[Digging out old stories from The Delhi Walla] News flash on a website: 2G:BJP demands probe against PM, PC. The meaning of the cuss word Chutium Sulphate, explained in an online dictionary: “Complete moron, as in, That chutium sulphate can’t drive two feet without blowing his horn.” Slutwalk’s Indianised avatar that took place in Delhi: “Slutwalk athhart Besharmi Morcha.” This is the 21st century sound of Delhi. In the capital of a republic of 122 languages with more than 10,000 speakers (2001 census), we have entered into a new kind of multilingual anarchy, where a colon-dash-bracket on the keypad has become shorthand for a smile. Our conversational language has disintegrated into a mess of jargon, idiom, acronyms, abbreviations, cuss words and symbols. When a girl

[Digging out old stories from The Delhi Walla] It’s vanishing. The barsati. The small room at the top of the house where the family could enjoy the cool breeze during the monsoon. A unique Delhi phenomenon. The city’s real estate regulations spawned a way of life that was artistic and idealistic, temporary and flamboyant. Taking its name from barsat, Urdu for heavy showers, the barsati was a room with a large terrace. Holed up in these below-the-sky capsules, young, unconventional middle-class migrants waited for new opportunities. A few barsati residents later became famous. Painter M.F. Husain lived in a Jangpura barsati. British author Ian Jack had a barsati near the railway tracks in Defence Colony. Writer Arundhati Roy shaped her world view in

[Digging out old stories from The Delhi Walla] Messy, smelly and non-stop, Jane Austen would have described it as a continual state of inelegance. Delhi’s biggest embarrassment, it is also the title of a Bollywood film. The phrase Delhi Belly, according to the Hanklyn-Janklin dictionary, is “a stomach disorder sometimes afflicting newcomers to the capital”. Infectious amoebic agents such as Entamoeba histolytica enter the body, the intestine reacts and throws out all infection through frequent motions. It’s not Al Qaeda, but Americans take Delhi Belly seriously. According to a US diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity since he is not authorized to share this information, his embassy in New Delhi maintains a laboratory devoted to testing for germs and diseases such

[Digging out old stories from The Delhi Walla] Secretive and silent. Intertwined trees, twisted trunks, thorny twigs, rocky slopes, and clumps of grass. The nearest McDonald’s is two miles away. The Delhi Walla is on Delhi’s Central Ridge, a forest in the Capital’s heart abutting Sardar Patel Road in Chanakyapuri. For a city on the edge of a desert, Delhi is remarkable for the number and diversity of its trees. This dry, dusty metropolis is home to 252 species (New York has 130). We could just as well be in a rainforest. The 2009 Forest Survey of India records Delhi’s forest area at 85 sq. km, which is 5.73 per cent of the city. In the period between 2005 and 2009, the

[Digging out old stories from The Delhi Walla] A smoggy traffic square that was once dreaded by commuters for its long jams has become an unlikely urban haven. On one grassy slope, a group of women is playing kabaddi. On another, a cricket match is on. A few furlongs away, a badminton game is nearing its end. Across the road, the electric signboard of All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) is blinking red and green. Meanwhile, cars are speeding in all four directions – Dhaula Kuan, Ashram, INA Market and Green Park. It’s just another late summer night in Rajiv Gandhi Setu. Popularly known as the AIIMS flyover, the nine-lane signal-free traffic interchange on the Ring Road is now also a