City Hangout – Poetry Reading Benches, Mirza Ghalib’s Tomb
Place for poems. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Those good souls who love reading poems will sit down with a poetry anthology just about anywhere. Even while standing in a jam-packed Metro train. But where can one find…
City Hangout – Shatabdi Watching, New Delhi Railway Station
The thrill of travel. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] That powerful sense of “going somewhere” is probably more palpable in a railway station than at an airport terminal. So many of us harassed Delhiites dream of escaping this…
City Hangout – Graveyard Watching, Jamia Millia Islamia Metro Station
The view of the dead. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] So much hustle bustle but for what when we all have to end up dead? One can’t avoid struggling with such a feeling while going up the escalators…
City Hangout – Cats & Dogs, Bulbuli Khana
The art of co-existence. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s a very strange sight—dogs and cats living together serenely. But this is an everyday happening here in Old Delhi’s Bulbuli Khana. Now a black cat surfaces from the…
City Hangout – Back Garden, Safdarjung’s Tomb
Where peace comes dropping slow. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] No sound, but of birds. This particular garden paradise feels thousands of miles away from Delhi’s chaos though it’s tucked right in the city’s heart as part of…
City Hangout – Shah Music Center, Meena Bazar
The LP haven. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] All timeless legends are here — Begum Akhtar and The Beatles, the early Michael Jacksons and the early Amitabh Bachchans, the golden oldies of Barbara Streisand as well as rare…
City Hangout – Strangest Bench, Central Delhi
Away from the world. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] This may be the weirdest garden bench in all of Delhi. Instead of facing the finery of flowers it faces a wall here in central Delhi’s Bhishma Pitamah Marg….
City Hangout – Weeping Trees, India Gate
A scene by the canal. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] These don’t look like happy trees, do they? Sad and despairing, they perhaps remind one of Ophelia, the grief-stricken heroine in Shakespeare’s Hamlet who dies by drowning. Indeed,…
City Hangout – Buddhist Art Gallery, National Museum
A journey into Buddhism. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] So meditative and so very calm. That’s how one imagines how Lord Buddha was. It is also the state of mind one encounters at the gallery devoted to Buddhist…
City Hangout – Best English Language Poetry Shelf, The Book Shop, Jor Bagh Market
Besides prose. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Many good folk beat their chests lamenting the death of poetry. Which simply isn’t true. What are film songs but poems? How about all those Delhiites who can recite Ghalib and…
Recent Comments