Mission Delhi – Razi Zahoor Qureshi, Haji Hotel Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - July 7, 20220 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] He is silently taking turns. Razi Zahoor Qureshi is exercising his routine walk, here on Haji Hotel’s balcony with a panoramic view of the Mughal-era Jama Masjid (see photo). This elderly man in a safari suit is starting to be an Old Delhi living landmark. Partly so for being a patriarch of the family that owns this iconic institution, founded by his father in 1952. It was his brother, the legendary Haji Mian (Faiyazuddin), who used to be the area’s living landmark. If a passerby walking down the street didn’t spot him up there, sitting behind the large table on the hotel’s balcony, something essential was
Delhi Homes – Barsati, Around Town Delhi Homes by The Delhi Walla - July 7, 2022July 9, 20222 The vanishing rain shelter. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It is raining hard on the terrace of an 18th floor flat in Gurgaon’s Golf Course Road. Monsoon is giddily beating down on this multitude of high-rises. Yet, it feels like a draught—to a connoisseur of the barsati. Stealing its name from the Urdu for rain, barsati was a tiny room with a large terrace that went on to spawn a bohemian Delhi civilisation. Holed up high in these airy bubbles, eclectic migrants from small towns came of age in style and sensibility. Many barsatiwallas became famous. MF Husain had a barsati in Jangpura. William Dalrymple, who lives in a farm house, spent early 1990s in a Golf Links barsati. Pankaj Mishra,