The beautiful Delhi instant. One afternoon The Delhi Walla entered Barakhamba Park, a public garden in Nizamuddin West that is an unofficial home to the homeless. Nisha Begum, a park resident, was standing against a tree. She was in a yellow salwar-suit and a pink dupatta. A...
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The author with her new book. One afternoon The Delhi Walla entered the home of author Sadia Dehlvi in Nizamuddin East. The house was all happiness. Ms Dehlvi’s publisher HarperCollins India had just delivered the first copy of her new book, The Sufi Courtyard: Dargahs of Delhi....
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The beautiful Delhi instant. One sunny noon The Delhi Walla saw a bride and a groom at a temple in Mandir Marg, Central Delhi. The couple was in the temple’s lawn, along with a few relatives and a priest. They were sitting under a canopy made of...
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The beautiful Delhi instant. One cold morning The Delhi Walla saw a woman vendor in the F-block of the colonial-era shopping district Connaught Place. The showrooms were still closed. The Inner Circle corridors were empty, except for a few sleepy guards. The woman was sitting cross-legged on...
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The beautiful Delhi instant. One cold evening The Delhi Walla saw a burqa-clad woman in the dargah of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, the 14th century Sufi saint. The shrine is in central Delhi. The woman was sitting outside Hazrat Nizamuddin’s tomb, amid pilgrims of her sex. A notice...
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The beautiful Delhi instant. One winter morning The Delhi Walla accompanied thumri singer Vidya Rao to the shrine of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, the 14th century sufi saint. Ms Rao was carrying a copy of Heart to Heart: Remembering Nainaji, a book on her life with her late...
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The beautiful Delhi instant. It is evening. The Delhi Walla is walking down the principal lane in Nizamuddin Basi, a 14th century village in central Delhi, named after a sufi saint. The street is teeming with pilgrims, beggars, and vendors of kebabs, perfumes, caps and sandals. It...
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Late night melody. One late night The Delhi Walla is walking down Aurangzeb Marg, a boulevard in central Delhi. Named after a Mughal emperor, it is lined with bungalows of Very Important People, including the ambassador of Netherlands. His bungalow was once the property of Muhammed Ali...
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The beautiful Delhi instant. One evening The Delhi Walla was in Jama Masjid, the grand mosque that Mughal emperor Shahjahan built in 1628. The gigantic courtyard was taken over by hundreds of men, women and children. Its open space made the dark-blue sky look as vast as...
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The beautiful Delhi instant. One morning The Delhi Walla was at a flat in Vasundhra Valley Apartments, a grey-colored housing complex in Sahibabad, a township beyond Delhi’s eastern limits. Sitting cross-legged on a bed, a girl was singing a song from the 1971 Hindi film Guddi. Hum...
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