City Moment – Muhammad Shah Rangila’s Biryani, Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya’s Dargah Moments by The Delhi Walla - July 5, 2015July 5, 20152 The remarkable Delhi instant. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] One man is carrying a plastic bucket filled with rose-flavoured milk. Another is doling out Parle G biscuits. It is a miserably humid evening in the month of Ramzan. The Delhi Walla is in the dargah of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. The Sufi shrine’s marble courtyard is teeming with Muslim men. Sitting on straight rows, they are waiting to break the daylong roza, or fast. The dargah’s caretakers are supervising the distribution of iftari, the light snacks eaten to end the roza. The standard items--samosas, pakodis, boiled channa, slices of watermelons and bananas--have already been served. Today there is vegetable biryani, too. This lavish dish is being served by a grateful devotee as
City Monuments – H.A. Mirza & Sons Postcards, Muslim & British Delhi Monuments by The Delhi Walla - July 5, 2015July 5, 20152 The beautiful untruths. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] The fragmented past lives on in memories. Sometimes it gets marinated in more tangible objects. In the early decades of 20th century, the photo studio of H.A. Mirza & Sons in Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi, produced a series of postcards showing the capital’s Islamic monuments and Colonial-era landmarks. The cards were photographed in Delhi and printed in Germany. The firm is history now. In the postcards, the buildings have an aestheticised exactness, not discernible in real life. This is a mythical Delhi, a longed-for city that we see only in our dreams, the memory of which fades on waking. The straight lines, symmetrical harmonies and people-less spaces of these postcard images actually belong to an unstable
Delhi’s Bandaged Heart – Ishan Marvel & Aleksandr Pushkin, Mandi House City Poetry by The Delhi Walla - July 4, 2015July 4, 20153 Poetry in the city. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla met poet Ishan Marvel outside Regal Cinema in early 2015. That evening he had shared his poem ‘My City is...’ with us. I meet Mr Marvel again. This sweaty afternoon we arrange our rendezvous beside Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin’s statue in Mandi House. This place is intimately connected to Mr Marvel’s inner life. “There was a girl,” he says. “Among other things, she introduced me to Pushkin.” Mr Marvel is reluctant to be photographed (again) but eventually agrees to my repeated requests. Glancing up at Pushkin, he says, “I'd never imagined something like this could exist in Delhi—this majestic figure looking into the distance, with crazy sideburns and billowing coat...
Delhi Archives – Nainital, North of Delhi Delhi Archives by The Delhi Walla - July 3, 2015July 3, 20150 [Digging out old stories from The Delhi Walla] At a height of 1,938m, giddy tourists gratify themselves by boating on the lake, riding the ropeway trolley and shopping on Mall Road. That’s Nainital, the hill station in Uttarakhand’s Kumaon region, 330 km north of Delhi. The sensitive traveller goes back with memories of smog and crowd, trash and traffic, tipplers and honeymooners. Most of Nainital is as scarred as other north Indian hill stations, like Shimla or Mussoorie. Mall Road, the principal promenade, is littered with plastic packets. The hill slopes are pockmarked with hotels. The mossy rocks are painted with ads. The tree branches are entwined with electric cables. Throughout the day, the hills echo with the sound of honking cars. Old,
City Obituary – Ghantewala Confectioners (1790-2015), Chandni Chowk Food by The Delhi Walla - July 2, 2015July 2, 20153 Rest in peace. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone. Prevent the cat from mewing with a juicy bone. It's dead, it's dead. The iconic Mughal-era mithai shop Ghantewala in Chandni Chowk has shut down. Born in 1790, the shop died in 2015. The shop was making losses – said the shop’s owner to The Times of India. This is also a personal loss to The Delhi Walla. The mouth-shattering motichoor laddus of Ghantewala graced the cover of my book The Delhi Walla: Food+Drink. Ghantewala was also famous for its sohan halwa. I present you for the last time the motichoor laddu of our much loved Ghantewala: It is the sweet of the gods. On Tuesdays,
Our Self-Written Obituaries – Vivek Tejuja, Bangalore Farewell Notice by The Delhi Walla - July 1, 2015July 1, 20152 The 86th death. [Text by Vivek Tejuja; photo by Unknown] His relationships were a mess. He lived like that, always fleeting – a man this time, another the next time and then there was no stopping. At the end of it, there was always this hollow feeling – this undefined emptiness which fortunately books filled. Vivek Tejuja did not know how to define himself while he was alive. When men and women asked him what he wanted to be, he just replied with a beatific smile, “Nobody really. Maybe a chronicler of dreams and lost hopes.” Mr Tejuja was short-tempered, fleeting, quite a fuzzy head but he liked to believe he was loved. He was never too kind to himself. He hated