A vanishing world. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Thick yellowing pages sewed within leather-bound volumes. Ancient threads escaping out of cracked spines. Centuries-old letters tucked inside spotlessly white envelopes. Bundles of very old newspapers. And boxes after boxes marked 'Fragile'. This is a world of Judaism that lies safe behind the bullet-proof windows of Renato Maestro Library and Archive--the building lies almost unseen in one corner of the Jewish district of Venice. The world's first ghetto is observing its 500th anniversary this year. The Delhi Walla recently spent a long afternoon in the library, randomly taking out these old books from their metal shelves, feeling their heavy weight, turning over their antique pages and moving the eager fingers over Hebrew characters that

A vanishing world. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] One afternoon The Delhi Walla visited the home of Jeet Thayil, the poet and novelist in his 50s, who lives with his partner, designer and photographer Akanksha Sharma, and cat, Marjorie Stuart Baxter, in their first-floor apartment in South Delhi’s Safdarjung Development Area (SDA). Their living room looks quite bare. Slouching down on a corner sofa, the poet-novelist says, “I had about 2,000 books but I’m beginning to develop papyrophobia.” Mr Thayil helpfully adds that he is referring to his fear of paper, which might be the reason behind his recent generosity—he has given away many of his books to friends. He also tried to give away some really bad ones to “enemies”.

A vanishing world. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla has often flicked books from other people’s homes. So it was quite astounding to know that there are people doing the exact opposite. Readers will remember the library of Anjani Kumar—it was featured on this website’s ‘City Library’ series. A security guard in central Delhi’s Jor Bagh, Mr Kumar owns half a dozen books. He had told me -- “These books are as precious to me as my job.” The other evening I was walking in Jor Bagh when Mr Kumar waved at me and took out two new-looking books from his cabin. He said, “A lady came today. She gifted me these books.” I later learned that the aforementioned lady happened

A vanishing world. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Sometimes a collection of books becomes a portrait of a marriage. One evening, The Delhi Walla visited Karthika VK, publisher of HarperCollins India, at her East of Kailash home. In her late 40s, Ms Karthika shares a first-floor apartment with her dogs, Sundari and Crush, sons Shiva and Shasta, and husband, Vivek Menon. Ms Karthika has thousands of books at her home. Only a few, however, are from her company. Those books, she says, are at her office in Noida. The books at her home are mostly those that she has gathered over the years as an archetypal bibliophile. One can understand a person by surveying their bookshelves. But Ms Karthika’s collection is mixed with

A vanishing world. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Life to death, sex to body (and body parts – the eyes, hands, the left hand, breasts, the penis, the vagina, bones and blood and guts). There are also shelves on memory, amnesia, sleep, insomnia, dreams, silence and voice. A corner rack is filled with happiness and sadness, laughter and boredom. There are three racks of books on mathematics, with an edition of the Elements of Euclid always within easy reach and a book that contains only a million random numbers. The maths books are next to two shelves on evolution and biology, punctuated by volumes about fossil fish, imaginary animals, whales, ants, octopuses, giant squids, a history of horses and a

A vanishing world. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The warm daylight is streaming in through the window. It is utterly quiet. This is the book room of Vinod Mehta, the founder-editor of Outlook magazine who died in March, 2015. The Delhi Walla is in Mr Mehta’s first-floor apartment in Hazrat Nizamuddin East. His wife, Sumita, is showing me his library. “This is the place where Vinod would sit and read,” she says. “He wrote his two books on this desk.” Mr Mehta’s collection has more than a thousand volumes. Different genres lie together in a jumble of diversity. Lucy Peck’s Delhi: A Thousand Years of Building stands next to an old hardbound edition of The Faulkner Reader. Guy de Maupassant sits

A vanishing world. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] You don’t usually see books lying about in Delhi restaurants, except for a few loungy places in Paharganj where foreign backpackers leave behind their India guidebooks for the benefit of other travellers. But there is a café in south Delhi's Basant Lok Market, which has two well-stocked bookshelves. The collection at The Piano Man suggests its collector's strong personality -- almost all books are on music. The Definitive Illustrative Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues is stacked against Jazz: A History of Music - the latter is co-written by Geoffrey C Ward, an award-winning American author who grew up in Delhi. The Encyclopedia of Pop and [Rock} stands behind The Rolling Stones. Oliver

A vanishing world. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] One afternoon The Delhi Walla invited himself to Anjani Kumar’s library. The books are stocked in his office, which is a cramped plywood cabin situated outside a bungalow in Jor Bagh. A security guard in his forties, Mr Kumar owns half-a-dozen books. With rarely used reading glasses tucked into his shirt pocket, he says, “These books are as precious to me as my job.” Mr Kumar felt passionately for books even during his childhood days when he was growing up in his village, Dargahpur, in Bihar. “My grandfather, late Nawal Kishore Sharma who was the school headmaster, used to read me (Tulsidas’s) Ramcharit Manas at night.” The collection in the guard’s cabin includes an

A vanishing world. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] One rainy evening, The Delhi Walla knocks on the door of Sadia Dehlvi. In her fifties, she lives in an apartment in Nizamuddin East with her son, her cook and her hundreds of books on Islam. Ms Dehlvi has written two books on Sufism. Being her trusted acquaintance, she has often lent me books from her library. This evening she is looking distraught. “I cannot find two of Khushwant’s books,” she says, referring to author Khushwant Singh who died two days ago at 99. Ms Dehlvi is standing amid piles of books spread out haphazardly on her drawing room floor. “I have never given Khushwant to anyone.” Looking down at half a dozen books that

A vanishing world. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] One mildly-warm dusty noon, The Delhi Walla knocks on the door of Jhampan Mookerjee. In his fifties, he lives in an apartment in Gurgaon with his thousand books, three dogs, two children and one wife. “I have the first edition set of all the 10 volumes of Salim Ali’s Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan,” says Mr Mookerjee. “Each of them is inscribed with Salim Ali’s signature.” A former journalist, Mr Mookerjee has made TV documentaries on environment – one “exciting” project focused on cow dung as an energy resource. He now works as a wildlife conservationist, and naturally, has many books on trees and flowers, and also on wildlife. “This is