City Life – Home Sweet Home, Mathura Road
Inside the walls. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] One cold evening The Delhi Walla met the 80-year-old Manikchand, a retired rag-picker. He stays alone. The entrance of his one-room shelter faces the busy Mathura Road. In a pinkish-red…
City Faith – Chehlum Procession, Matia Mahal
End of a mourning. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Today is chehlum, the ceremony commemorating the 40th day after the death anniversary of the Prophet Muhammed’s grandson Imam Husain Ibn Ali. Centuries ago, he and his 72 followers…
The Biographical Dictionary of Delhi – Homai Vyarawalla, b. Navsari, Gujarat, 1913-2012
The definitive directory of famous Delhiites. [Text by Mayank Austen Soofi; pictures shared by Alkazi Collection of Photography] Like most of today’s generation, you must have been introduced to her photographs in history textbooks. Homai Vyarawalla, 97, originally a Bombay…
City Reading – The Delhi Proustians – IV, Indian Coffee House
A la recherche du temps perdu. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Today is the fourth meeting of The Delhi Proustians, a club for Delhiwallas that discusses French novelist Marcel Proust. Every Sunday noon for an hour we read…
City Monument – Ghalib’s Haveli, Ballimaran
Poet’s last home. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Every 27 December, on Ghalib’s birthday, his admirers march to his haveli in Shahjahanabad with lighted candles and give sound bites to the media on the poet’s relevance. As if…
City Moment – Feeding the Soul, Connaught Place
The beautiful Delhi instant. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] One cold morning The Delhi Walla saw a woman vendor in the F-block of the colonial-era shopping district Connaught Place. The showrooms were still closed. The Inner Circle corridors…
City Food – Paan, Around Town
The magic leaf. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] A foreign art critic visiting Delhi’s Connaught Place may be forgiven for thinking its red-splattered corridors are a form of abstract expression. Although the dirty white pillars of the colonial-era…
City Obituary – New Book Depot, 1925-2012
The legendary bookstore in Connaught Place becomes history. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] New Book Depot, the legendary bookshop in the colonial-era Connaught Place known for its vast collection of classics as well as for its eccentric owner,…
City Reading – The Delhi Proustians – III, Indian Coffee House
A la recherche du temps perdu. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Today is the third meeting of The Delhi Proustians, a club for Delhiwallas wanting to discuss French novelist Marcel Proust. Every Sunday noon we read his masterpiece,…
Book Review – Secrets, by Ruskin Bond
Seen better days. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The language of author Ruskin Bond, who spent his early childhood in a bungalow in central Delhi’s Atul Grover Marg, is not the kind of English we connect with ad…
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