It’s a distinction. In March 2012, The Delhi Walla was discovered by the Guardian, one of the world’s most respected English newspapers. In a cover feature called ‘Tales of the City’, the daily said: “From Delhi to New York, there are local bloggers opening their cities up to the world.”...
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A vanishing world. One evening The Delhi Walla knocked at the door of Payal Singh, keeper of her family’s treasure: six hardbounds of the eleventh edition of Encyclopedia Britannica. In her 30s, Ms Singh, an interior designer, lives with her husband and daughter at an apartment in...
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Delhi’s grand Friday mosque. “How can anybody live in this place?” This is the first thing that a new visitor to Shahjahanbad might want to know. The honking. The beggars. The loosely-hanging electric cables. The open drains. The stench. The filth. The traffic. And the grand mosque....
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A la recherche du temps perdu. Today is the 13th meeting of The Delhi Proustians, a club for Delhiwallas that discusses French novelist Marcel Proust. Every Monday evening for an hour we read his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time. It is 7 pm and The Delhi...
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The ghost story. The March 26, 2012, issue of Delhi-based Outlook magazine carries an essay on capitalism by Delhi’s greatest living writer, Arundhati Roy. Here’s the piece Is it a house or a home? A temple to the new India, or a warehouse for its ghosts? Ever since Antilla...
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Life in Delhi’s prettiest neighborhood. My landlord has asked for the phone number of my nearest kin. If I suddenly die, whom would he call to dispose off the body? He produces a form. I fill my particulars: height, weight, birthmark, blood group, the eye color, permanent...
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One of the one percent in 13 million. He gazes down on the marble floor. One minute. Two minutes. Three minutes. Eleven minutes. He is immobile. Pilgrims walk around him. A few pat him. One child playfully pulls his tail. One takes his photo with a mobile...
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The soul of Delhi. Delhi is the city of Sufis. It is traditionally known as ‘Bais khwaja ki chaukhat’, the threshold of 22 Sufis. To understand the soul of this city, you must make a pilgrimage to a shrine, which is six hours away from the capital....
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More considered reviews and recognition. A cat has nine lives. The Delhi Walla books – all four of them – are enjoying the same fate. Published by HarperCollins India in 2010, the books were widely considered to be mere guidebooks. Most Indian newspapers found them too insignificant to feature in...
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A la recherche du temps perdu. Today is the 12th meeting of The Delhi Proustians, a club for Delhiwallas that discusses French novelist Marcel Proust. Every Monday evening for an hour we read his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time. It is 7.18 pm and The Delhi...
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