City Food – Spring Roll and Other Fries, Khandani Pakodawala Food by The Delhi Walla - August 19, 20210 New in old. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Icons are in a shift. Delhi’s Central Vista is changing, and Delhi’s Khandani Pakodawala is changing too. This legendary place has been making a dozen different kinds of pakodas since 1962. But, this evening, as cook Bhupinder Sahu tucks out the various pakodas from his oil-filled cauldron, his giant ladle has something new. It’s a spring roll. “We introduced it six months ago,” says the cook, his face covered in a pink mask. Nobody instinctively relates spring rolls to batter-coated pakodas — they are more commonly found in East Asian restaurants. But here, these crispy rolls are harmoniously intermingling with the traditional pakodas. After all, spring rolls too are deep-fried and packed with stuffing, just
Mission Delhi – Anand, Near Gurgaon Bus Stand Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - August 19, 20210 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Anand is carrying a huge gunny sack on his back. “It looks heavy but is actually light,” he says. This evening, near Gurgaon’s bus stand in the Greater Delhi Region, Anand is collecting empty mineral water bottles from the pavements and garbage bins. “That’s my daily work.” Anand is about 8 or 9 years old, he says. He is wearing a blue T-shirt, blue shorts and yellow chappals. His hair is cut short. He is without a mask. His nose is partly dusted with mud. His face has the expressions of an adult man in the midst of an important assignment, with no moment to spare. Anand lives
City Landmark – Lonely Planet Afghanistan, Delhi’s Book Bazar and Bhogal Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - August 17, 2021August 17, 20210 Book and land. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] You are so wrong if you believe that Delhi’s Sunday book bazaar is dispensable. That place is like a gigantic public library whose used books are oftentimes precious souvenirs of our vanished worlds. Recently, a paperback of Lonely Planet Afghanistan was unearthed from the bazaar. It was a rare copy, the first and the only edition published by the guidebook series. Days later, Afghanistan entered into a new history with the dramatic comeback of the Taliban. Here’s a review of the outdated but historically significant book, as a homage to what Afghanistan could have been (complete with its Lonely Planet-carrying tourists), and also as a pean to Delhi’s irreplaceable book bazaar. Afghanistan for
City Library – Rakhshanda Jalil’s Mills & Boon Collection, Central Delhi Library by The Delhi Walla - August 16, 20210 Part of her past. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] How could any man be so mean? Could Kate really bear Adam long enough to discover the gentleness he apparently possessed? More urgently, did Rakhshanda Jalil really care? Turns out the highbrow Ms Jalil devoured Adam’s Law with unadulterated pleasure. Now, decades later, the acclaimed author of 30 books outs herself as a devotee of Mills & Boon paperbacks. “Millsies were my escape into romance, travel, and new places,” Ms Jalil, 58, gushes in a voice not at all hoarse with passion, totally unlike the slushy Mills & Boon heroines. Here she pauses, and murmurs more softly—“I haven’t read a Millsie for 30 years.” This afternoon the writing room in her central Delhi home
Mission Delhi – Devki, Hazrat Nizamuddin East Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - August 14, 20210 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] This role, to her, is both familiar and strange. Familiar, because being a working woman is by no means a novel experience. She has been “working, working, working” all her adult life, mostly administering her home in Lakshmi Nagar. Strange, because only recently did she start to step out everyday into the big wide world as the family’s sole breadwinner. Devki is the new face of an old landmark. She succeeds husband, Radhe Shyam, as an ironing service provider in the capital’s upscale Hazrat Nizamuddin East. He had been managing the household laundry of a part of the neighbourhood for more than a decade—his stall under a
City Hangout – Cul-De-Sac, Jacobpura Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - August 12, 20210 Dead-end destination. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Undeniably, some words are more intriguing than others. One can spend an entire afternoon thinking of them, uttering them out loud, seeing the image their very mention forms in the mind. Such as cul-de-sac, a blind passage, a street closed at one end. This word evokes a congested bazaar or locality, infinite in its complexities, and yet finite in size. The Millennium City of Gurgaon in the Greater Delhi Region, with its gated housing and shopping malls, is no place for a cul-de-sac. But old Gurgaon is another land, and one of the most beautiful cul-de-sacs lies in a forlorn corner of Jacobpura. The neighbourhood is chaotic, but stepping into this dead-end lane is
City Walk – Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, Central Delhi Walks by The Delhi Walla - August 12, 20210 On emperor's path. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It no longer needs to be known as Delhi’s Fleet Street, the London road famous for newspaper offices. At least some newspapers that were once located here have wholly or partly moved to other areas. And yet it stays rich—with history. Here’s a walk down the Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg. Reach ITO crossing. Start walking down the road named after Delhi’s last emperor. On the right stands a building decked with mosaic panels, showing figures in various costumes. Shankar’s International Dolls Museum houses more than 60,000 dolls from across the world, including a Flamenco dancer from Barcelona, a jazz musician from Harlem, and a doll “presented by Madame Tito, the First Lady of
City Food – Barfi with Mask, Dilshad Garden Food by The Delhi Walla - August 10, 20210 Double bonus. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] No, you don’t commonly spot this delicacy on the streets. Certainly not with this combination—brown barfi with face masks. “I used to sell only barfi, and then the bimari arrived,” says stall owner Raju Kumar, referring to the pandemic. “Since I had some vacant space on my stall, I thought why not sell masks on the side?” The grey-haired seasoned street hawker sure knows how to make the tiny inches count. His stall is a mere wicker stand, topped with a metal platter containing the sweetmeat, each piece cracked at various places due to its brittle texture. The masks are clipped to the stand by plastic hooks. The idea isn’t original; his pandemic-era entrepreneurship is
Delhi’s Bandaged Heart – Kandala Singh’s Poem Birdwatching, Munirka Enclave City Poetry by The Delhi Walla - August 9, 20210 Poetry in the city. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] Kandala. Such an uncommon name. “It means ‘golden’ and suggest someone who has the properties of gold, such as beautiful, precious, rare,” says Kandala Singh. The word is from Punjabi, her mother tongue. A poet, Ms Singh lives in south Delhi’s Munrika Enclave, a neighbourhood that “gives me plenty of fodder for poetry—interactions on the terrace with neighbors during lockdown, messages on the colony WhatsApp group, the Ashoka trees, the cacophonous chorus of birds twice a day.” In her 30s, she finished composing Birdwatching this month last year. She wrote the first draft in a single day but “went back and forth on this poem over the next four months, revising and editing, and re-revising with
City Hangout – Pintu’s Penguins, Sunday Book Bazar, Mahila Haat Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - August 8, 20210 A new star. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Times change, institutions alter. The iconic book bazar that used to unfold every Sunday on Daryaganj footpaths has been moved to the exhibition ground of Mahila Haat. It is very close to the market’s old site, but the experience is profoundly different. In the old bazar, you walked a mile from one stall to another, with books laid out on the pavement. In the new bazar, you move in circles. The space is much smaller, there is less mobility, there are no snack stalls, and the stalls are fewer. Also, some stars of the bazar are missing. Bookseller Surinder Singh for instance, who would sit outside the Broadway Hotel with some of