City Hangout – Bat Island, Deer Park Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - March 31, 20210 The evening show. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The sun is gone, the sky is dark. Bats are flying over the lake, letting out shrill chee-chee cries. They are spilling out in all directions, as chaotically and in as large numbers as their human counterparts in the Rajiv Chowk Metro station, during the rush hours of the BC (before corona) era. This is one of the most surreal sights to experience in the Capital. Every day, just after sunset, hundreds of bats start flying over and around the lake in south Delhi’s Deer Park. This evening the crowd of regular walkers has almost disappeared, and the stage is left empty for the flying bats’ performance. They are flapping their wings in great
Mission Delhi – Gauri Mohan Gupta, Sushant Lok Delhi Proustians Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - March 31, 2021March 31, 20210 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Many book-loving Delhi homes have Shakespeare, Tagore, Tolstoy and Ghalib. French author Marcel Proust is more difficult to spot, though his novel is counted among the greatest works in literature. There’s a reason to that rarity. À la recherche du temps perdu—In Search of Lost Time in the English translation—consist of seven fat volumes full of twisty dense super-long sentences. In these times of mobile phone distraction, who can exercise sustained concentration over several months of such demanding work? Even so, there must be a few folks in the city who have read the entire Proust (not counting the current French ambassador, who indeed has —
City Hangout – Northeast Grocery Shop, Chirag Delhi Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - March 30, 20210 Taste of home. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s called Northeast Grocery Shop but it is not in north-east Delhi. It is, in fact, in the southern part of the city, in Chirag Delhi village. And yet the name has a logic, for the daily-life stuff sold here is usually found in the groceries of the northeastern parts of the country. So, obviously you will find here the fiery hot raja mirchi chilli, the one you might have experienced at the Nagaland food stall in Dilli Haat. The fermented bamboo shoot is available too, and what’s this long green veggie? “It’s stinky beans.... yongchak,” says Phungreingam Hungyo. He explains that “we call it stinky because of its strong smell.” Mr Hungyo founded the
City Food – Kamruddin’s Chuski, South Delhi Food by The Delhi Walla - March 27, 20210 Summer's chiller. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Hot afternoon. Empty lane. Kamruddin enters. A young girl runs after his cart, asking the man for his signature treat, which she calls “baraf ka gola”—a ball of crushed ice on a wooden stick. Also known as chuski, the pavement speciality enters our world every year this time, though last year the successive lockdowns kept it away. The ice lolly is actually an unsung part of a vast buffet that keeps Delhi cool in summer: smoothies, gelatos, juices, kulfis, nimbu soda, roohafza sherbet, chaas, lassi, jaljeera, sugarcane juice, coconut water etc. The rendezvous with chuski, though, makes for a more intense elemental experience. You are literally eating the ice, composed of minuscule crystals, as
City Hangout – Peer Baba’s Courtyard, Mohalla Qabristan Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - March 25, 20210 Green oasis. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Some birds, some cats, a few trees, a few graves, and absolute quietude. Spending five minutes here is enough to secede from the life of everyday. Duties, concerns, plans, worries, prospects, and all other trains of daily thoughts dissolve into silent air. Such is the magic of the place. It is a spacious courtyard tucked deep inside the congested Walled City. There must be many private courtyards and rooftops in the area with such calmly ambiance, but this is one of the few that is accessible to all. The way to it passes through narrow crowded noisy lanes, but once you enter the door, you are abruptly transported into an oasis. The courtyard is home
Delhi’s Bandaged Heart – Raj Tekwani’s Poem to ‘Forever’, DLF Phase 4 City Poetry by The Delhi Walla - March 24, 20210 Poetry in the city. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] As we reach the first anniversary of the coronavirus-triggered lockdown, here’s a poem about our housebound days, then threatening to go on forever. In his early 20s, poet Raj Tekwani is both preparing his MA entrance exams and giving a helping hand to his father’s business of “supplying disposable items.” Chatting on WhatsApp video late night from his 2nd floor apartment in Gurgaon’s DLF Phase 4 in the Greater Delhi Region, he got the poem’s idea while on a fellowship programme in August last year. “We were all receiving training in pedagogy and education over online platforms.” He was inspired by the repeated structure and sessions of those days, he recalls, “especially since we were
Mission Delhi – Farhan Zaidi, Khureji Khas Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - March 23, 20210 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] These are bigger rooms, and here’s a hall too—finally ensuring a separate drawing room to host guests. After a lifetime in Old Delhi, Farhan Zaidi, 27, an art director in a Gurgaon-based advertising agency, is making a fresh start in east Delhi’s Khureji Khas. This is his first day here as a dweller. He is tiptoeing about the second-floor apartment with parents and younger sister, Shagufi, who works as a dialysis technician nurse in a south Delhi hospital. “This house is my gift to mamma/papa.” Mr Zaidi bought the apartment with his savings, built over a period of six years of career, and partly with bank loans. The
Home Sweet Home – House of Labourers, Ansari Road Delhi Homes by The Delhi Walla - March 22, 20210 So open, yet secretive. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The doors are locked, their wood rotting. The window jaalis are cobwebbed. The balconies are blocked with bricks. The weather-beaten building must be empty inside. Yet, it shelters very many people. Outside. Those people are nowhere to be seen this late afternoon but their residences are as visible as daylight. Their possessions—all the essential stuff that makes up a house—are laid out in a great display across the length of this building, on the footpath, here in central Delhi’s Ansari Road. One of the doors is clipped with a string on which are hanging shorts, pants, a pithu bag, and a hand bag, which has a white banian (vest) coming out of it.
City Landmark – Maharani Stella’s Grave, Christian Cemetery, Prithviraj Road Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - March 20, 2021March 20, 20210 An extraordinary life. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] She was a cabaret dancer in Paris and a maharani in Kapurthala—but her tomb, surprisingly, chose not to mention it. Like all graveyards, the Christian Cemetery in central Delhi’s Prithviraj Road is something of a book, whose pages would be the hundreds of graves it is home to. One can spend an entire day here, walking from one grave to another, reading the heartfelt inscriptions written to celebrate mothers, fathers, grandparents, husbands, wives, siblings and children. But Stella’s memorial seems to be neither of those. She is just Stella of Mudge. A quick Google search, right by her graveside, reveals her to be somebody extraordinary. She features in a New Yorker magazine report on
Mission Delhi – Prachi Sharma, Saidulajab Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - March 19, 20210 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] This is Tagore. This is Yeats. And this is Vikram Seth—says Prachi Sharma, pointing out cuttings of poems stuck on her closet. She wants to be a writer, and has chosen this tiny fourth floor room in cramped Delhi locality of Saidulajab as the setting to realise the dream. It is the first home of her own. “Pandemic or not, this house is a beginning for me,” she says. “It feels like a return to normalcy.” Ms Sharma, 21, moved here a month ago from her parents’ house in nearby Faridabad in Haryana. “Though they wanted me to stay with them.” But staying in Faridabad was