City Library – Vidya Rao’s Books, Mehrauli Library by The Delhi Walla - July 31, 2011August 1, 20112 A vanishing world. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] One humid afternoon The Delhi Walla knocked at the door of thumri singer Vidya Rao. In her 50s, Ms Rao shares her second-floor apartment in Mehrauli, south Delhi, with her cat Sufi and her hundreds of books. “I’ve no idea how many I have,” says Ms Rao. “I’ve decided to stop accumulating books.” Why? “I no longer want to be burdened by things. I need to keep my life light.” Waving at the living room's book-lined wall, Ms Rao says, “Books are of course superior to other kinds of things but they too are objects.” Walking to the shelves, the singer says, “This is my abridged library. I’ve given away most books.” Ms Rao
City Series – A House in the Village, Hauz Khas Life Regions by The Delhi Walla - July 30, 2011December 2, 20134 Life in Delhi’s prettiest neighbourhood. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla lives in Hauz Khas Village. The one-room apartment has a window that looks to graceful ruins and a placid lake. The view ahead is of treetops. In the day, birds chirp. In the night, ducks squawk. The sky roars frequently with the drone of airplanes, preparing to land in Indira Gandhi International Airport. The series A House in the Village will try to understand the life in Hauz Khas Village through its monuments, market and people, including the Kashmiri carpet seller who claims to see men’s future on their faces and the owner of a small second-hand bookstore where nobody has bought books since more than six
City Nature – Pomegranate Tree, Nizamuddin Chilla Nature Photo Essays by The Delhi Walla - July 28, 2011July 28, 20115 The nature’s gift. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] One evening The Delhi Walla saw a small pomegranate tree in the courtyard of the sufi retreat of Nizamuddin Chilla, behind Humayun’s Tomb in central Delhi. The tree’s thin branches were bending down under the weight of fruit. The leaves were green, but yellowed at the edges. Some of the pomegranates - in shades of green, yellow, red and brown - were ripe enough to fall at any moment. The leathery skin of each bloomed at the stem into a flower-shaped pattern. Used to seeing fruits only on carts or in supermarket shelves, it was a rare sight. Stepping under the tree, I looked up. The pomegranates were hanging like stars; the
Mission Delhi – Ramlal Thakur, Mirza Ghalib Street Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - July 26, 2011July 26, 20111 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Switching it off, he tucks it inside his white plastic sack. “Radio is my life,” says Ramlal Thakur. In his 40s, Mr Thakur is living beside a brick wall on Mirza Ghalib Street in Nizamuddin Basti, central Delhi, for... nobody in the area knows since which year. Fixed to the same spot, he has become as much a signpost as the nearby tomb of Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib, after whom the street is named. “When I was in school, I would secretly listen to the radio... ” Wearing navy-blue slippers, Mr Thakur is in striped shirt and light brown trousers that looks like as if they haven’t
The Delhi Walla Books – An Online Chat with Rediff Readers General The Delhi Walla books by The Delhi Walla - July 24, 2011July 25, 20114 Chatting on books, blogging and life in Delhi. [Excerpts from the chat section of rediff.com] The Delhi Walla-Portraits is the fourth and final volume in a series of books that brings together the best of writer-photographer Mayank Austen Soofi's website The Delhi Walla. Since 2007, Soofi's online musings and pictures have covered the many aspects of life in the capital in a series of rich and myriad offerings. Portraits is a compilation of his various encounters with Delhiites, from eunuchs to models and celebrated authors like Khushwant Singh and Arundhati Roy. Now, in a chat with rediff readers, The Delhi Walla will discuss his writings, his latest book and his love for the city that is his muse. So tune in for a
City Landmark – Mohan Singh Place Shopping Cum Office Complex, Baba Kharak Singh Marg Hangouts Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - July 22, 2011July 22, 20112 A New Delhi oddity. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] In a colonial-era commercial district that is getting colonized by multiplex chains and fast food joints, the Mohan Singh Place 'shopping cum office complex' in Connaught Place has no McDonald’s, no Café Coffee Day and no multiplex. If a mall means a building networked with a series of shops, then the grey-coloured dimly-lit Mohan Singh Place is perhaps Delhi’s first mall. Opened in 1969, the building has seven levels; the market is made up of three floors, starting from the basement, which also has two grocers and two eateries. The Indian Coffee House, Delhi’s loveliest, shabbiest and most unpretentious café, is on the third landing. The remaining floors have the offices of
City Hangout – Delhi Forests, Around Town Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - July 20, 20110 Delhi's wild side. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Secretive and silent. Intertwined trees, twisted trunks, thorny twigs, rocky slopes, and clumps of grass. The nearest McDonald’s is two miles away. The Delhi Walla is on Delhi’s Central Ridge, a forest in the Capital’s heart abutting Sardar Patel Road in Chanakyapuri. For a city on the edge of a desert, Delhi is remarkable for the number and diversity of its trees. This dry, dusty metropolis is home to 252 species (New York has 130). We could just as well be in a rainforest. The 2009 Forest Survey of India records Delhi’s forest area at 85 sq. km, which is 5.73 per cent of the city. In the period between 2005 and 2009,
City Culture – Chittaprosad’s Retrospective, Delhi Art Gallery Culture by The Delhi Walla - July 18, 2011July 18, 20110 The artist as ideologue. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Artist Chittaprosad Bhattacharya (1915-78), whose retrospective opened in Delhi on July 11th 2011 was most memorably the illustrator of the Bengal Famine of 1943 in which more than three million people died. But even if he had not wandered with his sketchbook in that starving countryside, occasionally on foot from one village to another, Bhattacharya’s collected drawings, prints and paintings would still be full of feeling. Chitta, as his friends called him, was born in Naihati, West Bengal; his father, a government officer, was an amateur pianist, and his mother a poet. Having spent most of his productive years in Mumbai, his work is diverse and some of it is borne out
City Food – Gol Gappa, Around Town Food by The Delhi Walla - July 16, 2011July 16, 20117 Taste explosion. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] It is more felt than tasted. The shell cracks open, the cold, intense spiciness washes around your mouth. Before you know what is happening it is gone. Made of whole-wheat or sooji flour, the delicate, round, deep-fried, crisp golgappas are Delhi’s most playful snack. The vendor pinches a hole in the hollow globe, shoves in a few boiled potato cubes and chickpeas, dips it into an earthen bowl filled with the spiced tamarind water and hands it to you. You open your mouth wide and pop in the whole golgappa at once. The water bomb explodes and its filling floods your mouth. If it is very spicy, your feel the heat rising to
The Biographical Dictionary of Delhi – Jahanara Begum, b. Ajmer, 1614-1681 Biographical Dictionary by The Delhi Walla - July 14, 2011July 15, 20111 The sufi princess. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Razia Sultan, Nur Jahan, Princess Diana. The most famous women in history are usually caricatured as saints or sluts, or both. Their lives are reduced to tragedies or travesties. Jahanara Begum (1614-1681) defies such stereotypes. The eldest child of Mughal emperor Shahjahan and Mumtaz Mahal, Princess Jahanara composed poetry, commissioned mosques, laid out gardens, and wrote biographies. She designed Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi’s signature street. She never married and had several affairs. No known likeness of her exists in paintings. Born in Ajmer, raised in Agra, Jahanara died in Delhi, aged 67. A power broker in the court of two emperors, she found her calling in Islamic mysticism. Her tomb lies in the