Letter from Venice – Remembering the Hall of Nations, Pragati Maidan General by The Delhi Walla - April 30, 2017April 30, 20171 A brief obituary. [Text and photos by Anna Gerotto] The Hall of Nations has been flattened. Even its name evoked respect. During my visits to the wide open exhibition grounds of Pragati Maidan, I always tried to enter the building and sometimes I would mange to succeed. On stepping inside I would feel a sense of intimacy with the structure, especially if the place happened to be empty. On the other hand, while looking at it from outside, the building stirred up the atmosphere of a pure vaster space such as that of a cathedral. The Hall of Nations also reminded me of one of my nicer recurrent dreams. Small jumps from a niche to another one. Jump down and rebound higher and higher. The
Mission Delhi – Simona Anedda, Old Delhi Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - April 28, 20172 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Most foreign tourists experience their fleeting glimpse of Old Delhi from behind the dust-free glass of their air-conditioned bus windows, with the bus circling the main avenue around the grand Jama Masjid. The Delhi Walla doesn’t grudge them. After all, even Old Delhi dwellers find it tough to navigate through their impossibly crowded streets. You don’t only have to dodge the hundreds of people squeezed up in the narrow alleys, but have to be also careful of not stepping upon dogs, cats, discarded meat pieces, and dead rats. (I shall remain silent on the culture of spitting.) So, it was with some wonder when one morning I spotted a
Netherfield Ball – Arundhati Roy Sighting, Somewhere in Delhi City Parties by The Delhi Walla - April 26, 2017April 26, 20172 The party secrets. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Her wild hair was not tied back to look straight. A tiny diamond, however, did gleam in one of her nostrils. She still had absurdly beautiful collarbones. One evening The Delhi Walla sighted Arundhati Roy somewhere in Delhi. One of the many nice women and men mingling around her whispered that she is the author of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, a novel yet to be born in the world. Ms Roy walked about in the flower-filled room like a summer night’s cool breeze. A hint of a smile, that was playing around the corner of her lips, momentarily undammed into a free laugh. At one point, everybody sat down on long tables.
Atget’s Corner – 1021-1025, Delhi Photos Delhi Pics by The Delhi Walla - April 26, 20170 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 1,00,000 photos showcases Delhi’s ongoing evolution. Five randomly picked pictures from this collection are regularly 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 1021 to 1025. 1021. Lodhi Market 1022. Turkman Gate
Home Sweet Home – Novelist Manan Kapoor’s Room, Shakti Nagar Delhi Homes by The Delhi Walla - April 24, 20171 A whole world. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Karl Marx is lying on his shoe rack. Italo Calvino is on his double bed. Federico García Lorca is beside a little guitar. Amitav Ghosh, VS Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Ernest Hemingway and Mirza Ghalib are on a long table. They are stacked with many other authors including Arundhati Roy and Manan Kapoor. And, we are lucky enough to be in Manan Kapoor’s room. Besides being a novelist, he is also a postgraduate student in Delhi’s Ambedkar University. Mr Kapoor’s first novel, The Lamentations of a Sombre Sky, was set in strife-torn Kashmir. It made its debut in 2016. He is now working on a new novel, something to do with memories of a
Photo Essay – In Memory of the Nameless Homeless Man Who Died, Around City Pavements Photo Essays by The Delhi Walla - April 22, 2017April 22, 20174 Rest in sleep. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It is almost midnight. He is lying sprawled on the road divider. He seems to be sleeping. His eyes are closed. The headlights of a speeding car fall on his figure, illuminating him momentarily. The car goes away; the man is again plunged into the city’s incomplete darkness. This is a scene on south Delhi’s Aurobindo Marg. The sight of this man on this spot in the city is unique because, after all, each of us has an individual identity. It is a part of basic courtesy to emphasize the exclusiveness of this anonymous person. Having said that, The Delhi Walla confesses that most of the times the homeless people sleeping on the pavements
Our Self-Written Obituaries – Sreeparna Chaudhury, Calcutta Farewell Notice by The Delhi Walla - April 20, 20170 The 143rd death. [Text by Sreeparna Chaudhury; photo by Shamindra Chaudhuri] Sreeparna Chaudhury, a nobody, a ghost of her own being, died last night by choking on an ice cream of her least favorite flavor. She perhaps always knew that her death would be as banal as her life was. She wanted to live so many lives and do so many things all in a single lifetime that she ended up doing nothing worth mentioning. Ms Chaudhury never liked her name showing up in red on the computer screen but guess the grump got used to it like everything else in her ordinary existence. Nobody had seen her going out of her home in years. She had once been a woman of beauty and elegance as
City Faith – A Late night Encounter with Mast Qalandar Sufis, Mehrauli Faith by The Delhi Walla - April 18, 20171 Trance world. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It was a scene with a timeless appeal. It would not have looked out of place even centuries ago. One night while walking down a lane in south Delhi’s Mehrauli village, The Delhi Walla heard the discordant cry of several men singing together. The sounds were coming from a dimly lit hall. I climbed the short flight of stairs to find about a dozen men huddled on one side of the hall. Most of them were wearing kaftan-like costumes. Some had turbans, and others had scarves wrapped around their forehead. Almost all had beards; many had long hair too. The men were singing a Sufi qawwali; this was not surprising since I was steps away
Mission Delhi – Elena Tommaseo, Lajpat Nagar Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - April 16, 2017April 16, 20173 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] She is a white European woman in South Delhi. Her home, however, is not in places such as Jangpura, Hauz Khas Village, Defence Colony, Greater Kailash-II, Malviya Nagar, New Friends Colony or any other similar localities in the city where you would expect a non-diplomat white expat to reside (black expats of Delhi are another story, of course). Instead, designer Elena Tommaseo, a native of Venice in Italy, lives in Lajpat Nagar. Her flat is close to the Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha in Krishna Market, and a walking distance from the charmingly-named Sona Lisa Beauty Salon. Ms Tommaseo is the only white person living in the vicinity,
City Monument – Mubarak Shah Sayyid’s Tomb, Kotla Mubarakpur Monuments by The Delhi Walla - April 14, 2017April 14, 20170 The elusive memorial. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] This is true only up to a point. It is late afternoon and The Delhi Walla is walking along the alleys of south Delhi’s Kotla Mubarakpur village for more than half an hour without any sign of Mubarak Shah Sayyid’s tomb, the area’s signature monument that commemorates the 13th century king of Delhi Sultanate. That old building seems to be only a rumour. The shopkeepers I asked for directions confess to have heard of ‘Mubarak Shah ka Makbara’ but they themselves have never seen it — and they have been here all their lives. Actually, I'm lucky in not finding the monument. The walk in Kotla Mubarakpur is turning out to be as engaging