City Legend – Meraj Ahmed Nizami, Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah Culture by The Delhi Walla - November 28, 2020November 29, 20200 Delhi's greatest qawwal. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] This winter marks the fifth death anniversary of Meraj Ahmed Nizami, the great qawwal of the sufi shrine of Delhi’s Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. The news of Meraj’s passing had gone unrecorded. Now, in this season of losses, one may as well commemorate the loss of one of the most accomplished, if little-known, figures of contemporary Delhi. As the elderly patriarch of Nizami Khusro Bandhu family, Meraj was among a very few classical qawwals left in India. He rendered Persian sufi verses most fluently in the old tarz, or melodies. This frail erudite supremely elegant man lived most modestly, in a one-room house near the aforementioned 14th century shrine. Meraj’s grandfather’s grandfather was the “shahi gawayya
Debris of Life & Mind – Actor & Model Aram Khan’s Dream, Bombay City Dreams by The Delhi Walla - November 28, 2020November 28, 20200 Sharing a dream. [Text by Aram Khan, photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] I saw in my dream struggling for my dream. I worked hard the whole day and yet had a shortage of food. I was tired but relentlessly toiling. Sometimes I was very happy and at times I acted sad. There were some bright flashes of lights and some dark shadows. But the fight seemed real for the hunger. I wasn’t sure in my dreams if it was a real story or all made up. But sure there was a constant endeavour for enthusiasm. Then a lady approached me. I was nervous looking at her. She smiled looking at me. I felt she had seen my struggle and saw potential in me.
City Landmark – Blue Wall, Sheikh Kaleemullah Jehanabadi’s Sufi Shrine Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - November 28, 20200 Beautiful blues. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] There is something gracefully fragile about the blue colour — especially in Delhi, where blue skies are more of a myth. In our city, every bit of blue, whatever its shade, depth and scale, can be seen as a mute testament to what we don’t have. See this wall. It displays such an exquisite depiction of blue that it probably wouldn’t be out of place in a critically acclaimed museum. The color here is rendered in many fine gradations of decreasing brightness, as if a painter had, after playing on her palette with several shades of blue, harmoniously arranged them on a canvas of bricks. For that matter, red bricks also show up,