City Food – Deepak Namkeen and Papad Store, Subzi Mandi, Gurgaon
The world of salty savouries. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] You might never know the names of all the birds, or all the flowers, or all the trees, or all the constellations in the sky. But to learn…
City Life – Veeru Bhai’s Self-Made Cart, Central Delhi
Life of the cart. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Carts are regular sights in this city of street hawkers. Usually they are but a broad plank of wood plonked over four wheels. But Veeru Bhai’s fruit cart—or thela,…
City Landmark – Unknown Grave, Near Humayun’s Tomb
A roadside resting place. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It lies by the roadside, looking abandoned, ringed by weedy bushes and by hints of all sorts of litter and hidden lives crawling within. This striking-looking stone grave, in…
City Walk – Main Avenue, CR Park
The Bengal country. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The men look carefree, playing cards by the pavement. The vegetable seller is napping by his cart. A balloon hawker is slowly dragging his bicycle and the helium balloons, tied…
City Monument – Chor Minar, Hauz Khas Enclave
Life of a ruin. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] History is intrusive, and always finds its way into our today. Sometimes that intrusion is barely perceptible, as the touch of a gentle breeze on the skin. Like the…
City Landmark – Shama Building & Shama Family, Asaf Ali Marg & DLF Phase 1
A literary icon. [Archival photos belongs to Ali Ahmed Dehlvi and Vaseem Ahmed Dehlvi, text and other photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The building has lost its colour. A tree is growing out of the balcony. What rescues it from…
City Landmark – PCO aka Phone Booth, Meena Bazar
Relic from the living past. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s like coming face-to-face with the indecipherable relics of a lost civilisation. The pale pink wall, here in Old Delhi’s Meena Bazar, is defaced with two acronyms: STD…
Delhi’s Proust Questionnaire – SM Shafi, New Friends Colony
The parlour confession. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Literature student SM Shafi eats poetry — poetically speaking. He reads poems, he writes poems. In his 20s, he is currently preparing to start his PhD on poet Fakir Mohan…
City Faith – Hazrat Madni Shah Baba, Near Jama Masjid
A shrine’s best-kept secret. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s one of the lesser known shrines of the capital and it is tucked within… oh well, another lesser known shrine. The historic graves of Hazrat Sarmad Shahid and…
City Nature – Olive Trees, Italian Embassy
A bit of the Mediterranean. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It might be dry, dusty and polluted, but Delhi is home to 252 species of trees. (New York has 130.) Right now, the bloom of the semal’s red…
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