City Hangout – Kohli Lal Yadav’s Lungi-Gamcha Stall, Chawri Bazar Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - January 17, 2019January 17, 20190 The showroom of many shades. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] This particular pavement stall stands out at Old Delhi's Chawri Bazar despite all its other engaging distractions. It looks like an ersatz wardrobe fit for a poet. The reality is somewhat different. Catering almost exclusively to the working class, it sells colourful gamchas and lungis. Nothing else. “All this clothing comes from Tanda in Uttar Pradesh,” explains owner Kohli Lal Yadav, who points to cotton gamchas so soft you’d want to cushion your face in them. His patrons are many. And they’re almost exclusively drawn from what he calls “the labour department”. They range from daily-wage labourers to rickshaw pullers. Out there on the streets of Delhi are constant reminders, of scores of men
City Landmark – Cheap Electricals, Ganj Meer Khan Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - January 14, 2019January 14, 20190 The most instagrammable store. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The sight is more than merely amazing. It’s incredibly instagrammable. The entire store is crammed with used electricals as a kind of monument to our modern civilization. All manners of used household equipments constitute this shop in Old Delhi which rightly calls itself Cheap Electricals. “Junk, that’s what it is!” grins owner Manmohan Swaran. Over the years people have left behind their household appliances for repairs, and sometimes don’t return to pick things up. In such instances Mr Swaran simply tosses the items behind him into what’s become a great pile. Now a customer walks in to reclaim a repaired toaster, soon followed by a woman bearing a thermos that no longer keeps fluids warm.
City Moment – Monet’s Metro Station, Vaishali Moments by The Delhi Walla - January 10, 2019January 10, 20190 The memorable instant. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Delhi is rightly chastised for its profound pollution. There are those ghastly days when the very air we breathe is accursed. Even so. There can also be something akin to art in the skies of Delhi, at least when viewed in the winter season at certain hours and specific locations. Such as the platform at Vaishali metro station at around 5:30 pm just after sunset. There’s still light – and it’s like a masterpiece by an impressionist painter like Monet. Turn your face westward and gaze upon the sky that opens out beyond the station’s curvy roof. The sky is suddenly imbued with various tints and tones as the aftermath of a spectacular sunset. These
Mission Delhi – Yogendra Yadav, Gurgaon Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - January 8, 2019January 8, 20190 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s amazing to discover the kinds of extraordinary people encountered on the road. He looks like any other person walking down the street here in Gurgaon’s Sushant Lok. Though he does stand out in the manner he is carrying his belongings. The two plastic bags are tied around the ends of a wooden stick that is precariously perched on his shoulder, making him look like one of those ascetic pilgrims who walk barefoot from one remote temple to another in the Himalayas. “I’m a dancer,” says Yogendra Yadav. In his late 50s, the gentleman keeps down his possessions on the street and quietly, unprompted, begins to show the items
City Hangout – Winter Midnight Ice-Creams, India Gate Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - January 7, 2019January 7, 20190 A midwinter night’s dream. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Delhi’s winter is extreme but fleeting. It will no longer do to postpone one of the most memorable ways to cherish the season. Bitter chill is needed for the perfect experience and that kind of cold doesn’t last long in our city. So head to India Gate tonight. Try to reach not before 12, and go straight for a choco bar or ice cream cone served by scores of vendors who’ve set themselves up at the traffic light near the monument: battling the hostile winter to eke out a meager living. “What cold, no cold!” shouts vendor Ram Kumar who’s just sold a cassata. He’s warmly bundled in a thick sweater as well as
Julia Child in Delhi – Elena Tommaseo Cooks Her Indo-Italian Bathua Risotto, Greater Kailash Enclave I Julia Child's Delhi by The Delhi Walla - January 6, 2019January 6, 20192 The great chef’s life in Delhi. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] This is that icy season of the year when our chachis/chachas and mamis/mamas surprise us with delicious bathua parathas. Some home kitchens rustle out rotis and raitas out of these aromatic winter-time green leaves. Some add bathua to flavour their dals. But have you heard of bathua risotto? Risotto is a rice dish from Italy, the land that doesn’t grow bathua. It’s actually a Delhi woman who invented this rarity. Designer Elena Tommaseo, a native of Venice in Italy, lives in Greater Kailash Enclave I. She is the sole dweller of her tasteful South Delhi apartment—her bookshelves and the accompanying divan make for a perfect paradise. The shy woman agrees to share
City Walk – Midnight Round, India Gate Circle Walks by The Delhi Walla - January 4, 20190 Late night wonder. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Just about anybody moving about in Delhi knows something about that radial enveloping India Gate Circle. It’s usually clogged with traffic, of course. Which is why knowledgeable city guides to our smoggy capital never suggest walking around the entire circle. Nighttime—late into the night-- is another story altogether. Traffic is next to nil as you negotiate the smoothly paved walkway shaded by webby tree branches so low they sometimes need to be brushed away by hand. Citizenry does pop up here and there when sauntering past the palatial Hyderabad House where they’ve switched off all the lights. It looks, well, abandoned. Further along, the outdoor sculptures at the National Gallery of Fine Arts seem as
Mission Delhi – Ram Deo, Church of Epiphany, Gurgaon Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - January 3, 20190 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The day began as ordinarily as it always had for Ram Deo. He had no inkling that he would get sucked into the biggest crisis of his brief career as a gardener. Its a cold but sunny afternoon and Mr Deo is quietly watering the general flora in Gurgaon’s Church of Epiphany. Some minutes later, a plumber installing an effigy of Santa Claus as part of the forthcoming Christmas Eve decorations casually asks for the name of purple flowers laid out along a track. Mr Deo freezes. “I know the name,” he murmurs to himself. Thoughtfully tapping a finger on his head, the gardener says, “It has a very simple name.....
City Monument – Gol Gumbad, Lodhi Road Monuments by The Delhi Walla - January 2, 20191 The romance of an illuminated ruin. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Lodhi-era Gol Gumbad, tucked in a corner of Central Delhi’s Centenary Methodist Church, got its present look way back in 2010. The monument was set up with night-time illumination. The effect continues to be magical. Reach after sunset. Rows of tubelights are fitted on the floor; the domed roof is bathed in a bright orange glow. The chamber inside is washed in a deep-gold shade; strobe lamps are arranged artistically at several vantage points. Someone outside the complex could mistake this blaze for fire. It just doesn’t look like one of those unlit, ignored, abused Lodhi tombs that litter Delhi. You’ll be surprised to hear that some people actually prefer
City Walk – Homely Views, Ashram Flyover Walks by The Delhi Walla - January 1, 2019January 1, 20191 Intruding the privacy. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] This is 1. 1. 2019. Let’s make a New Year resolution: To never ever invade people’s privacy, with just one exception today please! In any case we don’t usually get the chance to secretly peer into the lives of total strangers. Nor should we. But this becomes inevitable during one of the most unusual walks in the city. Strolling along the Ashram Flyover in South Delhi one is confronted with apartments so close at hand that private lives are suddenly glimpsed, if only for a moment or two. It’s a most amazing experience--like viewing an art biennale installation that has been carefully rustled out by an artist to depict the nuances of a domestic