Into a citizen’s heart. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] She earns by singing and dancing and offering blessings in household celebrations such as weddings, childbirths and grih-pravesh. This afternoon, combing her long oiled hair in a Walled City…
Story of bookstores. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Chicken Corner. Is that what the great bookstore has become? No disrespect to the pavement eatery, but it is right outside the bookstore, blocking the access to the shuttered front…
Stories of stones. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Monuments are made of stones and stories. Sometimes a series of monuments are threaded together by a single story, such as these three. Once upon a time there was a…
Happy blues. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] On Saturday morning, Lithuanian ambassador Diana Mickevičienė was strolling in the little park close to her residence in Vasant Vihar, and found the trees clothed in purple flowers. The lanes too…
Backstreet world. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Deserted alleys, defaced walls, cobwebby windows, rusting doors, loopy cables, dead rats and unexpected dead-ends. Strolling through certain Old Delhi passageways is like being abandoned inside some spooky documentary on municipal…
Summertime heritage. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Citizen Nizam doesn’t think much of himself. “What is special about me?”—he asks, genuinely perplexed on being photographed. Well, good sir, you happen to be among the last flag-bearers of an…
High-altitude living. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] This is a tree. This tree has a nest. This nest has a bird. It is the very heart of our smoggy megapolis—a small plaza in commercial Connaught Place, right outside…
For the record. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Gone. Shah Music Centre had hundreds of LPs. Those ‘Long Play’ discs storing half hour of music, before needing to be turned over, have long been out of use, but…
Shrine to Saturday. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Once upon a time, very long ago, a Walled City gali was home to a community of citizens called dakot. They workshopped Shani Dev and would ask for dakshina, or…
Language’s heritage. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Attention, heritage lovers, look at this Urdu typewriter. It is a most suitable sight for Delhi, a sheher of many writers, which is also a sheher where Urdu—a cosmopolitan khichdi of…
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