City Life – Star Cricketers, Old Delhi Life by The Delhi Walla - September 14, 20240 Lest we forget. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] During your next walking tour to Old Delhi, try catch glimpses of Nadeem, Kashif, Atif, Arib, Hayat and Kamran. These super six are being hailed by the historic quarter’s cricketing world as among the top players in the recently concluded BMMTA Cup (full form—Bazar Matia Mahal Traders Association). Matia Mahal with about 700 shops is among the Walled City’s most boisterous bazars. Last week the market’s association hosted a T10-style cricket tournament involving eight Old Delhi teams in seven matches held over four days in Chandni Chowk. The audience at the Shanti Desai Sports Club was made of Walled City’s cricket fans, along with students of a school close to the playground. The
City Life – Four Chai Drinkers, Yameen Peti Wale Life by The Delhi Walla - September 4, 20241 Tea time intimacies. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] At four in the evening, four carpenters settle down for tea. Clockwise from right: Alauddin, Kaleem, Farman and Imran Ali. The men work at Yameen Peti Wale. The workshop in Old Delhi’s Gali Chooriwallan is literally a hole in the wall, but, cave-like, it goes very deep within. On any given day, some of these men are seen ensconced into the remote interiors of the workshop, far from the daylight, surrounded by stacks of wooden planks, half-hidden in half-darkness. The men makes petiyan, or boxes. They agree to share their chai-time thoughts. Alauddin: I’m the only one among us four who isn’t from Purani Dilli. I came to Dilli more than 30 years
City Life – Rat Poison Sellers, Gurgaon Life by The Delhi Walla - August 31, 20240 One of the ways of making a living [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The world has its share of unloved and unwanted rats. This becomes evident in Gurugram’s bustling Sadar Bazar. It offers an unusually frequent sightings of street hawkers selling rat poison. Here are brief sketches of a few of them encountered across the seasons. Seeshpal arrived in the city more than two decades ago from a Rajasthan village. He spent the early weeks surveying the markets, observing the many street businesses. One afternoon in Sadar Bazar, he sighted a hawker walking along a packed lane with a placard hanging from his neck. The placard depicted a rat. The man was selling rat-killing pills and powders. Today, Seesh
City Home – Sharif Manzil, Ballimaran Delhi Homes Life by The Delhi Walla - August 29, 20241 An old mansion in the times of climate crisis. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The summer of 2024 will soon pass into memory for Sharif Manzil. The historic residence in Old Delhi’s Ballimaran has withstood the passing of too many summers. 304 summers to be precise—the house came up in the year 1720. This afternoon, Sharif Manzil’s patriarch is ensconced in his upper-floor drawing room. If you open the door behind the sofa on which Masroor Ahmed Khan is seated, and step out into the balcony, you will have a direct view of Gali Qasim Jan. That street is the address of Ghalib’s last haveli, the home of the great poet is a flower’s throw away from Sharif Manzil. “The haveli
City History – Sarmad and Azad, Old Delhi Life by The Delhi Walla - August 22, 20240 Two men. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] This is a story on the connect between Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Hazrat Sarmad Shahid. Their tombs lie close to each other, outside Old Delhi’s Jama Masjid, and together tell something of the Indian history. Sarmad, a mystic, was executed by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb on charges of apostasy. While Azad, born more than 200 years after Sarmad’s death, was a freedom fighter and free India’s first education minister. In the book Same-Sex Love in India: A Literary History, historian Saleem Kidwai devoted a chapter on Sarmad, detailing that “Sarmad was born a Jew in Kashan (in modern-day Iran), around 1590. He became a trader and acquired knowledge of mystic traditions and of Arabic and
City Life – Suburban Pigeons, Ghaziabad Life by The Delhi Walla - August 22, 20240 Our urban companions. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Many Old Delhi citizens keep pigeons as beloved pets, exhaust a great fortune on their daily meals, and fly them over the rooftops twice a day. The Walled City’s pigeon culture is routinely celebrated in books and movies. Now get out of the historic quarter, cross the Yamuna and drive to zila Ghaziabad in the eastern part of Delhi-NCR. This suburban world of multi-floor apartment complexes is punctuated by sudden shanties and weather-beaten walls. Note the walls. So many have hand-painted signs asking: Kya aap kabutaron se pareshan hain? (Are you being harassed by pigeons?). What appeared to be poetic in the Walled City is being seen as a nuisance in the newest parts
City Life – Death Notices, Old Delhi Life by The Delhi Walla - July 31, 20240 Sad shutters. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Late night, a shuttered shop in Old Delhi’s Chitli Qabar Bazar is bearing three printouts in Hindi and Urdu, see photo. “Muhammed Ali Bhai’s younger brother Ahmad Ali, aka Kallu Bhai, died on 25/07/2024. The funeral procession for Dilli Gate Qabristan will start from home at 5.45pm.” Death comes to every home. Coping with the private pain of losing a family member is to be simultaneously endured with the necessity of making a public announcement of the loss. In Old Delhi, one of the ways is to put up simple handwritten sheets of paper on walls. This is more common when the bereaved family owns a shop. The notice is taped to the shop’s
City Landmark – Bougainvillea Pave, Chelmsford Road Hangouts Life by The Delhi Walla - July 27, 20240 Changed, unchanged. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Things change profoundly. Yet, they stay the same. This is a brief sketch of a lane, a small stretch of it. Let’s go back to a log-ago July afternoon in the pre-Covid era. Barber Ishtiaq’s stall, on a lane off central Delhi’s Chelmsford Road, would briefly become among the city’s most picturesque shaving spots. It lay under a dense shrubbery of pink bougainvilleas, which for some reason, always bloom most gloriously during the rainy season (unlike many summertime bougainvilleas elsewhere in the city). The flowers would make such an overwhelming impression that the astonished eyes would register the modest stall underneath only a moment later. The middle-aged barber had been manning the booth
City Life – Ramjas Path, Daryaganj Life Walks by The Delhi Walla - July 7, 2024July 7, 20240 Of silence and song [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The lane is steeped in ‘pin drop silence,’ just the thing the teachers at the school ahead might expect from their students. The short Ramjas Paath in Daryaganj is lined with a handful of enormous pilkhans, whose thick brown branches gently spread upon the lane, colonising the upper altitudes, hiding much of the sky from the earth. A pair of vessels are hanging from a branch high up in the air; one of those is said to filled with grains for the birds, another is filled with water. Aam Panna seller Yameen shows a rope-and-pulley apparatus equipped around the tree’s wrinkled trunk. “It brings down the vessels to our level for
City Life – Newspaper Men, Mathura Road Life by The Delhi Walla - June 18, 20240 Print edition ambassadors. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Wars, bombings, summits, tournaments, tornadoes, murders, chain snatchings, fashion gallas, film star scandals, opening nights... so much has crashed into the world over the last 24 hours. The whole of it is piled up along a dusty Delhi curb, on Mathura Road. Here lies all the news fit to print. It is already warm at half-past five in the morning, also a bit humid. The man sitting cross-legged on the pave is hemmed in by heaps of Hindi-English dailies. He is inserting publicity flyers inside hundreds of newspapers, his fast-moving hands a blur. Overlooking the blue dome of centuries-old Subz Burj, the curb is packed with many of these newspaper suppliers, each man ensconced