Five years and counting.

[By Mayank Austen Soofi]

The Delhi Walla completed five years in April 2012. The website had started as a blog.

These are initial years. I will continue to explore Delhi in the decades ahead.

Stay with me.

Blasts from the past

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

Your search ends here

[The photo at the top is by Rajesh Thakur]

The poet’s place.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Opened from sunrise to sunset, the mausoleum of Urdu poet Mirza Asadullah Beg Khan Ghalib usually remains empty. His rectangular tomb chamber is in Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti, a central Delhi village named after a Sufi saint who lived here in the 14th century and whose shrine forms the area’s central focus.

Mirza Ghalib died in extreme poverty in 1869. His verses and letters chronicled Shahjahanabad, or Old Delhi, at a very delicate point in its history. The Mughal capital was destroyed by the British following the 1857 Uprising.

Ghalib was buried in the family graveyard of the nawabs of Loharu to whom he was related through his mother and also by his marriage.

Until a few years ago, the tomb was visible from an alley teeming with Sufi pilgrims, flower sellers, beggars and goats. It was restored in 2009 by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in partnership with Archaeological Survey of India and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.

Before the restoration, the boundary wall was not as high. Cats clambered down from the surrounding butcheries to snooze beside the poet’s tomb.

Today, the cats are not seen. The street sounds seem to come from far. It is difficult to believe that this is the final resting ground of a man whose poetry continues to command a large following in the popular culture.

The restored courtyard is paved with red sandstone, white marble inlays and ornamental patterns. A Ghalib couplet is inscribed on a marble slab in Urdu as well as in Hindi and English translations.

When nothing was, then God was there,
Had nothing been, God would have been;
My being has defeated me
Had I not been, what would have been

Half-a-dozen graves are clustered at one corner of the courtyard. One of these tombs is believed to be of Ghalib’s father-in-law, Mirza Ilahi Bakhsh.

Inside the grave chamber, sunlight enters through marble screens. A rare visitor might leave behind an offering of rose petals. The tombstone has an inscription in Arabic and Persian:

A hai’yii ya qaiyuum
Rashk-e-’Urfi va fakhr-e-Talib murd Asadullah Khan Ghalib murd
Kal maiN Gham-o-andoh meN baa khaatir-e-maHzuuN
Tha turbat-e-ustaad pe baiTha hua Ghamnaak
Dekha jo mujhe fikr meN taareeKh ke, Majruuh
Haatif ne kahaa ganj-e-ma’ani hai tah-e-Khaak

[The Alive, The Eternal
The envy of Urfi and the pride of Talib has died, Asadullah Khan Ghalib has died,
Yesterday in sadness and mourning, grief-afflicted too,
I sat by the Master’s grave with sorrow profound
Seeing me thinking of a tareekh, Majruuh,
A heavenly voice said, “Treasury of meanings is under the ground]

[Translated into English by Vasmi Abidi]

Where Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti Time Sunrise to sunset Nearest Metro Station Khan Market/Jangpura

1. Here you are

2. Peace

3. The disappeared neighbourhood

4. The world of living

5. A detail

6. Sleep well, Ghalib

7. Now, wake up

8. Ghalib lives on

9. Ghalib’s people

A la recherche du temps perdu.

[Photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The 19th meeting of The Delhi Proustians, a club for Delhiwallas that discusses French novelist Marcel Proust, will take place on 14 May 2012. Venue: The Athpula Bridge, Lodhi Garden. Time: 7 pm.

Where Athpula Bridge, Lodhi Garden Nearest Metro Station Khan Market/Jorbagh Time 7 pm

Athpula Bridge, Lodhi Garden

1.

2.

3.

4.

Chill of the lemon.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The simplest things in life are the most exquisite.

As you walk in the scorching heat of Connaught Place, the sun is white, and the air is still and dusty. You are sweating and your throat is dry. Suddenly you come across a water cart, the one that sells a glass for Re 1 and the lemonade version for a rupee more. The vendor is sitting listlessly behind a row of glass tumblers, which are filled with green-yellow lemons.

The scene is tempting but you are reluctant to approach the bhayya. What if the water is not clean? But your foolish companion insists on having a glass of shikanji (lemonade) and you have no choice than to say yes. The vendor picks a glass, sprinkles kaal namak (rock salt) into it, squeezes a lemon, fills it with the cold water and gives you the glass.

The rest is magic. The salty sourness of the chilled lemonade gently bites into your parched throat and reawakens you to life. You are ready to take on the day’s heat once again.

Priced at Rs 2, shikanji is Delhi’s most economical and refreshing drink. In the old parts of the city such as Matia Mahal and Ballimaran, exclusive shikanji stalls replace water carts. They are recognisable by their identical design.

