Manmohan Singh’s haunt.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Shelves gone. Desks gone. Cupboards gone. Newspapers gone. Those fat file folders gone. And oh, the magical back-room with its stacks of old New Yorker magazines too gone.

The place is unrecognisable. It is instead looking slick with scores of neatly arranged tables and chairs, and is buzzing this afternoon with cooks, waiters, diners.

Here’s how cities change. One landmark at a time.

The P-block address in Connaught Place housed one of Delhi’s oldest companies distributing newspapers and magazines across the country. The place has today transformed into a brightly lit outlet of a Kolkata-based restaurant chain. The air is smelling of some aromatic hunger-inducing spice. The restaurant opened about two months ago, informs Anshu Raghav, the courteous manager—see photo.

Set up before independence in Simla, the iconic Central News Agency had been standing on this Delhi site for decades, and was among the last remaining vanguards of the old CP. Long before the internet made it super-easy to access the newspapers of the world, members of Delhi ‘s intellectual elite would flock to CNA to get those hard-to-get newspapers. In the early 1980s, Rajiv Gandhi would regularly come here to get the foreign photography magazines. Teji Bachchan came daily in an auto rickshaw to get her selection of newspapers. Painter MF Husain would also be sighted. And before he became the Prime Minister, economist Manmohan Singh, who recently died, would arrive weekly to pick up his copy of the UK-based Guardian Weekly.

Until the CNA left the premises some two years back (and moved out of CP), the interiors had stayed unaltered for years and years. There were the low hanging ceiling fans, the matted staircase, the old metallic tijori, and the extraordinary staffers who exuded grace, courtesy and a homey friendliness. A memorable sight was of the tall newspaper rack, its cabinets resembling dinner plate racks. The adjoining magazine counter claimed the entire wall; the wooden brackets stacked with Indian and foreign magazines.

Suddenly, the recollection of those times is disrupted by the opening of the restaurant’s glass door. A CP shopper enters. Maybe she is craving for a dosa, or perhaps coffee. After all, what used to be Central News Agency is now called Dosa Coffee.