City Food – Amir Khusro’s Chai, Near Amir Khusro’s Tomb Food by The Delhi Walla - April 28, 2023April 28, 20230 His state-by-state chai. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] He has to be Delhi’s most exceptional chai man. Not because he is wearing a stunningly eye-catching shirt this afternoon. Not because he shares his name with one of Delhi’s greatest poets. But because Amir Khusro is a chai barista, and a most unusual one. Manning an ordinary seeming pavement tea place, he cries out yet again to passers-by: “Aao, chai le lo, Ahmedabadi, Rajasthani, Gujarati, Hyderabadi, Bhopal wali, UP wali… Bombay wali chai!” Street chai with so many variations? No way! Amir Khusro politely suggests this doubting Thomas to try out all the tea types, claiming that even an amateur will detect the differences with just two-three chuski. Speaking in a modest
City Landmark – Poet Ameer Dehlvi’s Room, Opposite Jama Masjid Life by The Delhi Walla - April 27, 20230 The beautiful room is empty. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The door to the left opens to the long balcony; the window in the front wall looks on to Jama Masjid. The room is an imperfect rectangle. The wall, yellow like Amul butter. The table, creamy brown. The bedspread and the pillow, white. A Jawahar cut jacket hanging on the wall. A table topped with three poetry books, including by Ustad Rasa Dehlvi. This small so-named “manager’s room” is on the first floor of Old Delhi’s Haji Hotel. A poet spent a lifetime in it. Ameer Dehlvi passed early in the year, aged 93. His family owns the landmark hotel. These days the room stays closed, and was unlatched briefly
City Landmark – Indian Christian Cemetery, Burari Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - April 26, 2023April 26, 20230 Summer's cool envoy. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] But then it was never easy to catch him. Say, he’s spotted with a Matia Mahal gossiper on Jama Masjid stairs. That very hour he’s seen enjoying a plate of Raju ki mutton biryani in Bara Hindu Rao. While somebody in Gurgaon swears he’s sitting quietly inside the old stone church in Civil Lines. Turns out RV Smith remains as elusive in death as he was in life. It is proving impossible this prickly white noon to locate the writer’s grave. Delhi’s legendary storyteller, a 21st century dastango, Smith effortlessly churned out his longtime newspaper column week after week, on the city’s lesser-known nuances, myths and legends. He died three
Mission Delhi – Kesar Devi, Somewhere in Delhi Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - April 25, 20230 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] She gave it the finishing touch minutes back. She calls it kundi. This is her protective headgear. “Keeps the head safe from the load I carry,” Kesar Devi explains. She isn’t sure of the fabric but it seems to be of plastic. More of this material is lying nearby. This sweltering afternoon the soft-spoken lady is stationed beside a wall of bricks, hauling these to a construction site, ten steps away, here in one of our city’s constantly altering colonies. At each round she carries a stack of dozen bricks on her head. Kesar Devi’s relationship with kundi began as a young girl in her village in Jhansi, UP.
City Hangout – Cyber Hub, Gurgaon Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - April 25, 20230 Ten years of the Hub. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Some shoppers are strolling down the promenade with a more easy-going stride than others. Some of those others are looking a tad dazed by the scale of things. The showrooms are grand. The hoardings are huge. The pathway are too-too wide. Even the sky is so on your face. Cyber Hub turns ten this year, and still overwhelms us as a place that sprang up from nowhere. The glass surface of any of the high-rises here reveals nothing but the reflection of fellow high-rises. Like most of these parts of Gurgaon, it appears bereft of memories, bearing no history. But Cyber Hub actually has a very old soul, a soul
City Walk – Gali Gunna Mishra, Near Dilli Gate Walks by The Delhi Walla - April 22, 20230 A Walled City street. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Narrow, secretive. The street is 50 steps away from Dili Gate, and 10 steps away from the crowded khasta kachori kiosks of Jaipur Namkeen Bhandar and Brajbasi Namkeen Bhandar. Yet, it feels completely severed from the Purani Dilli pandemonium. This afternoon, Galli Gunna Mishra is empty, silent. It tingles the spine to cross so easily from total chaos to total calm. The right-side wall is weatherbeaten pink. The left-side wall is weatherbeaten blue. A slightly open door to a house shows a small boy in a small room, enjoying dal-chawal. A slightly open door to the next-to-next house shows a cloistered veranda with two shafts of soft daylight falling across the
City Monument – Summertime Baolis, Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah & Elsewhere Monuments by The Delhi Walla - April 22, 20230 That old AC. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Some of us are dodging the summertime heat waves by self-exiling within AC rooms. AC existed in the very old days too. That medieval-era air-conditioner was of stone, a secretive monument linking light to shade, earth to water. It was the baoli. Stone stairs descending to a well or water tank; the staircase punctuated with pavilions, chambers, jaalis and corridors. In hostile summer months, heat-oppressed citizens would retreat into it, lounging in the lower reaches, closer to the receding water and its coldness. Delhi’s centuries-old baolis are no longer compatible with the summer of our times. But here are a few you might explore. The 13th century Gandhak ki Baoli is the capital’s oldest.
City Obituary – People Tree, Connaught Place Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - April 20, 2023April 20, 20230 Passing of an era. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Such a teeny-weeny dukan, but it fashioned a subculture, and became a Connaught Place icon. Some may even call it a Delhi institution. And now People Tree at 8, Regal Building, is shutting down. The Goa-based co-founder Orijit Sen announced on Tuesday. For 33 years, People have been grooming people from across the capital region and beyond into a kind of alternative styling, though this style has turned so mainstream in certain circles that you can’t honestly call it alternative. Even so, the funkiness hasn’t dimmed. A typical People Tree look tends to be gender-fluid and might include any permutation from these—oversized T-shirts, large kurtas, long skirts, jholas, cloth wallets,
City Home – On the Lane, Hazrat Nizamuddin East Delhi Homes by The Delhi Walla - April 19, 20230 Their temporary address. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Nizamuddin East is too posh. The dwellers include a nawab’s daughter, a former chief minister, another former chief minister’s politician son, a jet-setting film director, a top notch hotelier, a retired chief justice, and some of the country’s most expensive lawyers. Since the quiet “colony” prefers to stay estranged from the rest of our chaotic city, 8pm here is feeling like 11pm. Residents Shaan, Sehwad and Zafar have just settled down for the night. The young men’s shared bed is a sheet of tirpal, unrolled along a neighbourhood lane. Excerpts from their chitchat. Shaan: We have been here for some days to demolish a bangla. (He gestures to the blue barricades behind.) Sehwad: A
City Season – Amaltas Sighting, Near Sunder Nursery Nature by The Delhi Walla - April 18, 20230 Summer's cool envoy. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Are they really real or are they Artificial Intelligence real? AI-generated images are going viral these days. Can these be one of those fakes? No, the blossoms turn out to be real on touch. But these golden-yellow flowers show up by late April, and we are still in the middle of the month. Whatever, greetings to the season’s first Amaltas sighting. More than the killer heat waves, it is the arrival of these flowers that launches Delhi’s unforgiving summer. You may easily spot this early Amaltas, it stands close to Sunder Nursery gardens. Though the best Amaltas places in Delhi are elsewhere. Here’s a detailed guide (start your yatra in a few