The beautiful room is empty. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The door to the left opens to the long balcony; the window in the front wall looks on to Jama Masjid. The room is an imperfect rectangle. The wall, yellow like Amul butter. The table, creamy brown. The bedspread and the pillow, white. A Jawahar cut jacket hanging on the wall. A table topped with three poetry books, including by Ustad Rasa Dehlvi. This small so-named “manager’s room” is on the first floor of Old Delhi’s Haji Hotel. A poet spent a lifetime in it. Ameer Dehlvi passed early in the year, aged 93. His family owns the landmark hotel. These days the room stays closed, and was unlatched briefly