City Landmark – Neem Tree, Old Delhi Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - June 5, 20240 A Walled City sight. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The night air is growing less hot, almost spring-like pleasant. The sky is pitch black, not a single star to be seen. The dozens of street stalls are lying locked, sheeted and roped. The deserted lanes are littered with trashy remains of the day—upturned slippers, stained paper plates and squeaky clean chicken bones. Most lamps are out. Some homeless citizens are slumped across a flat landing, probably asleep. A barely perceptible sound is of the shiny green neem leaves that rustle in occasional gusts of warm breeze. This tree is among the most picturesque night-time sights in Old Delhi. Positioned directly opposite the eastern face of Jama Masjid, its nocturnal avatar
City Landmarks – Jeevan Bharti Office Complex, Connaught Place Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - May 29, 20240 Different perspectives. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It is post-twilight, and most glass panels of the multi-storey have their lights out. This is Connaught Place’s Jeevan Bharti office complex as seen from N block. A Charles Correa creation, the glass-and-concrete stands out amid CP’s white colonial-era corridors and columns. The building came up in the 1980s, and has revolutionised the shopping district’s landscape. It pops up in the most unexpected corners and lanes. Each sighting has the potential to give a fresh insight into the building, as well as of that particular corner or lane. For instance, Jeevan Bharti is slender when seen sidewards from a Janpath subway staircase, but balloons into a mountain when seen from Palika Bazar’s gate no.
City Landmarks – Two Houses, Gurugram Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - May 23, 2024May 23, 20240 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 died last week. In an altogether different context, the wisdom of Alice Munro’s words can be made applicable to Gurugram, a city often dismissed as a land of mere shopping malls. For it is actually impossible to crack the city into an easy definition. Like neighbouring Delhi, it too comprises of contradicting layers. Any Gurgaonwale will tell you that their city’s history goes back to the days of Mahabharat—a consideration surreal to comprehend while downing a pumpkin spice latte in one
City Landmark – Accordion Man, South Extension I Hangouts Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - May 16, 20240 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 music is streaming out though. The whole setup is a statue. The accordion man is installed under a peepal in South Extension I, in a shaded tree-filled plaza outside the underground metro station, gate no. 2. This uncomfortably warm, sunny mid-May evening, a poker-faced citizen is seated beside the accordion man, looking thoughtful. Another citizen is seated on the other side of the accordion man. He too is looking thoughtful. Neither of them shows any curiosity towards the player, as if he
City Landmark – Empty Field, Ghaziabad Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - May 10, 20240 Space in suburbia. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Something serving as a relief from what is usual—this is a more evocative dictionary meaning of ‘oasis.’ Technically, the word refers to “a green area in desert.” Zila Ghaziabad is no desert. It is full of trees and a river (hello Hindon!). This unique sight however closely matches the idea of an oasis—something rare is interrupting a sequence of customary scenes.. Here, a vast empty lot is managing to survive in the middle of multi-stories, and is marked with two trees. The smaller tree is lit up in yellow. It is Amaltas, whose flowers have lately started to bloom for the summer. Delhi has far superior places to see the Amaltas in blossom,
City Landmark – New Wall Clock, Turkman Gate Hangouts Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - May 3, 20240 Timeless gets new time. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The lush banyan tree stands by the old marble grave. High up in the smoggy air, the leafy branches bend over the chaotic street, keeping it marooned in perpetual shade, here in the crowded entry point of Old Delhi’s Turkman Gate Bazar. The timeless scene has been enriched with a new wall clock. This moment, though, nobody is looking at the clock. Maybe because there is so much else to look at in the vicinity—Standard Chicken Point, Ansar Pan stall, Delite Stationary Store, Ghalib Biryani, Bismillah Bakery, Tabish Medical Center, Shahji Doodh Bhandar, Nanha’s meat shop, Moinuddin’s tea stall… this same Moinuddin installed the clock during the ramzan that ended
City Landmark – Tile Art, Pedestrian Subway, Outer Ring Road Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - April 28, 20240 Tiles in the city [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Taak, a niche on the wall, is a disappearing element of Delhi’s architecture. Maybe because suburban flats no longer have walls thick enough to afford taak. But here’s a taak, set deep into a wall. Well, it actually is a two-dimensional representation of the traditional niche, consisting entirely of tiles. For that matter, virtually the entire pedestrian passage it is to be found in is adorned with tiles. This is a small underground tunnel in South Delhi, running under the traffic-heavy Outer Ring Road and connecting SDA Market to IIT Delhi. This afternoon, it is empty, filling one with uncertainty about the aesthetic merits of its tapestry of tiles. Is it beautiful or
City Landmark – Hazrat Amir Khusrau’s 720th Urs, Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya’s Dargah Faith Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - April 26, 20240 A poet-saint’s anniversary [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] As monuments go by, it is not instantly striking. But it is cloaked in rich layers of histories. In the beginning, it was just a marble grave and remained so for 200 years. Then came a marble headstone erected by emperor Babur. Then came the latticed sandstone enclosure around the grave, erected by emperor Humayun—the inside face of this stone screen has a Persian poem by Humayun himself. Then came the dome erected over the grave during Emperor Akbar’s reign. It was demolished by his son, Emperor Jahangir, who built the rest of the edifice as it exists today. The memorial, important to so many emperors, is of no emperor. It is of
City Landmark – Sahibabad RRTS Station, Ghaziabad Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - April 20, 20240 Learning to see a new landmark. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] It looks like an ocean liner stranded in plain land, far from the sea it belongs to. This is a fairly new landmark in zila Ghaziabad, that enriches the unusually rich architecture of Delhi’s neighbouring district. Opened late last year, the gigantic Sahibabad station is part of the under-construction Delhi-Ghaziabad-Meerut Regional Rapid Transit System, which for the time connects Sahibabad to Modinagar North, ultimately to be stretched out all the way to distant Meerut. Visible from far, the RRTS station stands above the highway running through a Ghaziabad suburb. As recently as at the turn of the century, this area was semi-wild, but now it is a thicket of apartment
City Landmark – Chicken Corner & Maktaba Bookstore, Urdu Bazar Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - April 17, 2024April 17, 20240 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 (see photo). Maktaba Jamia Limited has been closed for more than a month, since the beginning of the Ramzan, says the eatery cook. The assertion is confirmed by a staffer at the next-door shop. Founded in 1949, this Old Delhi landmark in Urdu Bazar is governed by a board. Late last year, it triggered waves of chest beating lamentations when it shut down for a few days. Sentimental eulogies even popped up on Facebook. The bookstore reopened following the uproar. Similarly iconic bookstores