Delhi’s Bandaged Heart – Taslima Nasreen, Undisclosed Location City Poetry by The Delhi Walla - December 20, 2014June 3, 20151 Poetry in the city. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla arranged to meet poet and author Taslima Nasreen at her home in Delhi. It’s 20 years since the Bengali author was made to leave her country Bangladesh following blasphemy charges and death threats. Thousands of people regularly marched in Dhaka in 1994 demanding her execution for allegedly insulting Islam in her writings. Today, the 52-year-old writer is the resident of a leafy neighbourhood of our city. Living in the capital since 2011, Ms Nasreen’s life seems uneventful on the surface. She buys books at the Oxford bookstore in Connaught Place and shops for fresh fish at the Bengali-dominated Chittaranjan Park. With her country refusing to renew her passport, Ms
Atget’s Corner – 626-630, Delhi Photos Delhi Pics by The Delhi Walla - December 20, 20140 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, courtyards, kitchens and old buildings. My archive of more than 25,000 photos showcases Delhi’s ongoing evolution. Each day five randomly picked pictures from this collection will be put up on the pages of this website. The series is named in the memory of French artist Eugène Atget (1857-1927), who, in the words of a biographer, was an “obsessed photographer determined to document every corner of Paris before it disappeared under the assault of modern improvements.” Here are Delhi photos numbered 626 to 630. 626. Janpath 627. Ballimaran 628.