Home Sweet Home – Kabeer Jhinjhianvi’s Bedroom Window, Old Delhi
Lovely but unloved.
[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]
This window in theory should be listed in guidebooks, looking directly down on Chitli Qabar chowk—one of those rare squares in Old Delhi.
But your chances of a glimpse are next to null unless you happen to know physiotherapy student Kabeer Jhinjhianvi. This amazing view is captured from his bedroom window. Irony of ironies–he himself has seen the sight so many times he’s become more or less inured. “It’s just a window,” he mutters, shaking his head amusedly.
The boy’s window offers a panoramic view of the square: biryani sellers perched beside their giant brass cauldrons…customers outside Diamond Bakery that makes Delhi’s best rusks…the balloon and bangle sellers, and of course all those pedestrians and rickshaws.
That’s the view when peering downwards, but looking straight ahead you spot the long lamplit street going all the way towards distant Golcha cinema. The view is quite simply stunning: a long celestial route stretching far out into the otherwise dark galaxy.
But Mr Jhinjhianvi isn’t impressed; he says he’d rather like to live in a windowless room in some tony south Delhi colony. What he did value in the house was an open courtyard that disappeared during a renovation a few years ago—the courtyard gave way to his current room.
“So much noise enters my bedroom,” he complains, his back turned towards the window.
Windows 2019
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