City Obituary – Dinesh Chandra Grover, the Legendary Hindi Publisher of Allahabad General by The Delhi Walla - July 7, 2017July 7, 20171 The passing of an age. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] He is sitting against a mostly-empty bookshelf. The upper reaches of the walls are lined with framed portraits of Hindi writers. This dimly-lit musty space seems to have already lived its best days. The elderly man himself appears to be the last souvenir of the old Allahabad, a historic university town in Uttar Pradesh, a night-long train journey from Delhi. Publisher Dinesh Chandra Grover, founder of the Lok Bharti Prakashan who published some of the great authors in Hindi literature such as Mahadevi Varma and Sumitranandan Pant, died on June 23 2017, aged 86. Mr Grover is survived by his wife, Vachna (Mona), and daughters Divya Raj, Varnika Kapoor and Shuchi Grover. The Delhi
City Hangout – Riverside Ghat, Yamuna Bazaar Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - July 7, 20171 Remember the river. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The evening sky is clear blue. The water is moving serenely. A handful of young men are sitting on the edge of the river. Two women are standing a few feet away. A blue boat seems adrift but is actually moored to a hook. This ought to be a most ordinary scene in Delhi, a city with a great river, but it isn’t. The Delhi Walla urges you to come here at least once, just to savour what could have been. I'm at a riverside ghat in Yamuna Bazaar near north Delhi’s Kashmere Gate. The locale looks like a distant cousin of Benares; the ghat has the same sort of stairs and a similar
Mission Delhi – Soumya Singh, Auto Rickshaw Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - July 5, 20170 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Soumya Singh has big black eyes and a sunny smile. She doesn’t seem to be weighed down by life. It could be because she is three months old. The Delhi Walla met Ms Singh one blazing afternoon in an auto-rickshaw. No, I did not see her in real life. I just saw her picture on the mobile phone of Pooran Singh, an auto-rickshaw driver, from Lakshmi Nagar to Patparganj. Ms Singh’s father has his phone fixed on his steering handle. The daughter’s image is the phone’s wallpaper. Each time the phone rings, her smiling face flashes on the screen. Apparently Ms Singh is fast acquiring a personality. “She doesn’t cry,”
City Food – White Rasgulla, Amar Colony Food by The Delhi Walla - July 2, 20172 The taste of light sweetness. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Every time The Delhi Walla visits an artsy home in this city and happen to fall in love with some exquisite table or chair, it turns out that it came from Amar Colony. The south Delhi neighbourhood is home to an excellent furniture market. But the other evening, I was dining in a tasteful apartment in Greater Kailash-I and the hostess’s piece de resistance — the tasty white rasgullas — turned out to be from Gopala in Amar Colony. “They are the best rasgullas in town,” she declared. The morning after I headed to, where else, Amar Colony market. Tucked next to an Arya Samaj temple, the tiny Gopala looked just