Photo Essay – The Empty Banquet Hall, Pahari Bhojla
Scenes of silence.
[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]
The blue-robed chairs are neatly arranged around tables that are covered with white clothes. This must be the setting for a formal sit-down dinner but there is no one.
One evening The Delhi Walla enters a public hall in Pahari Bhojla, a congested Walled City locality. The street is humming with streets sounds of the evening, but inside–utter peace. The hall has roughly-carved pillars; parts of the walls are fashioned into arched designs. It is summer, yet it is not warm. Low-hanging ceiling fans are standing still. The staircase go past paan-stained walls.
Large steel tubs, filled with clean dinner plates, are lying discretely in one corner. There are also black water tanks.
This is a world that seems to promise no change. But that is a false assurance. The guests will perhaps soon start to come. With them will come their respective cities. The quietude will then become history.
The beauty of emptiness
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All these cloth covers and decorations, a fire hazard, disaster waiting to happen.