Working in extreme temperature. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The sun’s glare was repeatedly hitting the auto rickshaw’s windshield. It was not even ten in the morning, but the road, the roadsides, and the trees along the roadsides…
Into a bookseller’s soul. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Delhi’s backpackers’ district of Paharganj had many bookstores, each crammed with hundreds of used books. Many of those well-thumbed paperbacks would bear origins of exotic lands, often left by…
Ice, its long form. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Artist-types always crave to turn life’s ordinary experiences into something sublime. There are also those who stoically labour through their profession, without realising that they too are a part…
More than just a Millennium City. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The complexity of things—the things within things—just seems to be endless, nothing is easy, nothing is simple. So said Alice Munro, the Nobel prize winning author who…
A writer’s city. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Happy Birthday, Ruskin Bond. The much-loved author turned 90 on Sunday. Although the hill station of Landour in Mussoorie has been Ruskin Bond’s home since 1964, he would routinely travel…
Dispatch from 40 plus degrees. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Amid the ongoing heatwave-like conditions, thousands of our fellow citizens lack the choice of sheltering themselves from the dangerous afternoon sun. They are obliged to carry on with…
The tamarind hill. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The love song from our grandfathers’ time is streaming out from a window atop the grocery of “Shadab ki dukan.” Up there is Bhai Majid’s “embroidery ka karkhana.” The hard-at-work…
City arbor. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] While wading through a dense jungle, a slight opening of tree leaves abruptly reveals a tantalising glimpse of another world—a tower in progress, 22 floors! See photo. The tower is actually…
The unseen side of Sunday Book Bazar. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Sunday tends to be most special for Delhi’s booklovers. They head to the Sunday Book Bazar, which every week gets crammed with thousands of random books….
His silent music. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Sitting with legs crossed, head tilted, moustache neatly trimmed and twirled, smiling beatifically, he is playing his accordion, the bellows of the instrument fanned out to their utmost extremity. No…
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