A vanishing world. One late evening The Delhi Walla knocked at the door of Aatish Taseer, a novelist. In his 30s, Mr Taseer lives in an apartment in Rajesh Pilot Lane, a quiet neighbourhood close to Lodhi Garden in central Delhi. Hundreds of books are on display...
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A vanishing world. One evening The Delhi Walla knocked at the door of Payal Singh, keeper of her family’s treasure: six hardbounds of the eleventh edition of Encyclopedia Britannica. In her 30s, Ms Singh, an interior designer, lives with her husband and daughter at an apartment in...
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A vanishing world. One late evening The Delhi Walla knocked at the door of Sonal Aggarwal, a devoted reader of Anita Desai and many other authors. In her 30s, Ms Aggarwal, an industrialist’s daughter, lives in a bungalow in Pitampura, north-west Delhi. Her library is at her...
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A vanishing world. One late evening The Delhi Walla knocked at the door of author Chandrahas Choudhury. In his 30s, Mr Choudhury lives on the second floor of a bungalow in Kalkaji, south Delhi. He shares his one-room apartment with “a couple of hundreds of books.” The...
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A vanishing world. One rainy afternoon, The Delhi Walla knocked at the door of writer and editor Ira Pande. Now 60, Mrs Pande shares her ground floor apartment in Sector 93, Noida, a Delhi suburb, with her husband, Amitabha, and thousands of books. “Our collection is the...
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A vanishing world. One humid afternoon The Delhi Walla knocked at the door of thumri singer Vidya Rao. In her 50s, Ms Rao shares her second-floor apartment in Mehrauli, south Delhi, with her cat Sufi and her hundreds of books. “I’ve no idea how many I have,”...
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A vanishing world. One warm evening The Delhi Walla knocked at the door of Advaita Kala, the author of Almost Single. Like her novel’s protagonist, Ms Kala, is single. In her early 30s, she lives in a two-room apartment in Nizamuddin East, central Delhi. Her flatmates: a...
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A vanishing world. One cold afternoon The Delhi Walla knocked at the door of Somini Sengupta, the former South Asia bureau chief of The New York Times. Ms Sengupta, 43, is working on a book and is – in her own words – “busy being a mom.”...
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A vanishing world. One day there will still be books, but they might not be in the printed form. In the series City Library, The Delhi Walla will make a record of the private libraries of Delhiwallas. In each library, I will try to understand the library...
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The newspaper readers’ club In these iPad times of 24X7 news channels and streaming video sites, when the death of the newspaper is considered a certainty, a small bookless library in Daryaganj is doing well with its reading room full of those supposedly dying entities. “We have...
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