Home Sweet Home – Elena Tommaseo’s Reading Bed, East of Kaliash Delhi Homes by The Delhi Walla - October 22, 20190 A lady's reading couch. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Hers is not a home filled with books. Not in the least. But designer Elena Tommaseo, 55, has created a truly beautiful reading spot. She’s topped a drawing room couch with an elegant Gujarati patchwork spread acquired from a handicraft shop in Paharganj, and with bookshelves on both sides that are stacked up with paperbacks collected over the 10 years of her life in this city. The lighting is so discreet that much of the space is immersed in cool darkness. Inevitably, visitors to her house in south Delhi’s East of Kailash are so drawn to this reading corner that Ms Tommaseo sometimes is obliged to hold “impromptu picnics” on what she calls her “reading
City Hangout – Weeping Trees, India Gate Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - October 21, 20190 A scene by the canal. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] These don’t look like happy trees, do they? Sad and despairing, they perhaps remind one of Ophelia, the grief-stricken heroine in Shakespeare’s Hamlet who dies by drowning. Indeed, many of the older trees here have their branches dipped deep in the long canal at the India Gate Grounds in Central Delhi. As though they’re tired of the world and want to simply drown and disappear forever. Such is the almost palpable melancholy wafting like an invisible mist (smog?) along this stretch. The prevalent mood is so withdrawn that it’s hard to believe that one is in the very heart of bustling Delhi. Throngs of visitors invariably turn up at India Gate for ice
Delhi’s Bandaged Heart – Jaideep Warya , Aurobindo Marg City Poetry by The Delhi Walla - October 19, 20190 Poetry in the city. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Most people listen to songs on the FM during their commutes. But one late evening in south Delhi’s Aurobindo Marg, landscape architect Jaideep Warya was spotted reading a poetry book… inside his car! It was his father’s TS Eliot—almost every page was annotated with blue ink, making the copy look doubly precious. In his early 30s, Mr Warya also writes poems. Fond of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels, he shares one with us. It’s on rage. Detailing the back story of this particular composition, he wrote in an email, saying, “The poem was a way of exploring how our culture makes different demands on us than our human nature; anger emerges,sometimes out of nowhere
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
Mission Delhi – Farida Begum, Central Delhi Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - October 17, 20191 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Farida Begum is the first to agree with the famous poet who suggested that loneliness is a horror not to be surveyed. “I do feel lonely sometimes but don’t think much about it,” says Ms Begum. As a beggar, she spends her days patrolling around central Delhi markets—her sturdy walking stick tip-tapping on the ground. The face of this 68-year-old nevertheless suggests a sort of contentment. Ms Begum never asks for money. People “just give it to me…sometimes even gifting me salwar suits,” she says, flashing an infectious smile. A native of West Bengal, Ms Begum has lived in New Delhi for some three decades. Her mother and father are
City Hangout – Buddhist Art Gallery, National Museum Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - October 16, 2019October 16, 20190 A journey into Buddhism. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] So meditative and so very calm. That’s how one imagines how Lord Buddha was. It is also the state of mind one encounters at the gallery devoted to Buddhist Art in New Delhi’s prestigious National Museum. Many of the exhibits are of Buddha himself; while the minimalist 8th century statue of Siddhaikavira from Nalanda in Bihar stands by the entrance, sparkling in its simplicity. The sculpture is shown wearing a necklace along with a dhoti that the unknown sculptor has depicted like a wave of river tide lingering on his legs. Then there’s the 5th Century Buddha Head from Sarnath inside a glass cage that has a powerful meditative aspect. The smooth face
City Obituary – Sufi the Cat, Mehrauli Life by The Delhi Walla - October 15, 20190 The passing away of a beloved. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Sufi died on 13 October, 2019, at her apartment in south Delhi’s Mehrauli that she shared with thumri singer Vidya Rao. “She went peacefully as I was holding and stroking her,” says Ms Rao. Sufi celebrated her 20th birthday early this year (see pictures) and barely managed to register her over-smiling human friends in the drawing room. She was struggling with health problems common to a cat of advanced years. Her liver and kidneys were no longer functioning smoothly. Her eyes too had weakened. Earlier, she would constantly run around the house, jumping onto the sofa and climbing the tables. But in her final years, she would sleep a lot, often in
City Hangout – Best English Language Poetry Shelf, The Book Shop, Jor Bagh Market Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - October 14, 2019October 14, 20190 Besides prose. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Many good folk beat their chests lamenting the death of poetry. Which simply isn’t true. What are film songs but poems? How about all those Delhiites who can recite Ghalib and Gulzar by heart? But, it’s certainly the fact that poetry shelves in bookstores tend to be rather meager, exiled to hard-to-spot polar extremities. A notable exception is the Book Shop in Jor Bagh Market which maintains stacks of poetry books next to the entry door. Though this Central Delhi store is small, the English language poetry selection is extensive: It’s clear that the shop’s all-women team have spent considerable time and thought deciding exactly what to stock. Of course, well-known poetry by Keats and Yates
Mission Delhi – Munna Bhai, Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - October 13, 2019October 14, 20190 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] What’s that one thing in the world that’s closest to your heart? “Mummy’s photo,” declares Munna Bhai, a tea stall owner in central Delhi's Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti. Showing the picture, Munna Bhai, who is in his mid-40s, says in a mournful tone, “This is the only photo I have of her... there’s nothing else left of her.” The coloured picture shows Munna Bhai with his arms around an elderly woman in black-rimmed glasses. “We never had any photo of Mummy... two years ago we were at a wedding and on spotting a photographer I asked him to click our picture.” The photograph was taken just in time — Munna Bhai’s