 One of the one per cent in 13 million. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Blushing, she covers her smile with the red dupatta and lowers her eyes. Starting to speak, the dupatta falls off her face, which instantly dissolves into soft sobs. The Delhi Walla is with Zubeida Bano. Ms Bano, 72, is painfully shy. Having lived almost all her life behind the purdah, she is not used to interact with men outside her immediate family. Now she has no choice. Ms Bano, along with her disabled sister, is without a home. “We’re from a very good Old Delhi family,” Ms Bano says in sophisticated Urdu, the language of the Walled City elite. “But now we’re ruined, worse than fakeers.”
Photo Essay – The Aloofness of a Man in the Indian Coffee House Photo Essays by The Delhi Walla - June 24, 2011June 24, 20112 Seeking a Shangri-la. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] One summer evening, The Delhi Walla spotted a turbaned man in the Indian Coffee House, Connaught Place. With its weak coffee, soggy sandwiches, oily cutlets, watery sambhar, creaky sofas, slow-moving ceiling fans, uniformed stewards, inexpensive menu, long-lost glory and die-hard regulars, the café has a unique character. It pulls in people of different ages and pursuits: artists and activists, tourists and traders, intellectuals and gossipers, families and friends, lovers and loners. The turbaned man was alone but he was sitting in the section reserved for ‘Ladies & Families’. A man and a woman were sitting behind him. The cashier was standing in the front. The window view was made up of the
The Delhi Walla Books – Portraits, Rs 199 The Delhi Walla books by The Delhi Walla - June 22, 2011June 22, 20111 The final volume of The Delhi Walla series. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] The fourth and final volume in The Delhi Walla series – Portraits – reached the bookstores in late June, 2011. While working on this book, I struggled with the following curiosities: How does a city shape the lives of its people? How do the people shape the narratives of a city? I spent a great deal of time with each person profiled in the book, trying to trace the elusive bonds that connect his or her inner life to the physical geography of Delhi. The book is done and I'm more in dark. The meaning of Delhi has become more complicated. A few things, however, have become clearer. The
City Moment – A Bird on Death Row, Farash Khana Moments by The Delhi Walla - June 19, 2011June 19, 20113 The beautiful Delhi instant. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla is on the rooftop of a house in Farash Khana, a congested neighbourhood in the Walled City. It is evening. There is a boy and a woman, who is sharpening a knife on silbatta, a stone used for grinding chutneys. The boy is carrying a bird cage. Inside it is teetar, the grey francolin. “It tastes very nice,” says the boy. The woman raises her head, looks at the bird, smiles, and says, “It’s especially good in the winter. Its meat is very warm.” The knife is sharpened. The boy unlocks the cage. The bird refuses to move. The woman pushes it out. “We bought it two weeks
Mission Delhi – Nameless Kapoor, Kailash Colony Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - June 16, 2011June 16, 20113 One of the one per cent in 13 million. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] He spreads out his four legs, tries to lift his body but falls flat on the floor. He tries again, and fails. Nameless Kapoor, a 20-days-old cocker spaniel, lives in a bungalow in Kailash Colony, south Delhi. “Since we have no plans to keep him, we are not giving him any name,” Mr Kapoor, owner of a showroom in South Extension, tells The Delhi Walla. I'm in his bedroom. Two years ago, Mr Kapoor bought Chhoti, Nameless’s mother, from a friend in Dehradun, a town 300 km from Delhi. Five yeas ago, his wife, Mrs Kapoor, had purchased Jojo, Nameless’s father, from a pet showroom in
City Hangout – Half Price Bookstore, Select Citywalk Mall Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - June 11, 20110 Affordable trash. [Text and picture by Mayank Austen Soofi] Some of Delhi’s best independently owned book stores (Fact & Fiction, the Bookshop, New Book Depot) don’t encourage discounts. Concessions kill the small players. The 31-year-old Bookworm, a landmark store in Connaught Place, shut down in 2008; its owner complained that book-store chains were doling out great discounts that he could never afford to give. Like compulsive shoe shoppers, most book-buying consumers need instant gratification. The Half Price bookstore in Select Citywalk mall, Saket, is unabashedly on the side of shoppers. Run by Roli Books, a Delhi-based publisher, the store in the Capital has 4,000 titles on a range of subjects—fiction, cookbooks, photography, history, design, art, architecture, management, and so on. Fancy stationery is
City Obituary – Raza Remembers Husain Culture General by The Delhi Walla - June 10, 2011June 11, 20110 On Maqbool Fida Husain’s death. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] On June 9, 2011, a few hours after the death of painter Maqbool Fida Husain in London, The Delhi Walla sat down with Syed Haider Raza at his first floor studio near Aurobindo Market, south Delhi. Both painters were early members of the Bombay-based Progressive Artists’ Group, a set of young avant-garde artists that revolutionized and reshaped the Indian art scene and brought it to the world's notice. Mr Husain died at 95. Mr Raza is 89. Seated in a wheel chair, Mr Raza says, “Since one week I was aware that Husain was seriously unwell.” His voice is feeble and I have to sit very close to him to understand
City Moment – The Girl With Red Roses, Near Sai Baba Temple Moments by The Delhi Walla - June 8, 2011June 8, 20110 The beautiful Delhi instant. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla was one afternoon traveling in an auto rickshaw when it stopped at a traffic light near Sai Baba Temple, central Delhi. Suddenly a girl emerged from the temple’s shadow and stood by the auto. She could not be more than 13. Wearing a yellow floral print salwar suit, the girl was holding about a dozen red roses. Each flower was wrapped in transparent polythene. Children like this girl are a common sight in Delhi’s traffic lights. The cars stop, the little boys and girls appear by the windows to beg. Some make cute faces and thrust out their palms, some gesture towards their bellies pretending that they have been
The Delhi Walla Books – Portraits is Published The Delhi Walla books by The Delhi Walla - June 6, 2011June 7, 201118 The fourth and the final volume. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] On the evening of June 6, 2011, The Delhi Walla received a small parcel from HarperCollins India. It was the fourth and final volume of The Delhi Walla series of books. Portraits, hot off the press. The earlier three volumes – Monuments, Hangouts, Food + Drinks – were published in 2010. (Those books are selling extremely well and the publishing house will come out with their second editions.) With the Portraits finally in my hands, I immediately took an auto-rickshaw to show it to some of the many people associated with the making of this volume. Later, in the night, I went to the sufi shrine of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya