Mission Delhi – Smita Babar, Sunder Nursery Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - October 31, 20210 One of the one percent in 13 million. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s evening and she is sitting alone by the lake in Sunder Nursery with a coffee mug by her side. Architect and urban conservationist Smita Babar, 32, graciously allows herself to be snapped. The next day, on e-mail, she answers a few questions about her solitary rambles in the city. What were you doing by the lake? I was trying to get in touch with my feelings. Being in the present moment is a challenge for many of us and we don’t even realise it. Coming close to the nature helps me with it. What did you do for the rest of the evening in the park? After finishing my coffee I looked
City Hangout – Sunset Bench, Lodhi Gardens Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - October 29, 20210 A twilight experience. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s just a bench. But right now it is hewn out of the sun’s very soul. This is one of the most thaumaturgic sights in Delhi. The setting is Lodhi Gardens. The chosen bench, close to the Athpula stone bridge, lies in a most strategic point. The dipping sun directly hits it at about 5.30pm (October time). This evening, the green seat is dappled in an impossible-to-capture-on-camera misty halo of amber. Pools of luminous light have fallen on the leaf-strewn ground in front of the bench, as well as on the leaf-strewn space behind it. Being empty, the bench is also saturated with the well-known poignancy of all empty park benches, but that mundane
Mission Delhi – Devki, Hazrat Nizamuddin East Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - October 29, 2021October 29, 20210 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] This role, to her, is both familiar and strange. Familiar, because being a working woman is by no means a novel experience. She has been “working, working, working” all her adult life, mostly administering her home in Lakshmi Nagar. Strange, because only recently did she start to step out everyday into the big wide world as the family’s sole breadwinner. Devki is the new face of an old landmark. She succeeds husband Radhe Shyam as an ironing service provider in the Capital’s upscale Nizamuddin East. He was managing the household laundry of a part of the neighbourhood for more than a decade — his stall under a
Mission Delhi – Shambhu Yadav, Outside Ashok Hotel Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - October 27, 20210 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s late October. That explains the nip in the air. But is it so chilly that Shambhu Yadav has to wrap himself in a blanket? The young man is perched on the pavement, outside the five-star Ashok hotel in Delhi’s diplomatic enclave of Chanakyapuri. It is late evening, and already dark. He is sitting behind a kerosene stove. Rice is on the boil. “I’m making dinner for us all,” he says. Mr Yadav is among a troupe of labourers charged with laying underground cables in the vicinity for a telecom company. He attributes the blanket to fever: “I’m shivery.” His colleagues have asked him to rest, and
Mission Delhi – Qurban Ansari, Hazrat Nizamuddin East Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - October 27, 2021October 27, 20210 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The dainty ornamental park at the B block in genteel Hazrat Nizamuddin East is ringed by trees. All day long they swell with the twittering of birds. The surrounding bungalows remain cocooned in quietude. But this morning a different tune is wafting through the air. It can’t be coming from the red house in A block, whose dweller daily practices the piano accompanied by an opera singer’s accomplished voice. This sound is of a bansuri. Has a flautist move into one of these homes? And suddenly the mystery is resolved. The musician is sighted. He is carrying a bouquet of flutes in one hand; the other hand is
City Hangout – AIIMS Flyover, South Delhi Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - October 26, 20210 An unlikely haven. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Consisting of sloped mounds, parts of the landscape resemble the sandy Chambal valley ravines that were infamous for sheltering dacoits. But here the crests and troughs of earth are carpeted with trimmed grass. And these are currently sheltering a handful of law-abiding citizens. A man is sitting still. Three folks are playing hide and seek, with a woman in blindfold. A couple is whispering into each other’s ears. Around them, an endless procession of speeding bikes, cars, autos and red DTC buses. Many years ago this used to be a smoggy square dreaded by commuters for its hour-long jams. Today, this is an island of utmost peace. It’s 6 pm in Rajiv Gandhi Setu. Opened
Mission Delhi – Muhammed Anas, Pahari Rajaan Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - October 25, 20210 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] He is 23. He has a dream. “I want to live in a house that has more than one room,” says Muhammed Anas. A bangle seller, he has spent all his years, so far, in a single-room house in Old Delhi’s Pahari Rajaan. This slow afternoon, while waiting for customers at his shop near Khajoor Wali Masjid (the khajoor tree vanished long ago), Mr Anas tells of his present house, as well as about the dream home in which he wishes to spend the rest of his life. On his present house: “It’s not really a room but a large hall on the ground floor, with a kitchen
City Monument – Stranded Column, Chirag Delhi Village Monuments by The Delhi Walla - October 22, 2021October 22, 20210 Littered past. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The pillar is slender, and swells up towards the top like a sonata soaring to a crescendo. It appears to be of red sandstone but the red has faded. You may spot this kind of fluted column inside the old houses in the Walled City, and also within temples and mosques. But it will be rare to find it by a footpath so matter-of-factly. Here, snuggled deep within south Delhi’s Chirag Delhi village, the column is half-embedded into the adjacent concrete, the other half exposed to the street like a dead body washed ashore. The column lies under a weather-beaten cement platform, which has four benches facing each other. It is a popular meeting point
City Monument – Nila Gumbad, Humayun Tomb Complex Monuments by The Delhi Walla - October 20, 20210 The Humayun blue. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s 24 karat gold—the kalash , or the finial, at the top of the Humayun’s Tomb. The gilded metal glistens in sunshine. Just some steps away is a much smaller tomb. Its dome is dotted with wild grass. But it too is as intense as its celebrity counterpart. The effect is caused by the dome’s enigmatic blue, which is neither shiny, nor pale. The shade appears fragile, and one fears it might wash out during the rains, or under the harsh sunshine. The Nila Gumbad, or the blue dome, stands at the far-east of the Humayun tomb complex. It isn’t visited by as many sightseers as the Mughal emperor’s mausoleum, but it is
City Life – Four Labourers, Tiraha Behram Khan Life by The Delhi Walla - October 19, 2021October 19, 20210 Waiting for work. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] They are sitting on their haunches, waiting for work. House painters Madan Lal, Gopal, Jagdish and Malik are stationed with their paint brushes in Old Delhi’s Tiraha Behram Khan. This is one of the historic quarter’s traffic junctions where freelance labourers gather to be picked up for assignments. Their clients—mainly builders and contractors— hire them for small projects, which might last from a few hours to the entire day. The labourers later return to this same spot, and wait for more work. It is 3 in the afternoon. These four painters say they haven’t been approached since the morning. They live nearby in a rented room and have been here since 8am—they left