Mission Delhi – Manoj, Rose Garden, Gurgaon Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - October 18, 2019October 18, 20190 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Silently he unrolls the plastic mat along the leaf-strewn grass. Next, he takes off his shoes and socks, and plops down on the improvised bed, making the gigantic blue bag his pillow. Paradise regained. This is delivery man Manoj’s daily routine. Every noon he heads to the same spot at the Rose Garden in Gurgaon’s Sector 15A in the Greater Delhi Region for a half-an-hour break from work. “For time pass,” he says. Manoj is 19. He finished his school last year and joined “a diploma course in computer” but “man nahi laga (didn’t enjoy).” One day he spotted a “delivery boy at work” and decided to go for a
City Nature – Sky Watching, New Moti Bagh Nature by The Delhi Walla - October 18, 2019October 18, 20190 Into the heaven. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Delhi always presents some difficulties. Such as capturing an unhindered perspective of the sky. Apartment blocks and bazars partly block any view, while in public gardens the abundance of trees conspires against heavenly sightings. But, an evening walk in central Delhi’s New Moti Bagh provides a different view altogether. In this neighbourhood of low-lying bungalows the expansive evening sky is right there, for anybody to behold. This evening puffy clouds are scattered about, like swathes of cotton from an astronaut’s torn pillow that somehow drifted out of the spacecraft. The inaccessible interiors of the sky are suddenly feeling reachable. New Moti Bagh is essentially a home for senior government officers snug in their bungalows—its wide roads mostly