Atget’s Corner – 891-895, Delhi Photos Delhi Pics by The Delhi Walla - December 31, 2015December 31, 20150 The visible city. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] Delhi is a voyeur’s paradise and The Delhi Walla also makes pictures. I take photos of people, streets, flowers, eateries, drawing rooms, tombs, landscapes, buses, colleges, Sufi shrines, trees, animals, autos, libraries, birds, courtyards, kitchens and old buildings. My archive of more than 25,000 photos showcases Delhi’s ongoing evolution. Five randomly picked pictures from this collection are regularly put up on the pages of this website. The series is named in the memory of French artist Eugène Atget (1857-1927), who, in the words of a biographer, was an “obsessed photographer determined to document every corner of Paris before it disappeared under the assault of modern improvements.” Here are Delhi photos numbered 891 to 895. Also read: Death Notice –
City Landmark — Hem Raj Jain Clinic, Paharganj Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - December 30, 2015December 30, 20152 The dream palace of a doctor. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] An elderly man is patiently looking out into the street through a curtained glass window. He is dressed in a three-piece suit, complete with a tie. The 63-year-old Vinod Kumar Jain—MBBS, Gold Medalist—awaits his next patient. The Delhi Walla meets Mr Jain, a “general practitioner”, one evening in the hotel district of Paharganj. His clinic, opposite the now-closed Imperial cinema, is soaked in the ambiance of a previous world. The wood paneled walls date back to 1953 when the clinic was set up by Mr Jain's father, Sumer Chand Jain. The Senior Jain, too, was a “general practitioner”—he had named the clinic after his father who was a hakeem in
City Travel – Puraini Village, 100 Miles from Delhi Travel by The Delhi Walla - December 29, 2015December 29, 20152 A perfect world. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Tall rose bushes grow in every house. Walls are painted with most brilliant colors. A well is overgrown with wild grass. The Delhi Walla is in Puraini, a village about a hundred miles from Delhi. This is the heart of the sugarcane country in western Uttar Pradesh. The foothills of the Himalayas are somewhere very close. But the village has folded itself into its own world. The place is as unreal as a morning dream. Old houses are built as if they have been effortlessly weaved out from arched niches and carved doorways. Painted brick walls have metamorphosed to more interesting shades. In the courtyard of one such home, a blue kerosene lamp hangs
City Life – Gilli Danda Players, Mehrauli Life by The Delhi Walla - December 28, 2015December 28, 20153 The forgotten game. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It looks like cricket but it isn't cricket. It is gilli danda, a game not commonly seen on Delhi's streets. Even so, one winter afternoon The Delhi Walla sees a group of young men playing it at Zafar Mahal, a Mughal-era monument in Mehrauli. The game is not even a part of the Commonwealth Games. The dependable Wikipedia condescendingly calls gilli danda an “amateur sport’ that “is played with two sticks: a large one called a danda, which is used to hit a smaller one, the gilli.” The players at the Zafar Mahal are all from Mehrauli. They look like college students but actually they are people with working lives. Vaibhav Midha is
Delhi’s Bandaged Heart – Living Poets Society, Ghalib Academy City Poetry by The Delhi Walla - December 26, 2015December 26, 20152 The world of Urdu poetry. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Three men sat in the front row. The rest of the house was deserted; the rows of chairs looked like empty bookshelves. The three seemed unperturbed. Verse has no deadlines and never lacks an audience, for there are always at least a few whose souls need poetry at the end of a prosaic day. Within the next hour, the auditorium at the Ghalib Academy began to get livelier. Poets arrived, joining the three who were there first. Members of the audience too trickled in, among them a kebab vendor and an elderly, homeless man. The stage was now ready for a mushaira. It was being held in the memory of a Delhi-based
City Faith – Midnight Mass, St James’ Church Faith by The Delhi Walla - December 25, 2015December 25, 20152 Holy night, cold night. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The night sky was not clear enough to show its thousands of stars but the white moon glowed radiantly. That was hardly a comfort. It was freezing cold. The Delhi Walla witnessed the arrival of Christmas by attending the Midnight Mass at the historic St James' Church in Kashmere Gate. Till The Cathedral Church of the Redemption came up in Lutyens's Delhi in 1931, St James’ was the viceroy’s church. The main building was decked with blue and orange fairy lights but the front lawn was immersed in darkness. The entrance was being guarded by gun-wielding cops. The gate was closed. It was utterly quiet as people silently gathered in groups of
City Moment – The Woman in the Anti-Pollution Mask, Khan Market Moments by The Delhi Walla - December 24, 2015April 2, 20193 Love in the time of pollution. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] No Delhiite needs reminding that air pollution levels in the metropolis at times reach emergency levels. We beleaguered citizens no longer think of ‘PM’ only in the context of afternoon hours but also as PM 2.5, an air quality measure to determine pollution. Indeed, the city’s artsy drawing rooms decked up with Madhubani paintings and Thangka appliqués are now decked up with air purifiers as well. No wonder a kiosk at the fashionable Khan Market does a brisk trade selling expensive filtering face masks that are becoming a part of our daily lives. As though illustrating the crisis of this new normal, an elegant woman was spotted walking along the Market’s
Home Sweet Home – Pratyush Pushkar’s Residence, Hauz Khas Village Delhi Homes by The Delhi Walla - December 23, 2015December 23, 20151 Inside the walls. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] His home is like his Facebook page; it has writings on the walls. One freezing evening The Delhi Walla knocks on the door of photographer, musician and poet Pratyush Pushkar. His dimly-lit home in South Delhi’s Hauz Khas Village is a minute away from the dream-like monuments of Hauz Khas. One of the domed tombs almost touches his cramped balcony (see photo no. 10 below). But no such sight is to be seen from the windowless bedroom. Here the world has expanded beyond Delhi. Read the bedside wall: Bossanova (here) Road (Goa) Spirit (Spiti Valley) Aaj Jaane ki Zid Na Karo (Everywhere) Love (Mama Guaga, Rishikesh) Light and Balance (Lake of Pushkar) This black marker poetry of place-names
Photo Essay – Delhi Feet, Around Town Photo Essays by The Delhi Walla - December 22, 2015December 22, 20152 The low life. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Hello feet. So, what do you plan to do today? Why not again go to Salim Bhai’s tea-stall in Kucha Chelan and have chai in one of his disgusting white plastic cups? Will you pay respects to yet another dead rat on the road? Are you still naughty, stopping beside dirty foreign magazines at the Sunday Book Bazaar in Daryaganj? In any case, I don't want you to lose your flamboyant nature. Please show off your beautiful body again in some South Delhi party as you did a couple of nights ago? Or, at least bitchily compare your shoe-dress with that of your more glamorous rival? By the way, aren't you tired of lounging
City Food – Daulat ki Chaat, Gali Kallan Kahar Food by The Delhi Walla - December 21, 2015December 21, 20151 The snow dish. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Is it a snowy desert, or a dessert? One winter morning The Delhi Walla came across street food vendor Kamal and his Daulat ki Chaat on Gali Kallan Kahar, a Walled City lane. This fabled dish of milk and cream is extremely delicate, and seems to be composed of nothing but froth, which you fear might disappear any moment. In 2011, I wrote about Daulat ki Chaat here, saying: "Much romance is attached to the making... One legend is that the milk is whisked under a full moon sky and the morning dew sets the resulting froth." The vendor Kamal, too, had prepared it early in the morning. The sweet dish was arranged on