Ode to loves. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] KD Singh was an iconic Delhi bookseller who passed away in 2014. The inscription reads: “Husband, Father, Grandfather & Bookman Extraordinaire.” Beneath runs a verse by poet Pablo Neruda: “When I close a book/ I open a life.” This is one of the many benches in Delhi’s Sunder Nursery, set up as part of the park’s ‘Dedicate a Bench’ programme for citizens to raise a public memorial for their loved ones. Almost every such bench is inscribed with intensely personal odes, some illuminating a person’s world in just a few words. A few plaques, like that of KD Singh’s, include lines by poets. One stretch in the park has benches remembering those who