City Landmark – PCO aka Phone Booth, Meena Bazar Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - April 2, 2021April 4, 20210 Relic from the living past. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s like coming face-to-face with the indecipherable relics of a lost civilisation. The pale pink wall, here in Old Delhi’s Meena Bazar, is defaced with two acronyms: STD and PCO. A quick Google search confirms that STD stands for ‘Subscriber Trunk Dialing’ and PCO are the initials of ‘Public Call Office’. Those among us who aren’t millennials, and who have lived in the BM era—Before Mobile—might recall that STD and PCO used to be a way of life in every little lane of the city. The former was the dialing code of a city or town that had to precede the number of the person you were to call, and PCOs were
Delhi’s Proust Questionnaire – SM Shafi, New Friends Colony Delhi Proustians by The Delhi Walla - April 2, 2021April 2, 20210 The parlour confession. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Literature student SM Shafi eats poetry — poetically speaking. He reads poems, he writes poems. In his 20s, he is currently preparing to start his PhD on poet Fakir Mohan Senapati, who wrote in Odia, Mr Shafi’s native language. Sitting in his favourite garden in south Delhi’s New Friends Colony, he gamely became a part of the Proust Questionnaire series in which folks from diverse backgrounds are nudged to make “Parisian parlour confessions”, all to explore the lives and experiences of Delhi’s citizens. He agreed on one condition—all his responses will be based on his passion for poetry. Your favorite virtue or the principal aspect of your personality The way I fall in love
City Faith – Hazrat Madni Shah Baba, Near Jama Masjid Faith by The Delhi Walla - April 2, 20210 A shrine's best-kept secret. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s one of the lesser known shrines of the capital and it is tucked within… oh well, another lesser known shrine. The historic graves of Hazrat Sarmad Shahid and Hazrat Hare Bhare Shah lie just outside Old Delhi’s Jama Masjid, and yet aren’t visited by many tourists, nor many pilgrims. Until recently, the shrine was identified by its red and green colours. Red symbolises Hazrat Sarmad, who was executed by Emperor Aurangzeb, and the green, or hara, commemorates Hazrat Hare Bhare. But as part of an ongoing renovation that began during the coronavirus-triggered lockdown last year, the shrine’s signature tiles are being gradually replaced by white marble from Rajasthan. This week, the