Mission Delhi – Raju, Near Yamuna Bazar
Homecoming dress. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Waste collector Raju’s bulging sack is huge. “It has all the trash I have collected today,” he says. Though it is only early morning in this market lane, it is already…
Mission Delhi – Devendra Kumar, Jacobpura
[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The family is cutting costs wherever it can. Devendra Kumar no longer “drinks a peg or two” and his school-going sons have stopped demanding treats of samosas and burgers. “As for my Mrs,…
Mission Delhi – Shah Hasan, Bhalswa Dairy
Homecoming dress. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] So much has changed in just a few months. Auto rickshaw driver Shah Hasan barely manages to register the individuality of his customers anymore. “They’re always in masks…. a series of…
Mission Delhi – Veena Mathur, Sector 51
Homecoming dress. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Wow, she speaks such free-flowing Hindi! Now, this might sound like an awkward compliment in the Hindi-speaking Delhi region. But then Hindi is not Veena’s first language. “Main Tamil Nadu ki…
Mission Delhi – Pappu, Central Delhi
Homecoming dress. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] He’s shining brightly. Pappu is wearing trousers whose bright shade is difficult to determine—is it some sort of brown or mustard color, or brownish-mustard, or something else entirely. Doesn’t matter. The…
Mission Delhi – Preeti Sachdeva, Devilal Colony
Lost world. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] She would do facial, manicure, pedicure, haircut and many other things in a space she created all by herself. But the dreamworld has ended. She finally shut down her beauty parlour…
Mission Delhi – Arman, Sadar Bazar
[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Despite living without a house in a tough city like Delhi, despite having to brave every day the dangerous times of the coronavirus pandemic, fruit seller Arman makes sure to have beauty in…
Mission Delhi – Nazma, New Palam Vihar
[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It all began with the bicycle, all those years ago, in Saharanpur town in UP. She was just 8. “Actually it started with the 25 paise Babu (father) would give me every day,”…
Mission Delhi – Nashir Ahmed Khan, Jama Masjid, Gurgaon
[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Every cynical person exasperated with the world and its people ought to meet him. Spending just ten minutes in his company will make you believe again in mankind. So courteous, so polite, so…
Mission Delhi – Kalu, Central Delhi
[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] His face is almost invisible, under the huge load of goat fodder he is carrying on his head. All that you see are glimpses of his glinting eyes and flashes of his nose…
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