City Obituary – RV Smith, 1938-2020 General by The Delhi Walla - May 1, 20202 Delhi's great offbeat chronicler. [Text and photos of RV Smith by Mayank Austen Soofi, photos of the burial by RV Smith's family] R V Smith, the Delhi chronicler who produced stories from the city’s gallis, kuchas, bazars, ruins, dargahs and graveyards as lightly as a magician brought out pigeons from a hat, died on Thursday morning. He was 83. He is survived by wife, 82-year-old Alvina, and five children--Enid, Bunny, Minnie, Tony and Rodney. “He was ill since some time,” said his eldest daughter 51-year-old Enid, adding that he died at around 7.30am at his second-floor flat in Mayapuri. Ronald Vivian Smith, Ronnie to friends, began his career as a reporter for The Statesman for more than 30 years and went on to author
City Series – Josep Almudever Chanza in Edinburgh, We the Isolationists (262nd Corona Diary) Corona Diary by The Delhi Walla - May 1, 20200 Our corona diary. [Text and photo by Josep Almudever Chanza] I close my eyes in self-isolation from corona... and I see the dew-covered walls of a tiny cell, Saint Teresa welcomes the dawn writing about her raptures; I see my mother making a shopping list for my brother, her spidery writing falling about her in a web of solitude; I see the eleventh dweller in Bocaccio’s tale, jotting down each word uttered by the other ten from a dark corner; and I see myself tending my absent lover’s plants, plundering books in search of poetry, writing, writing. “We the Isolationists” series urges folks from any part of the world to share a brief diary starting with “I close my eyes in my self-isolation