City Hangout – Salim Tea House, Matia Mahal Bazaar Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - March 30, 2018March 30, 20181 The pleasures of a hyperlocal lounge. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Students of human behavior could do worse than turning up at the Salim Tea House where all manner of men can be scrutinized. This morning two gentlemen sitting beside The Delhi Walla are loudly squabbling about money (of all things) and yet share biscuits from the same platter. While near the wall an itinerant merchant resembling Ali Baba is dipping buttered toast into his soft drink. Um, yes. I'm myself hunched over a newspaper while contemplating another customer shouting in Kashmiri. He has brought his own roti with him for breakfast, since Salim Tea House, here in the Walled City’s Matia Mahal Bazaar, doesn’t object to “outside eatables”. Overall there’s this
City Faith – Beyond Thursday Evening Qawwalis, Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya’s Dargah Faith by The Delhi Walla - March 29, 20180 The world of sufi music. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] You can find it in the Lonely Planet and in most city guides. Even William Dalrymple has written about it in his Delhi memoirs. It also appears in the Bollywood hit Rockstar. The Thursday evening qawwalis at the Sufi shrine of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya draw a full house. Once a week the shrine’s little courtyard fills up beyond capacity. As it happens, a few weeks ago, the shrine’s khadims (the traditional caretakers) brought the curtain down on this popular spectacle. “There was too much noise, too much crowd, too many instagrammers! The dargah’s sanctity was getting affected... and some travel guides even started charging a fee for showing the qawwalis as
City Moment – Friends from Kabul, Lodhi Gardens Moments by The Delhi Walla - March 28, 2018March 28, 20180 The memorable instant. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Two thousand four hundred years after it was written, The Delhi Walla bumps into somebody actually reading the classic Chinese text Tao Te Ching. And poring over it in Farsi, no less. This formidable book is totally captivating Afghan student Waheed Hasham the other day when I run into him and two friends in Lodhi Gardens. They’d all flown in from Kabul to celebrate university graduation by absorbing the delights of Delhi. “We’ve got this long list of things to do,” says Mr Hasham in English, brandishing a pink slip scrawled in Persian. We learn he’s a great reader. “I’m a fan of Balzac... I read him in Farsi.” Inevitably, the friends can’t help comparing
City Landmark — The Long Narrow Entry Lane, Basti Mir Dard Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - March 27, 2018March 27, 20180 The relationship with the passageway. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Delhi may be a world unto itself – encompassing nearly 25 million of us. But it’s also countless private lives vividly played out on the streets and alleyways of the national Capital. Somehow the spirit of our city – its esprit de corps - is encapsulated strikingly on a narrow lane where one late sun-filled afternoon The Delhi Walla encounters two young boys squabbling over yesterday’s carom board match. Also within earshot are some older women heatedly discussing the merits of the recent union between cricketer Virat Kohli and actor Anushka Sharma. This pleasant lane — an alleyway, really — vividly shows us the minutiae of the relationship we unconsciously strike with
Our Self-Written Obituaries – Rajeswari Bhattacharya, Bangalore Farewell Notice by The Delhi Walla - March 27, 2018March 27, 20180 The 190th death. [Text and photos sent by Rajeswari Bhattacharya] Rajeswari Bhattacharya has been pronounced dead. She jumped off the building with as much enthusiasm as she would sing Tagore’s “Bhalobasi, Bhalobasi” (I love, I love), as if in eager anticipation of a suicidal end. Her neighbours complained that it was “a ghastly sight”. The local police lugged her mangled, bleeding body with as much grace as life had bestowed her, careful not to leave behind a trail of blood, while being adept at gathering her corpse for an autopsy. Her family was informed, and they are in a state of shock. Her friends have been trying to fathom the cause of her suicide amidst sombre coffee conversations. There was no suicide
City Monument – Mubarak Begum Masjid, Hauz Qazi Monuments by The Delhi Walla - March 26, 20181 The mosque of the whore. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Machine-part shops overflowing with nuts, bolts, cables, and welding rod electrodes. And amid these sights soars the infinitely graceful Mubarak Begum masjid. Situated in a congested Old Delhi bazaar, the mosque stands on an upper floor. A flight of steep stairs leads to the courtyard, the sudden openness of which comes as a pleasant surprise. The red sandstone mosque has three domes; they increase in size towards the center. The parapets are prowled by cats. Built in 1823, the mosque was named after one of the 13 wives of Sir David Ochterlony, Delhi’s first British resident, who was known for his passion for nautch girls, hukkas and Indian costumes. Mubarak Begum, originally
Mission Delhi – Anand Kumar, Naraina Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - March 26, 2018March 26, 20180 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s proving to be a terrible day for salesman Anand Kumar. For the past four hours, he’s been walking around the streets trying in vain to sell his handmade notebooks. Just 20 rupees for a dozen pads, “but what can I do? I’m trying my best!” sighs Mr Kumar. This man is a surprising sight as The Delhi Walla had never seen a street vendor hawking handmade writing pads before. I fall into conversation with him in west Delhi’s Naraina on a lovely sky-blue day. There’s little doubt that his project is environment-friendly, to say the least. He collects discarded paper from Sadar Bazaar and then cuts and sticks it into
Julia Child in Delhi – Poet Mateen Amrohvi Serves Up Poet Ghalib’s Favroite Daal, Central Delhi Julia Child's Delhi by The Delhi Walla - March 25, 20180 The great chef’s life in Delhi. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s no child’s play to crack Ghalib. Even high-brow Urdu literates find his poetry formidable—Ghalib is all allusions and metaphors, or so The Delhi Walla has heard. And to make life more difficult, Delhi’s great 19th century poet also wrote extensively in Persian, and that part of his oeuvre is considered challenging by serious Ghalib scholars, too. Of course, some of his verses are also so simple and romantic that even roadside Romeos swing to them. Since it seems impossible for non-Urdu readers to become a true Ghalibite in this lifetime, at least, I'm always looking for an easy shortcut to get intimate with the legend. Why not, for instance,
Atget’s Corner – 1096-1100, Delhi Photos Delhi Pics by The Delhi Walla - March 24, 2018March 24, 20180 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 1,00,000 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 1096 to 1100. 1096. The Amazon Around the
City Moment – Semal Flowers, Jeevan Prakash Building Nature by The Delhi Walla - March 23, 20180 The beautiful Delhi instant. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The arrival of Delhi’s dreaded summer is most poetic. It is heralded by the blooming of the red semal. These flowers start growing when their large, stout trees are still leafless. Soon the bare branches are clothed with pulpy red flowers, which, after growing too heavy, fall on the ground with a soft thud. The Delhi Walla sees them everywhere at this time. Just last week I spotted the showy semal outside a friend’s drawing room in GK-I. There it was, leaning most majestically over a platform of Karol Bagh metro station. Indeed, in March, the city’s avenues and roundabouts are carpeted with these flowers. Some get squashed by car tyres and