City Life – Somebody’s Photo Album, Sunday Book Bazar Life by The Delhi Walla - May 31, 20210 Life's souvenir. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The cover is black. The album’s hundreds of photos are in black and white. The back label says—Made in England. This photo album is discovered by The Delhi Walla one afternoon at the Sunday Book Bazar, in Delhi’s Mahila Haat. It is buried under a pile of Sidney Sheldon paperbacks. The album is priced for a mere 100 rupees. Inside is the documentation of one man’s life. Most photos cover India and England from the 1920s to the early 1940s, when we were still a British colony. The earliest pictures were taken in a family mansion in Ahmedabad, year 1925. Each page is extensively annotated in a clear, beautiful handwriting, with a pencil whose
Mission Delhi – Tribhuwan Narayana Singh, Ghaziabad Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - May 29, 20210 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Such honeyed voice. An assistant general manager in Bharat Electronics Limited, he sings exceptionally well. That’s the opinion within his friend circle, especially among his weekend groupies. This evening Tribhuwan Narayana Singh has already set up the stage within the isolation of his fourth floor home in a Ghaziabad apartment complex—complete with sound mixers, harmonium, earphones and mike. It’s Mr Singh’s hour for satsang, a weekly tradition he observes with his satsang comrades, in which they together sing devotional songs. “This has been my routine for 10 years,” he says. “Every Saturday evening I freshen up on returning from the office, and leave for the satsang”—which would be hosted
City Library – Jawaharlal Nehru’s Book Collection, Teen Murti House Library by The Delhi Walla - May 27, 20210 Statesman's books. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Hundreds of books have been written on India’s first prime minister. One day The Delhi Walla checked out the books that Jawaharlal Nehru kept in his home. Millions of people have visited the Nehru Memorial Museum at Teen Murti House, the Central Delhi residence where Nehru spent 16 years as Prime Minister. The visitors look in awe at his drawing room, his study, his dining room and also the bedroom where he died. Only a few have arguably surveyed in detail a corridor that runs past his private rooms. This gallery is lined with hundreds of books Nehru acquired over the years. A random glance helps bring the man closer to us. One is thrilled
City Hangout – Happy Bench, Friendship Park Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - May 25, 20210 The cheery spot. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] One of the most hauntingly beautiful park benches in Delhi is in Lodhi Garden. This is the one under a dead tree, its back picturesquely turned towards the Sheesh Gumbad tomb. The tree’s leafless branches spread over the bench like the wailing limbs of a grief-stricken person. Decades ago, novelist Anita Desai famously posed for a photograph on this bench—the place has already been featured in these pages. But another equally beautiful park bench can be found in the so-called Friendship Park, adjacent to Aurobindo Marg in south Delhi. The park isn’t famous. But it’s a happy bench, and looking at it is enough to cheer the heart. Its back too is picturesquely
City Faith – Tree God, Hanuman Temple Faith by The Delhi Walla - May 23, 20210 Sacred green. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] This small Hanuman temple stands in a sprawling yard, here in south Delhi. A peepal tree’s sharp-tipped leaves make a jungle of shadows on the temple’s back wall. But the compound has another peepal, a larger one, and more luscious, in the front. Its branches soar above the fourth floor windows of adjacent buildings. It would take at least three people to embrace the trunk completely. This morning the yard is empty. A woman enters. She is wearing a green sari, and an orange mask. Her head is modestly covered by the sari’s pallu. The woman takes off her slippers and, instead of heading inside the temple, she turns towards the front yard peepal. She
Delhi’s Bandaged Heart – Siddharth Sethi’s Poem in Lockdown, Kailash Colony City Poetry by The Delhi Walla - May 23, 20210 Poetry in the city. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] While Delhi passes through one of its most tragic times in living history, it has citizens distilling their experiences into art. Isolated within home in Kailash Colony, actor Siddharth Sethi, 20, is away from fellow actors and rehearsals, away from the audience and the stage. “Theatre was my escape into a reality other than mine,” he says on a WhatsApp video chat. With the city in lockdown, he is flailing about in only one reality. This reality too is rich, comprising of his “dada,” parents, and younger sister, Suhani, who is holding his mobile for this photo shoot. There are online classes to stay busy—Mr Sethi is a literature student in Delhi University’s Hansraj
Mission Delhi – Shailesh Singh, Sainikhera Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - May 21, 20210 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] His quarantine lasted 14 days. “It was like chaudah saal ka vanvaas,” says Shailesh Singh, comparing his ordeal to Lord Ram’s 14 years of exile. Except that his banishment from the familiar world wasn’t in a forest, but in an apartment complex, in Gurgaon’s Sector 31 — the address in the Greater Delhi Region where he has been serving as a much-cherished security officer for a decade. Mr Singh’s brush with the coronavirus pandemic gave him a terrifying glimpse of life’s frailty, but also showed him the generosity of his immediate world, especially of the people among whom he work. This afternoon, the fresh covid veteran is chatting
City Walk – Florence Nightingale Lane, Green Park Walks by The Delhi Walla - May 19, 2021May 19, 20210 Street of the nurse. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Delhi has all sorts of lanes, all over the place. And then there’s Florence Nightingale Lane in Green Park—reminding us of the need for nurses in these grim days of pandemic. The street suitably houses the Trained Nurses’ Association of India; the sprawling building features an outdoor painting depicting Nightingale—walking past a row of filled hospital beds carrying a lamp. The other side of the road sports expensive private homes, some of them with three stories. Many have huge glass windows through which the afternoon sun shines so brilliantly that you might well imagine a getaway resort. Some of these rooms on the upper floors have no curtains, and clearly reveal the furniture inside.
City Monument – Sultanate Souvenirs, Around Town Monuments by The Delhi Walla - May 17, 20210 Before the Mughals. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It is baking in the hot sun — Ghiyas-ud-din Balban’s tomb in Mehrauli Archaeological Park. The roof has collapsed, so have parts of the stone wall. Like many Delhi monuments, the edifice doesn’t convey the grandness of its early days. Squirrels are frolicking irreverently about the grave. Balban was one of the sultans of Delhi Sultanate that spanned five dynasties, 32 rulers and 320 years. The Sultanate’s surviving landmarks are scattered across Delhi — in Feroz Shah Kotla, Hauz Khas, Mehrauli, Hazrat Nizamuddin, Shahjahanabad, Siri Fort and Tughlaqabad — yet it’s the later Mughal-era monuments, such as Red Fort and Jama Masjid, that seem livelier. Perhaps because the Mughals are our more recent past,
City Life – Voices from Covid, Around Town Life by The Delhi Walla - May 15, 2021May 15, 20210 An anthology of our feelings. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It is perhaps the first time that the entire Delhi, with all its diverse complexities, has come around to a singular theme—of grief and fear about the ongoing surge of the coronavirus pandemic. While everybody is in isolation, The Delhi Walla brings together the capital’s citizens by offering raw voices from a spectrum of neighbourhoods. Shivam Sharma in Mayur Vihar Phase 1 “My family’s WhatsApp group comprises of memes, obnoxious jokes, gossips, images of Gods wishing ‘Good Morning’, and some bogus home remedies for coronavirus. Today I offered condolences as my first contribution to it.” Sumit Chauhan in Narela “When I was Covid positive, my mother told me, ‘Ho jayega thik tu, me hu