The lemonade jar has a steel lid fixed with a handle. Enclosed in a layer of salted crushed ice, the jar is gently shaken around to ensure that the lemonade freezes uniformly into ice.

When a customer arrives, the vendor opens the lid, crushes the lemonade ice, ladles it into a plastic glass, adds masala powder and spikes it further by squeezing a lemon. The iciness jolts you out of your heat-induced stupor.

The most refreshing shikanji that you have to try is at Ved Prakash’s stall in Chandni Chowk.

A punchier version of shikanji is banta, Delhi slang for lemon soda. Sealed with a glass ball called kancha, banta bottles are easily spotted in the North Campus area of Delhi University or any other busy markets, such as Lajpat Nagar.

With its strong masala and extra lemon drops, it is very tart.

Coming back to the shikanji, there is a story that when Pakistani dictator General Zia ul Haq came visiting his former alma mater, Delhi’s St. Stephen’s College, he first looked for the college’s in-house shikanji walla. General Zia died in 1989 but that lemonade man is still there at the Stephen’s.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

A refuge for rejects.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The most liberating space for Delhi’s social rejects lies in the heart of the capital. The park above Palika Bazaar parking in the colonial-era Connaught Place is one of those rare public places in the city where the jobless, the homosexuals, the eunuchs, the smack addicts, and other lonely souls gather daily.

Until 2005 this crowd was seen in the adjacent Central Park. Elderly prostitutes stood beside bushes. Homosexuals made emergency love in the white-tiled urinal. Those who wished to be alone were left untouched. Foreign backpackers lounged on the grass. Book lovers read novels under giant neems.

But Delhi was building its first subway system, and Central Park was to be one of the hubs. Once taken over by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, the park’s benches were disposed of, its grass turned over, its trees felled, and everything dug up to build an underground railway terminus. The renovated Central Park (opened in 2006) is a different world: well-behaved couples sit on grassy slopes, families stroll with standard-issue contentment, and children throw empty chip packets into the cascading fountains. Occasional concerts take place in a 350-seater amphitheater.

Meanwhile, the low life of the Central Park moved across the road to the garden above the Palika Bazaar parking. Here it co-exists harmoniously with the more conventional versions of life (couples, office-goers, tourists et cetera).

Ringed on three sides by a circular road clogged with cars and buses, the park remains surprisingly quiet. Sleeping is the most popular activity.

In the evening, red-capped ear cleaners chat with chaiwallas. Lone men smoke cigarettes. Drag queens walk with exaggerated hip swings. Boys kiss each other. Eunuchs sell blessings. Addicts look happy.

Come here each time you are bored of respectability.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

The taste of Delhi.

[By Anusha Hariharan]

The Book Review, India’s esteemed book review journal, reviewed The Delhi Walla books in its 1 January 2012 edition. Here is the complete text:

When I moved to Delhi five years ago, apart from the various friends I had made, the work that I did, the endless chats on barsaatis of various people (I was being introduced to barsaati culture at that point, a typically Delhi phenomenon), the one other element that really got me to explore the city and its ways was Mayank Austen Soofi’s blog.

Every day after lunch hour, I used to sneak a peek and catch up on his latest on The Delhi Walla (and yes, I had to sneak because at that point, I worked in an NGO that did not allow us to Google chat, let alone surf blogs on cityscapes). It was with a lot of thrill and expectation that I sunk my teeth into Soofi’s four part series in print, inspired of course by The Delhi Walla. Soofi paints vibrant images of the city, replete with its food, culture, history, and most importantly, the people! The four-part series is divided into Food+Drink, Monuments, Hangouts and Portraits. While I would be doing a great disservice to Soofi by attempting to review them one by one, I would still have a go.

The Food+Drink book is the one that has been worked with the most consistency in writing. It reflects Soofi’s love for the culinary, and evokes a sense of the city that is entirely experienced through the senses.

Soofi has also taken care to pan the lengths of the city. While I am glad that the book does not zero in on eating places in swanky South Delhi alone, and explores the other part of the city, that is the usual North Delhi joints. Barring a few eateries, east and west parts of Delhi are almost entirely missing.

The writing evokes nostalgia for food as an experience, rather than the food as something that you have just tasted and loved. Soofi’s accounts almost border on ethnography and the cultural aspects of each of these foods and the spatial significance of these have been painstakingly worked out.

The other part in the series, a favourite with me, is the book titled Portraits. Again, Soofi has panned the diversity of class, religion, age, and gender when it comes to picking up different faces from the city and telling their stories.

