Mission Delhi – Waris Ram, Karol Bagh Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - March 7, 20200 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s so appallingly early on this cold morning, but Waris Ram is already up and about, walking along a deserted street in the west Delhi neighbourhood of Karol Bagh. In his early 40s, he is holding a walking stick that he uses to shoo away the street dogs who, he says, always tend to bark aggressively at him. “I don’t know anybody here,” he mutters without any emotion, vaguely gesturing towards the shuttered shops. But then adds he doesn’t mind not knowing folk in Delhi, “because I want to be alone.” Mr Ram arrived in the capital 6 months ago from his village in faraway Assam. “There were problems
Our Self-Written Obituaries – Nargis Hussair, University of Hyderabad Farewell Notice by The Delhi Walla - March 7, 2020March 7, 20200 The 254th death. [Text and photos by Nargis Hussair] Nargis Hussair, 27, died on a hot summer evening. They discovered her in the green pond near her mother's house in Kerala where she spent most of her childhood. Earlier that fateful day when a hummingbird died near her window, she walked to the pond, entered the water and started to float, looking up at the blue sky. Suddenly, the sky turned into a kaleidoscope, the clouds formed silly shapes and it made her laugh. She thought about her best friend's apartment balcony, her mother's comb, her dad's mustache and the last lines of a Neruda poem. She eventually forgot to breathe and just like in one of the magical realism novels she loved to