A refuge to remember forever.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

It is utterly quiet. The reading lamp is glowing like smoldering coal. The bed sheets are as white as the Arctic.

It is more than midnight.

The Delhi Walla is inside the most beautiful hotel room in the world. Beingsattvaa is a place in Bali, Indonesia, that I cannot afford. And yet, this room is mine. For free. Because I’m a writer. I have been invited in this capacity at the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival.

It is my sixth night in the hotel. The literature festival ended with a party a few hours ago. I will leave for Delhi after a few hours. My books and clothes are scattered all over the room.

The blue jeans–the dirty, torn blue jeans, the love of my legs–is flung across the other bed, along with a copy of Jane Eye bought two days ago at the Ganesha Bookshop. Philip Larkin’s Collected Poems is on the side table. Wallace Steven’s The Palm at the End of Mind is on the floor, beside the sandals. Emily Dickinson is in the drawer, beside the passport. Shakespeare is on the dressing table. Rimbaud, the beloved, is under the pillow.

Check out time is 8 am, after which this room will cease to be. My world will come to an end.

A room of my own

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