The tree society. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The infirmities of old age had finally set in. That beloved old neem would simply topple in the next storm. So the authorities, in their wisdom, took a deep collective…
The visible city. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] Delhi is a voyeur’s paradise and The Delhi Walla also makes pictures. I take photos of people, streets, flowers, eateries, drawing rooms, tombs, landscapes, buses, colleges, Sufi shrines, trees, animals, autos, libraries, birds,…
The rich elixir. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] There’s no getting around it. The Delhi Walla loves those sleepy markets where an entire day can be whiled away and where time seems to charmingly come to a halt….
Where few trains stop. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] You may think that this lonely little railway station is somewhere out there in the hinterland — one of those bleak little stops that express trains pass by in…
A vanishing world. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla is in the private study of Justice Leila Seth, who died four months ago (5 May 2017). This quiet room, redolent with memory, “was her heart and…
One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla can’t cycle more than 30 minutes on an exercise bike, but rickshaw pullers somehow manage constant pedalling day in, day out. What’s…
The definitive North Indian version. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The romantics celebrate the Indian Coffee House for its turbaned waiters and torn rexine sofas (which, alas, have been replaced by steel chairs). The idealists, who believe that…
A whole world. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Old Delhi’s Shamim ud Din loves machinery. So much so that he decided, years ago, that he needed a tiny dark room near the family residence to store it in….
Music as objects. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Here, you’ll make friends with the Dama from Tripura, which looks like a tapering dholak (drum). And there’s the Sanitar, a kind of lute from Kashmir, with a hollow resonator…
Delhi by list. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] You may know what it’s like at Central Delhi’s Sadar Bazaar, so congested you can literally crash into somebody. The Delhi Walla almost stumbled over Muhammed Jaafar, a carpenter sitting…
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