The stories in themselves are written throughout with grace and elan. Indeed, a lot of thought has gone into the ethics of translating intimate details of somebody’s life onto a book that borders on being tourism of a certain kind. At some point, you almost wonder whether the decision to pan across these identities was also done with the purpose of keeping with the political correctness of our times. However, the writing is appealing, and you are just glad to see a book on cityscapes that is affordable and non-academic, which has taken care to present the city in all its different forms.

The book on Hangouts does not particularly enthuse one. Some sections of it make even the typical Dilliwalla’s ears perk, given that there are so many undiscovered spots in Soofi’s collection. The book is also classified into the usual (museums, markets, eateries, and the unusual (Sufi spaces, spaces that are ideal for a nice stroll, book bazaars, etc).

However, Monuments was a bit of a letdown, While they were all carefully chosen, painstakingly researched, the nearest metro station and other such logistics provided, the writing is comparatively sedate. The tone is that of an interestingly written history book.

There were glimpses of the kind of writing that Soofi does justice to — that which combines a sense of nostalgia, his own memories of the place that communicate a love and passion for walking around the city and visiting these spaces, but you have to seek them out in this piece of writing.

The four books clearly cater not just to the tourist but also to the typical Dilli walla, one who has grown up in this city, has a history rooted in its spaces, and engages with it with passionately. It is ideal for those who have moved newly and want to evolve a relationship with the city that is more than the markets you choose to buy your regular household goods from or zeroing into that one hangout that you would inhabit through the years to come. At Rs 199 per copy, it is also affordable to a wide range of consumers, even the masses of college students who come to Delhi every year on meager budgets.

[The author is a political science graduate from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and works as a researcher with Centre for the Advanced Study of India.]

Definitive Delhi

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

A la recherche du temps perdu.

[Photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The 19th meeting of The Delhi Proustians, a club for Delhiwallas that discusses French novelist Marcel Proust, will take place on 14 May 2012. It was originally scheduled for 7 May. The inconvenience is regretted. The venue will be announced on 13 May.

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 Pakistan in which thousands of people have lost their lives in their violent struggle for independence.

Trying to search for happy Kashmiris, I found my happy Kashmir in an outdated guidebook. Kashmir Tourist Book was published during the 1950s when the Delhi-Srinagar airfare was Rs 172 and Srinagar still had cinemas (Neelam, Regal, Palladium, Sheraj, Naaz, Broadway, Firdaus and Khayam).

The guidebook delves deep into Kashmir’s happiness.

The happy vale of Kashmir is renowned most for its wonderful air, lovely scenery and excellent beauty. This is that happy valley where one can make life most enjoyable to different tastes and interests. This is that happy valley where spring appears in all its glory. This is that happy fairy lotus-land where the lotus blooms to greatest perfection. This is that happy valley where trees like chinar and poplar are most beautiful at all stages. This is that happy valley before which the title “Eden of the East” blushes and artists find undreamed beauties of colour and scenery for the brush.

Happy?

This is the final volume of the Kashmir Diary series.

Scenes from a ‘happy’ Kashmir

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

God bless Kashmir

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 “there was enough in common between Vedantism and Sufism – the unity of the Divine, equality, rejection of both the ego and materialism, as well as idolatory – to make this possible.” Kashmiriyat is thus a culture of synthesis, understanding and humanism. Thus whenever fundamentalists of either religion, supported by one of Kashmir’s changing rulers, have sought to enforce their habits of the heart on the people, the Kashmiris have rebelled. Also, tellingly, Kashmir was the only part of India with a mixed Hindu-Muslim population which did not see communal rioting during the 1947 partition of the subcontinent.

In the 1990s, the militancy movement with its dominant Islamic character used violence to secede from India. Many Kashmiri Hindus were forced to flee the valley. The abandoned Pandit houses in Srinagar were converted by the Indian army into barracks.

The Kashmiri Hindus continue to live in the squalid refugee camps of India.

Today, there is a new threat to Kashmir’s Kashmiriyat.

In its issue dated 31 March 2012, the Delhi-based newsweekly Tehelka reports:

Wahhabis. Deobandis. Tablighi Jamaat. Orthodox outfits have been turning the valley into a bastion of puritanical Islam. But the Sufis are fighting back to regain their moorings.

The article was headlined: The fight for Kashmir’s soul

Back in the dargah of Makhdoom Sahib, the courtyard is crowded with pigeons. The golden rays of the evening sun are piercing through dark clouds. There are few devotees.

Scenes from Makhdoom Sahib’s Dargah

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

The unhappy land.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

A pizza-maker at Café Arabica. A police constable at the Jamia Masjid.

The Delhi Walla is in Srinagar, Kashmir’s capital.

An old woman at the Boulevard. A tailor in Maisuma. A Tolstoy lookalike at the Hazratbal shrine. A steward at the Ahdoo’s.

The faces of Kashmir.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.