City Food – Litti Chokha, Around Town Food by The Delhi Walla - February 28, 2012February 28, 20125 Delhi’s best-kept secret. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] If Bihar were a country, Delhi should be its capital and litti chokha its national dish. The capital is home to a large migrant population from Bihar, but... ‘Just what is litti chokha?’ Smoked brinjal and baked dough. A rustic two-dish combination symbolizes the resurgence of a region that has been vilified for too long as wretched, lawless and corrupt. Litti chokha began as the food of the poor in what is now known as Bihar, and rarely appears on roadside carts or restaurant menus of big cities. Instead, it has largely remained confined to the home kitchens of Biharis. The Delhi Walla once had home-made litti chokha here. Litti chokha is soul
City Sighting – Arundhati Roy, Pragati Maidan General by The Delhi Walla - February 28, 2012February 29, 20128 Delhi’s principal mischief-maker. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] One evening, The Delhi Walla sighted his most beloved Delhiite – author Arundhati Roy. She was in hall number 11, Pragati Maidan, a sprawling complex in central Delhi that was hosting the 20th New Delhi World Book Fair. People crowded around The Offender of Small Minds. Everyone looked a little wary of her. Ms Roy had arrived to launch the Hindi translations of her three books. Broken Republic, which is Aahat Desh. Walking With the Comrades, meaning Bhoomkal: Comradeon ke Saath. Listening to Grasshoppers, or Kathgare Mein Loktantra. The autograph seekers surrounded Ms Roy. She seemed Untouchable. Her black eyes shone behind her black-rimmed glasses. One woman whispered to her, “I
City Reading – The Delhi Proustians – X, Indian Coffee House Delhi Proustians by The Delhi Walla - February 27, 2012April 17, 20131 A la recherche du temps perdu. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Today is the tenth meeting of The Delhi Proustians, a club for Delhiwallas that discusses French novelist Marcel Proust. Every Monday evening for an hour we read his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time. It is 7.17 pm and The Delhi Walla is alone, with printed sheets of Swann's Way, the first volume. I’m feeling low. My writing has hit a dead-end. I’m also not being faithful to Proust, reading him rather irregularly. Just then Sourabh Gupta, a writer from Noida, enters the coffee house. Sitting down at my table, he takes out a packet of oatmeal biskuts, and says, “Today I will order coffee.” Mr Gupta started his Proust project a
City Moment – Sadia Dehlvi’s The Sufi Courtyard, Nizamuddin East Moments by The Delhi Walla - February 24, 2012February 24, 20121 The author with her new book. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] One afternoon The Delhi Walla entered the home of author Sadia Dehlvi in Nizamuddin East. The house was all happiness. Ms Dehlvi’s publisher HarperCollins India had just delivered the first copy of her new book, The Sufi Courtyard: Dargahs of Delhi. “Isn't it looking beautiful?” Ms Dehlvi said. “I worked so hard on it.” The cover photo shows the Sufi shrine of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, Delhi's 14th century Sufi saint. The back cover describes the book: The Sufi Courtyard takes you on a journey through the famous and lesser-known dargahs of Delhi. From the first Sufi centre established in Mehrauli by Khwaja Qutub Bakhtiar Kaki during the early days of the
Photo Essay – The Juice Sellers, Near Jagat Cinema Photo Essays by The Delhi Walla - February 23, 2012February 23, 20120 Life of street vendors. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Everyday in the summer, sugar cane juice sellers Harsh and Ishwar can be seen walking through the back-lanes of Shahjahanabad. The Delhi Walla met them behind the building of now-defunct Jagat cinema, close to Jama Masjid. Harsh was carrying peeled sugar canes on his shoulder; Ishwar had a makeshift juice machine. Unlike other vendors who scream out of their lungs while passing through streets, Ishwar and Harsh do their business quietly. When stopped, they lower down the machine on the ground and crush a cane to extract its juice. Their customers are usually children. “We bought the machine from Agra for Rs 1,500 Rs,” Ishwar says. Migrants from eastern Uttar Pradesh,
City Reading – The Delhi Proustians – IX, Indian Coffee House Delhi Proustians by The Delhi Walla - February 20, 2012April 17, 20134 A la recherche du temps perdu. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Today is the ninth meeting of The Delhi Proustians, a club for Delhiwallas that discusses French novelist Marcel Proust. Every Monday evening for an hour we read his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time. It is 7.03 pm and The Delhi Walla is with Jonas Moses, an irregular member of the club. Opening page 152, I say, “I admire Marcel’s ability to dissect feelings. The minute divisions that together constitute a remembered moment are separated, considered, described individually and then they are re-united into a single stream for a deeper appreciation.” I start reading. When I was tired of reading, after a whole morning in the house, I would throw my plaid
Mission Delhi – Rakesh Kumar Mishra, Connaught Lane Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - February 18, 2012February 18, 20121 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Sitting on his patch of the pavement, he takes a sip of the chai, and again looks at the blur of people walking in front of him. The Delhi Walla met Rakesh Kumar Mishra, 34, a seller of second-hand magazines, novels, and guidebooks at his stall in Connaught Lane, a pedestrian street in Connaught Place, the colonial-era commercial district. “These are old magazines so not many people stop here,” says Mr Mishra, pointing to old issues of Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, GQ, Good Home, Harvard Business Review, Better Homes, and The Caravan carefully arranged against a brick wall. Stacks of Time, Newsweek and National Geographic, a couple of
City Style – The Classy Delhiwalla, Turkman Gate Style by The Delhi Walla - February 16, 2012February 16, 20121 Searching for the stylish. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla saw this man one morning at Turkman Gate, one of the five surviving gateways built to protect the Mughal-era Shahjahanabad. He was in a white shirt, white pants, white topi, black waistcoat and black strapped sandals. His beard was white. The hair on his head was dyed with henna. There was no one dressed like him. Established by Emperor Shahjahan, the Walled City has seen better days. Chickens are slaughtered beside roadside drains. People spit on walls. Beggars lie doped. Flies buzz on street food. Electric cables dangle dangerously. Chaos rules. This man has disturbed the disorder. The white of his dress is without a spot. His sandals are
City Hangout – National Zoological Park, Mathura Road Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - February 15, 2012February 15, 20125 Into the wild. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Situated between Purana Qila and Mathura Road, National Zoological Park has 75 species of animals, birds and reptiles. The area is wooded. Squirrels hop across trees with slanting branches. Tired visitors lounge on the grass. Each tree is marked by a steel plate bearing its name. One dead trunk is identified as White Mulberry. It takes two hours to walk through the zoo. There are benches along the way. Parents with small children ask the shortest route to lions and bears. You can hire a ‘trolley’ to be driven through the garden in 45 minutes (charges applied). Life in the zoo is lethargic. Mynahs perch listlessly on the backs of sea
City Reading – The Delhi Proustians – VIII, Indian Coffee House Delhi Proustians by The Delhi Walla - February 13, 2012April 17, 20135 A la recherche du temps perdu. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Today is the eighth meeting of The Delhi Proustians, a club for Delhiwallas that discusses French novelist Marcel Proust. Every Monday evening for an hour we read his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time. It is 7.14 pm and The Delhi Walla is comfortably seated with Marcel. The coffee house is crowded but my table is empty. I show off my Proust, trying to say, “While you people are wasting your time in useless talk and bad coffee, I’m reading the world's greatest post-modernist novel.” [Yawn] Reading Marcel is like a punishment. [Looking at the watch] The first volume has 610 pages. I’m on page 110. There are seven volumes. [Requesting a steward to