The Delhi Walla in the French capital. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla is trying too hard to be a Parisian. I had macarons in Laduree. I read Le Monde by the Seine. I acquired Flaubert’s Sentimental Education from Shakespeare & Co. I spent an entire day with a second-hand paperback on Pont des Arts, a creaky wooden bridge where lovers attach iron padlocks on the railings, throwing away the keys into the river. I spent an evening in a French restaurant – complete with check curtains and paper table covers – where I had cassoulet and profiteroles. Perhaps this is not Parisian at all. Perhaps the real thing might be beyond me. In Paris, I have been meeting painters,

The Delhi Walla in the French capital. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla began the dinner with a half-dozen oysters on the half shell. Then arrived the sole meunière. It was perfectly browned in a sputtering butter sauce with a sprinkling of chopped parsley on top. Then came the salade verte with a slightly acidic vinaigrette. The meal ended with a leisurely dessert of fromage. I then floated out of the door of S***** towards the Eiffel Tower, just a 10-minutes walk. It was close to midnight and I just had my first perfect meal in France. Suddenly as I came face-to-face with the Iron Lady, the rumblings started. It was Paris Potty, the French equivalent of Delhi Belly. Searching

The Delhi Walla in the French capital. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Trees, fountains, flowers, cafes, sculptures, graveled paths, busts of important artists, a pond, and, of course, a palace, which serves as the seat of the French Senate. There is also a puppet theatre and the original model of the Statue of Liberty. To Parisians, Luxembourg Garden, opened to the public since 17th century, is linked to memories of childhood and youth. Located between the high schools and universities of the Latin Quarter and the apartment buildings of the 6th District’s Old Money families, the garden was built by Marie de Medicis, Queen of France and a native of Florence, who wanted to recreate her Italy in the French capital. The

The Delhi Walla in the French capital. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla is spending his days in Paris walking down the streets, stopping at cafes for a 1 euro coffee and browsing for English-language novels in second-hand bookstores. This is the first time I’m discovering that Delhi is not the center of the world. There are other cities, equally rich in histories, which are more beautiful and more civilized. In Paris, I examine the faces of people to find out what goes on in their mind as they look at me. To them, most probably, I’m just a brown man from Asia -- may be from Bangladesh. They would never know that I’m a writer from India who

The Delhi Walla in the French capital. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] A family is having baguette and cheese. A middle-aged woman is jogging with her dog. A girl is kissing a boy. A young bride in white is walking with her man in a black suit. A pair of ‘sensitive boys’ is running together. The pigeons look better fed than their cousins in Delhi. The Delhi Walla spends his first day in Paris in the shade of Jardin du Palais Royal. Two symmetrical rows of trees make the garden. The benches are of wood and iron. All the trees reach to an equal height; their leaves look manicured to the same dimensions. The Louvre and the Seine is close, and the

Delhi to Agra and back. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] There are no dhabas, no burger joints — not yet. Neither is there a rail crossing. You will not pass through a single town. The Yamuna Expressway takes you from Delhi to Agra in less than 2 hours. Bhopal Shatabdi Express, India’s fastest train, takes 2 hours and 11 minutes. A Tatkal ticket for Bhopal Shatabdi Express costs Rs 370, while on the expressway cars have to pay Rs 320 (one-way). Opened in August 2012, India’s longest six-lane highway is built as a public-private partnership project by the Noida-based infrastructure conglomerate Jaypee Infratech Ltd and the Uttar Pradesh (UP) government. Constructed at a cost of Rs 12,839 crore, the expressway has

200 km from Delhi. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] In the Shikargah, two derelict brick pavilions face each other across a fish-stocked pond observed by mango and jamun trees. “On this one sat the nawab sahib hunting for fish,” Mehboob Shah Khan, the pond’s watchman, says. “On the other sat his begum.” Close to the edge of the water sits a hunting lodge, with carved ceilings and a sloping tin roof. Some of the windowpanes are missing, and the wire mesh crumbles to dust at a touch. The pond, the lodge and the nearby Khas Bagh, a 100-room palace, belong to the son and daughter of Murtaza Ali Khan, the last titular nawab of Rampur, a former princely state in Uttar Pradesh

India's fastest train. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] There is a stench of urine, and cockroaches and rats scurrying around. It is 6.05 am. At the New Delhi railway station, the Bhopal Shatabdi Express is on platform No.1, the Ajmer Shatabdi Express is leaving from No. 3, and the Shatabdi to Lucknow is on No. 9. Seventeen pairs of Shatabdis ferry passengers across the country, connecting cities like Delhi and Amritsar, Howrah and Ranchi, Bombay and Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Chennai. Every morning eight Shatabdis leave New Delhi for cities as far apart as Ajmer and Dehradun. Running at an average speed of 90-100 kmph, it is India’s fastest train service, though the speed of each Shatabdi may vary depending on the rail

The unhappy land. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] In its issue dated 21 April 2012, Open, a Delhi-based newsweekly, published a cover story on Kashmir titled “Sorry, Kashmir is Happy.” The author Manu Jospeh asks: “Why is it obscene to accept that a historically wounded people are ready to move on?” In the story, he writes: Srinagar does not have pubs or discos or cinema halls. Most young people there do not drink. A popular form of fun is sitting in a café and having coffee with friends. They are still uncorrupted by city slickness and there is an endearing honesty in their words. The Delhi Walla is in Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir, a divided region under the control of India and

The unhappy land. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Situated on the southern side of the Hari Parbat hill, the Sufi dargah of Makhdoom Sahib offers the most spectacular views of the old town. The Delhi Walla is in Srinagar, Kashmir’s capital. The valley is considered a land of Sufis. The old Srinagar is dotted with dozens of dargahs. In a paper for Carnegie project on “Globalization, National self-determination, and Terrorism”, development economist Deepak Lal, writes: The Kashmir valley, which had been predominantly Hindu, was converted to Sufi Islam in the 14th century. The syncretic Hindu-Muslim culture which resulted was a mixture of mystical Hindu Vedantism and Islamic Sufism. The concept of Kashmiriyat stresses the commonality between the Hindus and Muslims of the valley, as