City Landmark – Chicken Corner & Maktaba Bookstore, Urdu Bazar
Story of bookstores. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Chicken Corner. Is that what the great bookstore has become? No disrespect to the pavement eatery, but it is right outside the bookstore, blocking the access to the shuttered front…
City Monument – Three Edifices, Around Town
Stories of stones. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Monuments are made of stones and stories. Sometimes a series of monuments are threaded together by a single story, such as these three. Once upon a time there was a…
City Season – Jacaranda Blooms, Around Town
Happy blues. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] On Saturday morning, Lithuanian ambassador Diana Mickevičienė was strolling in the little park close to her residence in Vasant Vihar, and found the trees clothed in purple flowers. The lanes too…
City Neighbourhood – Pratap Street, Old Delhi
Backstreet world. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Deserted alleys, defaced walls, cobwebby windows, rusting doors, loopy cables, dead rats and unexpected dead-ends. Strolling through certain Old Delhi passageways is like being abandoned inside some spooky documentary on municipal…
City Food – Game Wali Kulfi, Turkman Gate
Summertime heritage. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Citizen Nizam doesn’t think much of himself. “What is special about me?”—he asks, genuinely perplexed on being photographed. Well, good sir, you happen to be among the last flag-bearers of an…
City Home – Bird Nest, Connaught Place
High-altitude living. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] This is a tree. This tree has a nest. This nest has a bird. It is the very heart of our smoggy megapolis—a small plaza in commercial Connaught Place, right outside…
City Landmark – Shah Music Centre, Netaji Subhash Road
For the record. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Gone. Shah Music Centre had hundreds of LPs. Those ‘Long Play’ discs storing half hour of music, before needing to be turned over, have long been out of use, but…
City Faith – Shani Temple, Rao Tula Ram Road
Shrine to Saturday. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Once upon a time, very long ago, a Walled City gali was home to a community of citizens called dakot. They workshopped Shani Dev and would ask for dakshina, or…
City Monument – Urdu Typewriter, Ghalib Academy
Language’s heritage. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Attention, heritage lovers, look at this Urdu typewriter. It is a most suitable sight for Delhi, a sheher of many writers, which is also a sheher where Urdu—a cosmopolitan khichdi of…
City Walk – Gali Gudaryan, Old Delhi
A welcoming street. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Some parts so silent and deserted, others full of bustle and sounds. Most of Gali Gudaryan is like a baggy wide megapolis where people come from all corners of…
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