The algebra of infinite merit. Sorry, Stephanians. You will never get as majestic a view as enjoyed by the college across the road. “Hinduites are so lucky to have us facing them,” says Ketki Saxena, a final-year English (hons) student of St Stephen’s College, Delhi University (DU)....
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The legendary bookstore in Connaught Place becomes history. New Book Depot, the legendary bookshop in the colonial-era Connaught Place known for its vast collection of classics as well as for its eccentric owner, died on January 6, 2012, aged 87. “I shut the bookshop today,” Rakesh Chandra,...
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Jesus loves you. Halleluyah. St Paul International Book Center is one of the very few shops in Delhi selling Bibles in all the 22 official languages of India. Situated in an Outer Circle block of the colonial-era Connaught Place, the store was established in 1964 by the...
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It goes online. Until August 2011, anyone with the ambition of understanding Jawaharlal Nehru had to fly to Delhi and spend hours at the members-only library in Teen Murti Bhavan, Nehru’s British-built residence that was turned into a museum after his death. Such a trip is no...
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A New Delhi oddity. In a colonial-era commercial district that is getting colonized by multiplex chains and fast food joints, the Mohan Singh Place ‘shopping cum office complex’ in Connaught Place has no McDonald’s, no Café Coffee Day and no multiplex. If a mall means a building...
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The bakery from grandfather’s time. It’s cramped and dark, except for the orange glow from a hole in the wall. Two men in lungis squat in front of the wood-fired oven. Blackened iron trays are stacked against one of the cell’s sooty walls. Ten minutes later, one...
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Best collection of non-fiction on India. If it were a book, it would be thick, dense, informative, wonderfully engaging, but wrapped in unattractive grey paper. Manohar bookstore in central Delhi is that sort of hidden gem. “It has India’s best collection of scholarly books on Indian history,...
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India’s oldest toy store. The pillars outside the corridor have been repainted. The adjacent Odeon Cinema has been taken over by a multiplex chain. Elsewhere, most familiar landmarks have given way to junk food outlets and retail chain showrooms. But Ram Chander & Sons, which claims to...
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Delhi’s saddest museum. Opened in 2004, the Walled City museum in Lahore Gate smells of urine. Housed in the Shri Narayan haveli, circa 1929, the windowpanes are broken, the door is unlocked, the halls are empty, the spotlight bulbs are missing and electric switchboards have come off...
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Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin has an arresting stare. Meet the Marxist revolutionary at a bookstore in the capitalistic Connaught Place, central Delhi’s premium shopping district. His portrait hangs close to a shelf stocked with bestselling trash such as Rich Dad, Poor Dad and Love...
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