City Reading – The Delhi Proustians – IV, Indian Coffee House Delhi Proustians by The Delhi Walla - January 14, 2012April 17, 20137 A la recherche du temps perdu. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Today is the fourth meeting of The Delhi Proustians, a club for Delhiwallas that discusses French novelist Marcel Proust. Every Sunday noon for an hour we read his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time. It is 12 pm and The Delhi Walla is at the table with Richard Weiderman, a retired teacher from Grand Rapid, Michigan. A tourist in the city, he describes himself as a book-collector. We are reading Swann’s Way, the first of the seven volumes. “I’ve never read Proust but he has been mentioned so often in so many books that he feels familiar,” says Mr Weiderman. “I don’t think I’ll ever read him. There are so
City Monument – Ghalib’s Haveli, Ballimaran Monuments by The Delhi Walla - January 12, 2012January 12, 20126 Poet's last home. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Every 27 December, on Ghalib's birthday, his admirers march to his haveli in Shahjahanabad with lighted candles and give sound bites to the media on the poet's relevance. As if he needs this lip service(!) What Shakespeare is to the English language, Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869) is to Urdu. He exploited a courtly language to compose verses of lustful love, piquant ironies and bawdy humour. Mughal princes loved his works, as did roadside tipplers. Today, Bollywood actors lip-sync his poetry and Indian politicians quote him in their speeches. But nothing of the poet’s popularity is reflected in the house where he spent his last nine years. Ghalib's last home lost its original flourishes of frescoes, alcoves
City Moment – Feeding the Soul, Connaught Place Moments by The Delhi Walla - January 10, 2012January 10, 20123 The beautiful Delhi instant. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] One cold morning The Delhi Walla saw a woman vendor in the F-block of the colonial-era shopping district Connaught Place. The showrooms were still closed. The Inner Circle corridors were empty, except for a few sleepy guards. The woman was sitting cross-legged on a bench. She had three polythene bags filled with cracked corn. A little banner was sticking out from one of them. The hand-written notice was in Hindi. Kabutaron ka daana yaha milta hain [Grain for pigeons is available here] The woman was wrapped in a shawl. A flock of pigeons was gathered near her. A man in a pink shirt, black trousers and white half-sleeved sweater came to her and purchased the
City Food – Paan, Around Town Food by The Delhi Walla - January 9, 2012January 9, 20121 The magic leaf. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] A foreign art critic visiting Delhi’s Connaught Place may be forgiven for thinking its red-splattered corridors are a form of abstract expression. Although the dirty white pillars of the colonial-era arcade were repainted in time for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, every column is again stained blood red. If you are looking for a culprit, it’s paan, the edible betel leaf stuffed with supari (betel nut), tobacco (optional), lime paste, catechu and other piquant flavours. The oozing liquid fills up the mouth, and is either swallowed or—as is evident across the city—spit out. In Connaught Place’s F-Block, the wall that was temporarily white after the hasty makeover in 2010 is marked with the red
City Obituary – New Book Depot, 1925-2012 Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - January 6, 2012January 6, 201210 The legendary bookstore in Connaught Place becomes history. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] New Book Depot, the legendary bookshop in the colonial-era Connaught Place known for its vast collection of classics as well as for its eccentric owner, died on January 6, 2012, aged 87. “I shut the bookshop today,” Rakesh Chandra, the owner, told The Delhi Walla on phone. “There were ongoing court cases with the landlord. I have surrendered the space back to him. It was all of a sudden.” Every morning Mr Chandra himself dusted the bookshelves. A little temperamental, he occasionally got into tiffs with customers who showed "disrespect" to his books by turning the pages too violently. On December 1, 1946, Mr Chandra’s lawyer father, Kuldip, bought
City Reading – The Delhi Proustians – III, Indian Coffee House Delhi Proustians by The Delhi Walla - January 6, 2012April 17, 20134 A la recherche du temps perdu. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Today is the third meeting of The Delhi Proustians, a club for Delhiwallas wanting to discuss French novelist Marcel Proust. Every Sunday noon we read his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time, for an hour. It is 12.05 pm and The Delhi Walla is at the table with Jonas Moses, a French man living in the city. We are reading Swann’s Way, the first of the seven volumes. It is the first time I'm not the only one attending the club’s reading session. “I came here for three reasons,” says Mr Moses. “I’m a reader of your website. I feared your pronunciations of the French names in the novel might
Book Review – Secrets, by Ruskin Bond General by The Delhi Walla - January 4, 2012January 4, 20121 Seen better days. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The language of author Ruskin Bond, who spent his early childhood in a bungalow in central Delhi's Atul Grover Marg, is not the kind of English we connect with ad jingles and call centres, or with magic realism and stream of consciousness. It is the English of a charming old uncle sitting in Lodhi Garden and telling the gardener's children about his sad, carefree and mischievous early life. Published in late 2011, Mr Bond’s collection of seven short stories, Secrets, is one of his more superior productions. Set in Dehradun, a town 250km north of Delhi, the stories are derived from his own childhood experiences. They recall the Anglo-Indians and the “country-born British” stationmasters,
Mission Delhi – Pradip Krishen, Mangarbani Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - January 4, 2012January 4, 20124 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Walking down the hilly slope, he says, “It’s like a little museum of what the rocky past of the ridge must have looked like before swallowed by Delhi.” We are in Mangarbani, a 100-hectare jungle, mostly consisting of Dhau trees, in Aravalli hills, a few miles outside south Delhi and The Delhi Walla is with Pradip Krishen, author of Trees of Delhi, a field guide detailing every tree species found in the city and its vicinity. The forest we are walking through is sacred, the trees are worshipped and there are two temples. The valley has a village of Gujjar herdsmen who believe in a mystic called
City Hangout – Everest Café, Paharganj Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - January 3, 2012January 3, 20120 Cramped and cool. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] At an altitude of 239 metres, Everest Café cannot fit more than a dozen people at any given time. Tucked in a shaded lane, it is off the main street in Paharganj Main Bazaar, a central Delhi market favoured by foreign backpackers for its inexpensive hotels and close proximity to New Delhi railway station. Opened in 2000, the café is hippie-like. Come here if you want to get a sense of the carefree 1970s when things like bathing were considered a bourgeoisie indulgence. Wicker chairs and low tables occupy a space so small that you find yourself squeezing against barely-clothed backpackers. One rack is stacked with toilet paper rolls; it faces the