City Landmark – Lakshmi Book Store, Janpath Bhawan Hangouts Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - August 20, 20240 A lesser-known haven. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Bookstores aspire to build a community of loyal readers, nudging the book browsers to linger on for hours. But this bookstore has a note stamped on the counter saying: “Please do not spend more than 15 minutes in the shop.” The little-known Lakshmi Book Store in Connaught Place’s Janpath Bhawan specialises in “occult sciences,” crammed with volumes on astrology’s many branches—astronomy, palmistry, numerology, Vastu, tarot card and face reading. The mezzanine floor destination is empty this evening in contrast to the jam-packed eateries (including the legendary Depaul’s!) downstairs in the market corridor. The shop started as a pavement stall in CP in 1951 by migrant Prem Sagar. It moved through a series of CP
City Neighbourhood – Gali Haveli Kallu Khawas, Old Delhi Hangouts Regions Walks by The Delhi Walla - August 17, 20240 The world of a long lane. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] What to write about it? This is just a narrow lane remarkable only for looking too-too unremarkable. Its mouth at the bustling Chitli Qabar Bazar street is flanked by a bangle stall. Whatever, the gali seems short and dull, it must end some dozen steps ahead on reaching that facing wall. The lane reaches the wall, but doesn’t end there. It veers to the left, goes straight, turns sharply to the right, goes straight, to the right again, straight, to the left, finally ending into a panel of partly pink doorways. Contradicting the first impression, the entire path turns out to be dense with many sights and many sounds. Such
City Hangout – Independence Day 2024, Old Delhi Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - August 14, 20240 Azadi planner. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Such a predictable 15th August routine in the suburban world of gated communities. On the Independence Day morning, the housing society dwellers obediently gather at the community lawn. The hoisting of the national flag is followed by deshbhakti songs and paper-cup chai, after which they board the lift back to their flats. And then there’s a very different Azadi anniversary in the gallis and kuchas of labyrinthine Old Delhi. Friends, you ought to do this one thing tomorrow on the Independence Day. Celebrate it in the historic Walled City. Old Delhi afternoon gets fantastically festive on “Pandrah Agast.” The area around Jama Masjid becomes like a carnival. The incredible jubilation has to be personally experienced to
City Hangout – Book Residues, Sunday Book Bazar Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - August 13, 20240 On Delhi's great institution. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] There is more than one way of exploiting Delhi’s fabulous Sunday Book Bazar. Every week the exhibition ground of Mahila Haat on Asaf Ali Road is carpeted with thousands of used books sourced from across the world. Many of these much-thumbed paperbacks contain itsy-bitsy stuff belonging to their former owners—receipts, cards, letters, newspaper clippings, photos, flowers, etc. These lie pressed between the book pages, perfectly preserved. The Delhi Walla has amassed hundreds of such titbits over many Sundays. Each fragment transcends time and space, at times bringing one tantalisingly close to the texture of some unknown person’s daily life. Here’s a sample. 1. A yellowed torn clipping of Hindustan Times front page
City Curtain-Raiser – Humayun Museum, Near Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya’s Dargah Hangouts Landmarks Monuments by The Delhi Walla - July 27, 2024August 4, 20241 India's new heritage site museum. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Nestled in a corner of the pristine Sunder Nursery garden, across the road from Humayun’s Tomb, a series of red sandstone ramps gently head to the grassy ground beneath. They descend into corridors and halls with massive sheesham doorways that summon the grandeur of Fatehpur Sikri’s Buland Darwaza. Inside, await five huge galleries of granite flooring, marble columns, and stone benches. Delhi is crusted with layers and layers of past. These exist laterally, extending outwards, but also vertically, beneath the ground, under a surface that millions of feet pound on every day. It is fitting, then, that the newest landmark of this city of graveyards is entirely underground. Opening next
City Hangout – New and Old Balconies, Ansari Road Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - July 27, 20240 Changing architecture. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Look at this photo snapped last week. Two balconies, one old, the other also said to be quite old but so newly renovated that the work on it is still to be completed, and it might not end up as a balcony at all. Both structures are worlds apart in their aesthetics. Together they evoke the evolution of a Delhi neighbourhood in which the defining visual character for a long time has been the architecture. Named after freedom fighter Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, the Old Delhi avenue is bordered by fragments of the mostly vanished Walled City wall. It houses several publishing houses and book distribution companies, and lately parcel delivery services. It also has
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 Neighbourhood – Kucha Baqaullah Khan Hangouts Walks by The Delhi Walla - July 27, 20240 One of the two brothers. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Once upon a time there were “do bhai”— Rohilla Khan and Baqaullah Khan. Both brothers were Mughal nobles. The assertion is forcefully made by a handful of men idling this humid evening at Kucha Baqaullah Khan. (The same claim was asserted one afternoon months ago by a few men idling at the neighbouring Kucha Rohilla Khan—a street already featured on The Delhi Walla). The entry to Baqaullah’s blind alley is like a hole in the wall, sandwiched between the hole-in-the-wall shops of Chitli Qabar Bazar. Fortunately, the green-bordered signboard bearing the street’s name is easily discernible. The other marker is the huge black tank perched atop the tricoloured gateway. Inside, the unpainted
City Neighbourhood – Hamdadrd Chowk, Old Delhi Hangouts Landmarks Walks by The Delhi Walla - July 27, 20240 Circle of birds. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] This humid afternoon the circular traffic island of Hamdard Chowk on Asaf Ali Road is filled, as always, with hundreds of pigeons. The traffic noise is reaching into the sprawling circle weakened and indistinct. A man in white kurta pajama is slowly walking about the circle, stopping frequently, picking up things from the circle’s surprisingly high platform, and he is putting those things… into his mouth! These are broken pieces of mithai that somebody must have placed for the pigeons, he says. He doesn’t give reasons for consuming these himself. ‘Partner in pain’ in Urdu, the chowk’s name comes from the facing headquarters of Hamdard Laboratories At night, the traffic circle’s surroundings--the
City Hangout – Live Music, Connaught Place Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - July 16, 2024July 16, 20240 Killing us softly with their songs [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Late evening. A young man is strumming a guitar in a Connaught Place (CP) corridor, crooning the Ankit Tiwari love song Teri galiyaan. A small crowd swiftly gathers—see photo. Some start snapping the singer-busker. One woman is tapping her foot, in sync with the beats. Elsewhere in CP, an elderly man is often seen playing flute in an Inner Circle corridor, beside a handwritten placard stating: “I’m not a beggar. I just want to touch your soul with the help of music.” Live music in CP is a long-time tradition. The colonial-era commercial district was a jumble of pubs and restaurants as much in the 1960s as it is in the