Mission Delhi – Vidya Rao, Lodhi Gardens Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - March 31, 20220 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The city is losing a beat of its music. Delhi-based thumri singer Vidya Rao will no longer be based in Delhi, where she has lived for 41 years as a performing artist, a publishing house editor, an author and as a single parent. On Friday morning she is flying back to Hyderabad, to live in the city where she spent her early years. “I’m not going back,” Ms Rao politely interjects, explaining that “back implies a place that is home, but Delhi has been my home… I will now have to make a home out of Hyderabad.” This evening, walking in her beloved Lodhi Gardens, Ms Rao
City Landmark – K & R Pickle and Murabbas, Matia Mahal Bazar Food Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - March 30, 20222 Pickle with monthlies. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The pungent aroma is heady. This is Ali Baba’s treasury of pickles —mango, karela, carrot, lemon, ginger, garlic, shaljam, amla, bamboo, lesua, tela, green chillies, and red chillies. Each red chilli achar is stuffed fat with spices, and its vivid colour is looking as fiery as the timeline of any hot-headed tweeter. Old Delhi’s Matia Mahal Bazar is full of curiosities, but this little shop is its most unusual landmark. It sells unbranded pickles and magazines. “We are the only place in this part of the city for both eaters and readers,” says Ramavtar, half-jokingly. He is the R of K & R Pickle and Murabbas. The K stands for his elder brother,
City Food – Dolly Sharma’s Lunch Van, Shankar Chowk Food by The Delhi Walla - March 28, 20220 From the world of rajma chawal. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Tej patta leaves are floating underneath the thick red gravy. Whole roasted lal mirchi too can be spotted. The dish is so hot you can see steam hissing out of it. Rajma is looking like the rajma maa makes at home. In the light of all that has unfolded since 2020, it is an adventure to have homey food in the office district of Millennium Gurgaon, in the Greater Delhi Region, while surrounded by fellow diners who have again started to WFO (work from office). As the pandemic appears to fade, here is an opportunity to re-acclimatise to old-world normalcy. This is a eatery on a service lane in Shankar
City Season – Bougainvillaea Watching, Indirapuram & Other Places Nature by The Delhi Walla - March 26, 2022March 28, 20220 A sight most surreal. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] You really have to be in this place in Ghaziabad to believe it. Even if your home is as far away as in Gurgaon, or Faridabad, or Uttam Nagar. This is probably the most surreal roadside sight these days in the entire Delhi region. Here’s a vast shrubbery of pink bougainvillaeas, and amid the luscious bloom lies the carcass of a severally damaged car. This scene on Indirapuram’s Sucheta Kripalani Marg is like a worst nightmare come true, but in a most pristine setting. The nearby vendors have no idea how this car founded its afterlife in this heavenly spot, but a sugarcane juice seller points out that it has been
City Life – Vaccination Camps, Jama Masjid Life by The Delhi Walla - March 26, 2022March 26, 20220 The mosque in the Covid-era. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The five tents are in red. A flap of cloth sewed on one of them says: Covid 19 Vaccination Center. The tents stand in Jama Masjid, as a material souvenir of Covid in this place of history. Old Delhi’s 16th century monument can be experienced multifariously. You may see it as a mosque, or as a historic edifice of red standstone, or as the Walled City’s signature landmark, visible from numerous rooftops and back alleys. You may also apprehend the building by familiarising yourself with the disparate worlds it shelters in its folds: the kebab stalls on the northern face; the Sufi shrines on the east side; the scores of labourers
City Monument – Bagh e Nabiullah Mosque, Hauz Qazi Monuments by The Delhi Walla - March 25, 20220 Hidden mosque. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The courtyard springs up without warning. Outside—a dense blab of peoples, sounds, streets and multifarious sensations. Inside—this airy courtyard, utmost silence, and barely anyone. Bagh e Nabiullah sits in the heart of Old Delhi’s Hauz Qazi Chowk. The mosque is a few steps away from the super-busy Chawri Bazar metro station. Lesser known but immensely beautiful, the monument is impossible to spot from the street. Sandwiched between two shops, the doorway is rarely flapped open to reveal the spaciousness within. A curious visitor must push the door but slightly to be instantly upgraded into an altogether different world. The effect is pleasantly unsettling. It is like walking exhaustedly along a crowded locality, and
City Season – Leaf Fall, Around Town Nature by The Delhi Walla - March 23, 20222 Autumn in March. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] There is a particularly friendly tree in Jacobpura in old Gurgaon, under whose shade the area’s cart pullers would sit for a few minutes of repose. But today the place is empty. The shade too is missing. The verdant tree is bared of leaves, its spindly branches are looking like a giant’s unclipped fingernails attempting to scratch the sky. Isn’t this supposed to be spring? In the West, new leaves are appearing on trees that were bare in winter. In Delhi region, it is the opposite. Our trees are letting go of their leaves as they prepare for summers. Author Pradip Krishen explains that “for a tree to survive in prolonged drought, it needs to shut
City Monument – Toy Qutub Minar, Mahipalpur Monuments by The Delhi Walla - March 23, 20220 Dummy history. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Next time your flight lands at Delhi airport, look outside carefully from the aircraft window. Moments before the plane’s wheels hit the runway, you are likely to spot the iconic Shiv Murti in Mahipalpur. Immediately afterwards, you will spot the much smaller Qutub Minar. But, isn’t Qutub Minar very tall? Isn’t it in Mehrauli? Well, this is a miniature model of Qutub Minar. If three Amitabh Bachchans stand on top of one another, then their human tower will easily eclipse the peak of Mahipalpur’s Qutub. The Minar is at the centre of a grassy tree-filled roundabout, across the highway from a 5-star hotel. This sunny blue afternoon, some people are lazily sprawling on the warm grass
Mission Delhi – Khajani, Old Delhi Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - March 20, 20220 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] His heart is pierced by Cupid’s arrow. And within the heart is inscribed ‘I Love You’. This is a tattoo on Khajani’s right arm — his working arm, he points out, for “the labourer’s right arm is his greatest tool.” This afternoon, Khajani is in an Old Delhi bylane, laying out a sewage pipe with two colleagues. He is sitting on a mound of upturned earth he helped dig from the street. Long ago his parents had already tattooed his right arm with the sacred ‘Om’, he says, showing the place on his flesh. There’s another tattoo as well, and it says ‘R.K.’ It happens to be the initials
City Food – Bittu’s Moong Dal Samosa, Tiraha Bairam Khan Food by The Delhi Walla - March 17, 20220 An unusual samosa. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] There’s more than one Eiffel Tower in the world. They are in Hangzhou, Slobozia, Tokyo, Les Vegas, Blackpool, and there’s one in our Delhi too. The purists however insist that the true Eiffel is in Paris. That’s like claiming that the true samosa consists of potato filling. But a Chandni Chowk shop makes samosas stuffed with green peas. A Connaught Place restaurant makes samosas stuffed with kabuli chhole.. A bobo coffeeshop makes baked (not deep-fried!) samosas stuffed with arbi. Then there’s a place in New Moti Nagar that makes more than 20 types of samosas, one of which is stuffed with cheese and corn. It is in this spirit of infinite possibilities that you