GO STRAIGHT TO CITY CLASSIFIEDS & CITY EVENTSGO STRAIGHT TO MORE STORIESContact mayankaustensoofi@gmail.com for ad enquiries.A city that shaped the contours of Indo-Muslim identity.[By Raza Rumi; the Pakistani author blogs at Jahane Rumi, Lahore Nama and Pak Tea House. He is writing a travelogue on Delhi; pictures of the Jama Masjid by Mayank Austen Soofi]When travels come, they come in battalions. Such has been the trajectory of my recent sojourns to Delhi. Travel to India can be, at best, random and left to a game of chance, given how the officialdom on both sides of the border ensures that people don’t cross real and imagined boundaries. Coincidence, or as my less rational side would say, the calling of the Delhi

GO STRAIGHT TO CITY CLASSIFIEDS & CITY EVENTSGO STRAIGHT TO MORE STORIESContact mayankaustensoofi@gmail.com for ad enquiries.A walk into the past.[Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi]Up the alley; down the street. I’m in her quest. Razia Sultan was the first woman Muslim ruler in my part of the world. I always imagined that her tomb was in the neighboring state of Haryana. “Nahi janab, her kabra is near Turkman,” a bearded man corrects me at a chaikhana in Gali Jaaman Walli. Razia Sultan buried in Delhi! Thrilling. I take the directions and walk on.(After around fifteen minutes...)I’m lost. Old Delhi is like that. Confusing. This street is curving into another, it is now dividing itself, it is climbing up, it

GO STRAIGHT TO CITY CLASSIFIEDS & CITY EVENTSGO STRAIGHT TO MORE STORIESContact mayankaustensoofi@gmail.com for ad enquiries.Conversations with a man who runs a blog on the city’s gay life.[Interview and picture by Mayank Austen Soofi; the picture has no relation with the interviewee]Sir, welcome to The Delhi Walla. Your blogsite, Yugyag, is perhaps Delhi’s first exclusive blog on gay life in the city. But it has a strange name. Oh, yeah. It is the reverse of 'gayguy'. Yugyag symbolizes my status as a closet gay guy who somehow doesn’t have guts enough to come out. Through this blog, I’m trying to come out. Mr. gay blogger, you may be trying to come out but we don’t even know your name.

The writer's second car is a...cycle rickshaw. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Life has become exciting in the sleepy C block in Central Delhi’s Hazrat Nizamuddin East after its eminent resident, writer Sadia Dehlvi, owner of a Maruti Zen, purchased a private cycle rickshaw for Rs 6000 - less than the price of a mobile phone! The other evening the proud malkin was stopped by former Foreign Secretary Salman Haider, her neighbour. "Did you actually buy it?", he asked. A friend exclaimed, "what made you buy it?" Sadia is unfazed. "Me and my mother who live across the road in Nizamuddin West share just one car and it is convenient to have another vehicle between us," she says. Until now it was

GO STRAIGHT TO CITY CLASSIFIEDS & CITY EVENTSGO STRAIGHT TO MORE STORIESContact mayankaustensoofi@gmail.com for ad enquiries.One man's struggle to save a dying Urdu publication.[Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi]Dignity in the face of decline is rare. Consider a day in the life of 50-year-old Mr. Asif Fehmi, the writer, designer, editor, publisher, printer and owner of Din Duniya, a historical Urdu magazine, which in his own words is "financially unviable". Each morning Mr. Fehmi wakes up in his NOIDA Sector 41 bungalow, dresses up in a suit (tie included), drives to Jama Masjid, walks his way through Purani Dilli bylanes, and enters a haveli with a courtyard shaded by large Neem trees. There, Mr. Fehmi struggles, along with 15

GO STRAIGHT TO CITY CLASSIFIEDS & CITY EVENTSGO STRAIGHT TO MORE STORIESContact mayankaustensoofi@gmail.com for ad enquiries.My search for home.[As told to Mayank Austen Soofi; the narrator lives in Amar Colony and doesn't wish to be identified; picture by Mayank Austen Soofi]Like many fellow Tibetans in Delhi, I too went to Jantar Mantar and demanded independence from China. As friends shouted slogans, their fist punched high into the air, I wondered what if we really get freedom. After all, we are messed up kids: India-born but not Indians. You know we Tibetans keep crossing into India but I was crazier. I'm one of those very few who did the reverse migration. After working for 8 years in a travel company in

An excellent coffee store that no-one knows. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Most likely Leo Tolstoy never got to taste South Indian filter coffee in his lifetime but a certain stretch of Tolstoy Lane, at Connaught Place, thousands of miles away from Russia, is forever suffused with the scent of freshly ground coffee beans. No Anna Karenina or Natasha Rostov is to be seen hopping here but the Indian Coffee Depot's patrons are equally illustrious, if not that immortal. Packets (only one type of special blend coffee is available) here are routinely delivered to hallowed addresses like Rashtrapati Bhawan and Prime Minister House. The embassy people (particularly American, Spanish and, yes, the Russians) too are faithful customers. So are the firangi

GO STRAIGHT TO CITY CLASSIFIEDS & CITY EVENTSGO STRAIGHT TO MORE STORIESContact mayankaustensoofi@gmail.com for ad enquiries.Fast-food chains don't deliver in Delhi's Muslim ghetto.[Text and picture by Mayank Austen Soofi]Fast-food chains like Domino's and McDonald's usually refuse home delivery in Jamia Nagar even though this dominantly Muslim neighbourhood, famed for its Jamia Islamia University, is close to their New Friends Colony (NFC) outlets. By the way, Jamia Nagar is not just another unplanned stinky ghetto--it has wide roads, spacious houses, and proper addresses. (See the story: Jamia Nagar - Delhi's Rich Muslim Ghetto)"We don't deliver there," was the reply when The Delhi Walla called up Domino's (011-26933951-56) at NFC. Different responses on different calls: "we are sorry", or "we haven't started

GO STRAIGHT TO CITY CLASSIFIEDS & CITY EVENTSGO STRAIGHT TO MORE STORIESContact mayankaustensoofi@gmail.com for ad enquiries.This city sucks big time.[The author is a well-known fashion designer; picture by Mayank Austen Soofi]Of all that I hate, I hate Delhi the most. What's there to like about it?The Qutub Minar? Sure, but try visiting it. If the touts don't get you, the traffic on the way will. I'd rather just go see Nelson on his horse another time. The food? No doubt keeps the medical trade flourishing in this city.The supposedly warm and hospitable people? Read the newspapers please! People who kill for bread even when there is bread for all, people who maim, rape, crush people. The business? Not good unless