Their story, in their words. [By Jis James] What Delhi has got to do with a boy who comes all the way from the southern most part of the country which is Kerala? But it has got some real genuine things to do with his life. This city has become an integral part in his life. So if he writes a biography of himself there's no way he can exclude the influence of this city. The past three years he has spent in this place have given him some fond and warm experiences to hold on. Few experiences have somehow played its part in shaping what he is today. A handful of people whom he will cherish till the last of his

Their story, in their words. [By Tahreema Rahim] Tahreema, 19, lives somewhere in Daryaganj with her parents and a 5-year-old brother. She never knew that this will be the time when she will revisit her blue, towelled, patched childhood album. Her father has always been fond of capturing moments and taking pictures whenever possible. So as she goes by the first page, she sees her name written in elegant calligraphy. Whenever she goes through her album the moment which she vicariously lives through the photographs is her first birthday. She doesn’t remember it consciously but photographs do help to picture the scenarios. Everyone showed up, everyone gathered, the well lit, bright room with clustered balloons, pink, orange, yellow, fairy lights hanged on the

The definitive directory of famous Delhiites. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] At 72, the maker of Hindustani classical music lost interest in the world. Poet Amir Khusro, the 14th century courtier to seven kings, was in mourning after the death of his spiritual mentor, Delhi’s Sufi saint Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. Khusro gave away his wealth, retired to Hazrat Nizamuddin’s tomb, died six months later, and was buried in the shrine’s courtyard. Perhaps it is all a legend. How could one person singularly invent the tabla and sitar, produce the first raga and create the Sufi music of qawwali? Most likely Hindustani classical music came out of a civilization, but Khusro’s poetic genius gave that civilization its Hindustani texture. Folksy and immediate, his language

The definitive directory of great Delhiwallas. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Old Delhi’s living encyclopedia, he knows the stories of its every street and alley, and he is probably more important to the well-being of this city than the Red Fort or Jama Masjid. Anyone in Pahari Imli can tell you that Naseem Mirza Changezi is the 23rd descendant of the great Genghis Khan. At 106, Mr Changezi is Old Delhi’s oldest man. He traces his family's roots in the city to early-17th century when Mughal emperor Shahjahan laid its foundation—of course, then Old Delhi was known as Shahjahanbad. Mr Changezi has been the subject of a number of TV documentaries and newspaper features, most of which repeat his passing

The definitive directory of great Delhiites. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] He was always seen in a green kurta, this lean man with deep-set eyes and a long beard. Allah Hu was a gravedigger at the Batla House Qabristan in south Delhi. Over the last 40 years, he had dug or supervised the final resting place for thousands in this sprawling Muslim cemetery. On 25 April 2016, he died of a heart attack—and was buried in the place he had selected for himself years ago. At 85, Allah Hu had lived almost all his life in these dusty grounds, in a two-room house that is his only material bequest to his wife Khushnabi, four sons, two daughters, and 11 grandchildren. The other legacy

Our foreign correspondent. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It is noon, yet the drawing room is washed in a cool darkness. The gentleman is seated on a sofa. The November sunlight pierces the window and falls on his face. He is alone, except for a sleepy Labrador lounging on the floor beside him. His partner is out on an errand. The bookshelf is lined with “Happy Birthday” cards. One of them says, “The National Old Farts Club Welcomes Its Newest Member!” The card is addressed to the man on the sofa, who turned 80 in October—Mark Tully, or Sir Mark (he was knighted when he was 67). Mr Tully is synonymous with British broadcasting for Indians. More than two decades after he

India's great photographer.[ Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] This year, Raghu Rai completed 50 years of photography. In December, Aleph India will publish his book Picturing Time: The Greatest Photographs of Raghu Rai. Born in Jhang village in the pre-Partition Punjab in December 1942, his has been an extremely productive and acclaimed journey. Mr Rai has published more than 40 books, which show the story of contemporary India. His first book, published in 1971, was on then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. His recent book was on Gujarat, the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was also the subject of one of Mr Rai’s books published in 2014. Mr Rai’s archive has more than 500,000 photographs. The first one he took

Author Khushwant Singh's longtime cook. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Chandan Singh, 85, has a kind of sculpted face that won’t look out of place in a room filled with death masks of Roman emperors who had lived up to a great age. Mr Singh was a longtime cook to author Khushwant Singh who died in March 2014 at the age of 99. He served the celebrated author for 60 years. The capital’s important people, who routinely attended Khushwant Singh’s famous evening soirees at his drawing room in the colonial-era Sujan Singh Park, had grown used to nibble at what Chandan Singh would made for them in the kitchen. On Khushwant Singh’s last day on 20 March, Mr Singh had served

The face of Delhi's fifth estate. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Extra, extra, read all about it. Is there a more pleasurable morning ritual than the ceremony of unveiling a crisp, unread newspaper? Bhim Sen Puri’s daily beat always starts with The Hindu, Mail Today, The Times of India, and Hindustan Times—in that sequence. In his 90s, Bhim Sen is the masthead of the Central News Agency (CNA). The legendary Connaught Place landmark has been supplying newspapers from across the globe long before the time when we all learned to download The New York Times or The Guardian app. Today, a distributor of all kinds of print media, including newspapers, magazines, journals and books, Bhim Sen’s CNA has expanded to Mumbai and Chennai. Rewind to

The bookish bookseller. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Ajit Vikram Singh is the founder of the cramped Fact and Fiction Booksellers, the capital’s most eclectic bookstore. No other place in Delhi offers such rich selections of books in literary fiction, religion, cinema, philosophy, travel, music, science, history, wild life, cookery, ecology, economics and poetry. And Fact & Fiction also has the distinction of being the capital’s only bookshop to keep the handsome Modern Library boxed set containing all the seven volumes of Marcel Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time. It is also probably the only shop in Delhi that keeps more than one edition of Simone Weil’s An Anthology. Obviously, Fact & Fiction is strongly marked by the character