Mission Delhi – Annu Begum, Panj Peeran Graveyard Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - June 19, 20230 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Her voice is fainter than the slight sound of the evening breeze. “Hussain, Hussain, mera Hussain, Hussain…” At times, the voice falls completely silent, though her lips are still moving, murmuring. At times, the voice returns, rises, falling silent again. Annu Begum is walking inside a graveyard, heading towards the grave of her son. He died two weeks ago, aged 6. “I come here daily to meet him. He fell ill with pneumonia and two days later...” A flower seller, she lives in a nearby slum, under a flyover, with her other son, her daughter, and the daughter’s young son, the quiet Moinuddin, who is walking with her, holding her
Delhi’s Proust Questionnaire – Irish Ambassador Brendan Ward, Bloomsday Special! Delhi Proustians by The Delhi Walla - June 16, 2023June 16, 20230 The parlour confession. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] Thálatta! Thálatta! It’s June 16, the date on which the entire Ulysses is set. The novel by James Joyce is considered among the literature’s greatest modernist masterpieces. Today, Ulysses fans worldwide will celebrate Bloomsday, so named after Leopold Bloom, the novel’s protagonist. The book mostly consists of the characters walking the streets of Ireland capital Dublin. Naturally we convinced Irish ambassador, the Dublin-born Brendan Ward, to become a part of our Proust Questionnaire series in which citizens are nudged to make “Parisian parlour confessions”, all to explore our distinct experiences. (Oh yes, this evening His Excellency is throwing a Bloomsday party at his residence!) Your favorite virtue or the principal aspect of your personality. I think
City Food – Crossword Chai, Sirajuddin’s Tea Stall Food by The Delhi Walla - June 15, 2023June 15, 20230 A tea house too unique. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The yellow walls are gone. They are now blue. “I painted it myself, some weeks ago, before the beginning of the Ramzan,” says the tea stall man. Fortunately, the chai place still looks like a crossword puzzle, the very thing that makes Sirajuddin’s tea stall among Delhi-NCR’s most fascinating street-side stops. The uniqueness is in a shelf clamped onto the wall—see photo. It has wooden slabs running from top to bottom, and from left to right. This divides the shelf into an array of square-shaped spaces, making it resemble the crossword puzzles you find in newspapers. Except that instead of alphabet letters, the tiny boxes are casually crammed up with tea
City Home – A Transitory House, Somewhere in Delhi Delhi Homes by The Delhi Walla - June 15, 20230 A home in the city. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The house is now a debris. A huge mountain of broken bricks has spilled out into what used to be a driveway. It looks like one of those press agency photographs depicting a powerful earthquake in some far-off city. Four men are sitting on the ground, by the semi-dismantled gate. This could be a scene in any upscale neighbourhood in the megapolis. Here is unfolding one of the most familiar and frequent, though unrecorded, stories of our times. An old house is being razed down to be replaced by a multi-storey apartment complex. During this shift between the old and the new, the vacant space tends to be occupied by
City Hangout – Public Park, Greater Kailash II Hangouts by The Delhi Walla - June 13, 20230 Jungle raj. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] A huge tree with thousands of leaves. And another tree, dissimilar in the shape of its leaves and the fanning of its branches, but similar in grandness. Then another such tree. Another. Another. And more. Some trees are easily identifiable—neem, bargad, ashok, peepal. Some are not. This little park ought to be the only one of its kind in the Delhi-NCR. The almost-forest is tucked —most unexpectedly—inside a bazar. It stands within the M Block Market in south Delhi’s Greater Kailash II. This sweltering June afternoon, the market lanes are parked with long gleaming cars, their painted metal reflecting off the sun’s blinding glare. The glass walls of the cafés and restaurants show the customers
City Season – Heatwave Citizens, Around Town Life Nature by The Delhi Walla - June 12, 2023June 12, 20230 June is the cruellest month. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water… How much more intense these powerful lines would have been if poet TS Eliot had written The Waste Land after surviving a spell of Delhi’s June heatwave. Here’s a snapshot of citizens obliged to work directly under the sun, encountered in peak summer noons present and past. Early afternoon. Daily-wage labourer Sukhi is standing about the so-called “labour chowk” near Gurugram’s Sector 6. Barely beyond his teenage years, he shares a pavement habitat with his “jija,” also a labourer. “The stones (of the pave)
City Life – Chowk Mohalla Qabristan, Old Delhi Life by The Delhi Walla - June 10, 20230 Life of an intersection. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Ignore the power cables, the crowd, the rickshaws. Gradually, this derelict many-windowed mansion reveals its raw beauty. The elegant edifice commands Chowk Mohalla Qabristan as regally as Maharani Victoria must had her durbar. Although a nearby qabristan—full of graves but no longer in use—gives its name to the three-way intersection, it is this mansion with three floors, six apartments and 15 windows that shapes and consecrates every point of perspective here. The property belongs to a family living many streets away in Ballimaran, and most of tits dwellers continue to be the descendants of original tenants. Gossipy locals tell stories of the mansion’s first inhabitants—such as Muhammed Muzammil, aka Bangali, who was
Delhi’s Bandaged Heart – Parth Sarathy Sharma’s Poetry Prints, Around Town City Poetry by The Delhi Walla - June 10, 2023June 10, 20230 Poetry in the city. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Some say love looks like a pair of pyjamas, and some say it's a bird… oh, see, here’s love! Stuck on a Lodhi Garden tree, having the size of an A4 sheet, with big-sized words demanding to know “what do we become when we are in love?” The flyer is clipped lightly, loosely—easily detachable. Tiny sized words on the top left says: “Feel free to take it with yourself.” A few days after instagramming this flyer’s click, the culprit is traced. Digital agency copywriter Parth Sarathy Sharma—pen name Vesmir— reads novels, writes poems, and maintains a diary of one-line musings on love, longing, loneliness. Sometimes, at the office in Ghitorni, he
Delhi’s Proust Questionnaire – Anant Kumar, Sunday Book Bazar Delhi Proustians by The Delhi Walla - June 8, 20230 The parlour confession. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] It is a truth universally acknowledged that the greatest place to shop for all kinds of books in the entire Delhi region is at the Sunday Book Market. For decades the bazar unfolded every week on the pavements of Daryaganj. It lately moved to Mahila Haat, nearby. That’s not the only profound change the bazar has undergone. Some familiar booksellers are gone, some new sellers have surfaced. Thankfully, the meetha-voiced bookseller Anant Kumar has been a constant for 25 years. This unbearably hot Sunday afternoon, sitting by a great heap of books (“50 rupees, pick any”), he agreed to be a part of our Proust Questionnaire series in which citizens are nudged to
City Monument – Lodhi Garden Ruins, Central Delhi Monuments by The Delhi Walla - June 8, 20230 The 'qilas' of Lodhi. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] This is a qila. That is a qila. And that also is a qila. Very common to overhear visitors to the world-famous Lodhi Garden call each of its monuments a “fort,” a common Delhi designation to explain away any unfamiliar monument. Of course, dear reader, you aren’t one of them! But for “qila” people like us, here are tips to sound like a blue-blooded Lodhi Garden geek. Mostly built by the Sayyids (1414-1451) and Lodhis (1451-1526) of the Delhi Sultanate, the monuments make dramatic centrepieces in this garden, which was created around them in 1936, on the site of Khairpur village. The park was named after Lady Hardinge, the then viceroy’s wife. Visible