City Food – Aloo Bhaaji, Cotton Market
Dish for the home-sick. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] There they are, lying in heaps — these shallow-fried potatoes in the shape of fingers. It’s only 8 in the morning but Muhammed Ali Khan’s footpath cart, in Old…
Mission Delhi – Raj Kumar, Sadar Bazar
[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] One feels a nip in the air. There is a shift in the season, and soon it will be time to take out the warm woollens from the trunk. Raj Kumar, too, will…
City Obituary – Hotel Broadway, Asaf Ali Road
On the death of a landmark. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The friendly doorman is nowhere to be seen. A printed notice slapped on the glass door says that Hotel Broadway is closed —“Since the running of… is…
City Walk – The Circles of Shakti Nagar, North Delhi
City islands. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It is commonly assumed that nothing exciting ever happens in small towns and villages. At best, the threadbare public life centers around a tree in the square, under which folks might…
City Landmark – Premier Shoe Factory, Sadar Bazar, Gurgaon
The lockdown survivor. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] This is how it was before the coronavirus. The walls had seen so many shifts of seasons that it would have been impossible to determine their original color. The wood…
City Hangout – Bougainvillea Aesthetics, Barakhamba Road
Beauty spots [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It takes a bougainvillea to raise a city. That’s what one feels on witnessing the magical scene of a Connaught Place high-rise emanating from the flower pot of a pink bougainvillea….
Mission Delhi – Muhammed Shahid Hussain, Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya’s Sufi Shrine
[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] This is a new kind of job, that came up with the pandemic: Checking the body temperature of people entering the shrine. But it must be so boring. Muhammed Shahid Hussain shakes his…
City Life – Tailor Nathuram Ahuja, Ram Nagar
Life in the pandemic. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] His routine stayed the same for more than 50 years. Every day he would be in his tailoring shop, working with the fabrics, the sewing machine, the inch tape…
Mission Delhi – Durgesh Kumar Yadav, Central Delhi
[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s the same blue sky, the same flowers and trees. All these things used to give him joy. But no longer. Durgesh Kumar Yadav is nursing a disappointed heart. “My love story has…
City Home – Kavita & Ankita’s, Gurgaon
Home sweet home. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Kavita Arora, 47, is a psychiatrist. Ankita Khanna, 36, is a psychologist. They occasionally share their eight-floor apartment, in Gurgaon in the Greater Delhi Region, with residential complex pigeons or…
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