City Neighbourhood – Gali Bhootni Wali, Old Delhi Regions Walks by The Delhi Walla - December 17, 20230 Lane of ghosts. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Bitter cold. Not a mouse stirring. All is silent and dark. Gali Bhootni Wali in Old Delhi gets its name from ghosts, but no such bhoot is to be seen or sensed tonight. As the third lane off the neighbourhood of Kucha Mir Hashim, the gali is narrow and straight, punctuated by a sharp turn, and at one point it passes through protruding walls, before climaxing into a doorway. Two men surface in this dark silence—Nadeem and Ubair (see photo). Speaking fearlessly in a bold voice, Nadeem confesses of never having personally seen a bhoot, but has heard his elders talk of the long-ago days when the ghosts would be commonly sighted along the
City Vox Popili – A Life in Arpita’s Day, Delhi Life by The Delhi Walla - December 17, 20230 As part of The Delhi Walla series asking citizens to “write down everything you did in one day.” Send yours in 400 words max to thedelhiwallasoofi@gmail.com [Photo by Aditya Ahuja] [By Arpita Chowdhury, a writer, poet, journalist in Delhi.] "The lover's fatal identity is precisely this: 'I am the one who waits.'” ― Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments. Yes! I am the person who waits…but not for someone people might presume. I wake up; I wait for calmness, which might never come. My body works like a robot when it comes to doing the mundane activities that make you a 'good girl.' It's called following a routine. Is it the right thing to do? Who knows? For me, it is just an addition
City Food – Tasty Trinity, Gurgaon Food by The Delhi Walla - December 15, 20230 Gaalis in the galis. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] In foggy December, one of the few consolations during the gloomy thandi can be the company of jalebi, pakori and adrak chai. Every pincode in the big wide Delhi region has its own permutations and combinations of the classic tridev, or trinity. Here is a tried-and-tasted selection curated in Gurgaon that aims not only towards the palate but also to help you appreciate the spread of the so-called Millennium City. Winter bite This snack cart in Gurgaon’s picturesque railway station rustles out the punchiest green chilli pakoras. Their fierceness verges on an almost-elusive border where you could still enjoy and not suffer from the mirchi’s soul-shuddering piquancy. The cart attendants keep the pakoras
City Life – Swearwords, Walled City Life by The Delhi Walla - December 14, 20230 Gaalis in the galis. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] An elderly man sits all day long outside a long-dead chai shop in Old Delhi’s Mohalla Qabristan. His gestures are courtly, his Urdu pronunciation is flawless, and his every second gupshup sentence that issues out from his venerable lips is laced with a gaali. Most citizens in the vicinity credit the friendly man to have a vocabulary extremely fluent in traditional as well as unconventionally creative swearwords. Gaalis transcend Delhi’s social divides. The offensive words circulating in the back alleys of Mahipalpur exercise the same freedom of movement in the genteel Mayfair Gardens. The Mohalla Qabristan gentleman is different. Many of his gaalis are linguistically playful, the shape of the sounds so
City Vox Popili – A Life in Shezi’s Day, South Delhi Life by The Delhi Walla - December 14, 2023December 14, 20230 As part of The Delhi Walla series asking citizens to “write down everything you did in one day.” Send yours in 400 words max to thedelhiwallasoofi@gmail.com [Photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] [By S. Zeyaul Abrar Husain “Shezi”, a “pharma professional” in south Delhi.] Since I’m passionate about poetry, I’ll start with lines by poet Jigar Moradabadi, who lies buried in my hometown Gonda, a stone’s throw from our ancestral house. “Tūl-e-ġham-e-hayāt se ghabrā na ai 'jigar' aisī bhī koī shaam hai jis kī sahar na ho (Jigar, don’t be frustrated by life’s prolonged sorrows, There is always light after the darkness.)” I get up a few minutes before 5:45am. After offering the fajr namaz, I help the wife in readying the kids for their school. I drop them
City Food – Gajar ka Halwa, Around Town Food by The Delhi Walla - December 13, 20230 Carrot tourism. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Red Fort looks red from the outside. But a lot of it is white from within. Gajar halwa sports this very same red. Carrot is red after all, most of the time. But there is a gajar halwa that is white. Safed gajar halwa is found in very few places in the Delhi region. One of them is the legendary Shereen Bhawan in Old Delhi’s Matia Mahal Bazar. Among the oldest surviving culinary landmarks in the Walled City, it was established long before Partition by a man called Fayazuddin, whose descendants continue to thrive in a sprawling house nearby. Around this time of the year, the gigantic platter on the shop’s street-facing counter
City Neighbourhood – Last Bungalows, Hazrat Nizamuddin East Landmarks Regions by The Delhi Walla - December 12, 20230 Era, passing. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Thak, thak, thak. The dusty air is reverberating with the sound of continued hammering. The source of the clatter is a white bungalow, here in Nizamuddin East. The bungalow is being demolished. Three-four labourers are hammering at walls and ceilings. One diligent hammer is about to bring down a fireplace any moment now. Very unlikely that in these times of climate change, the city would see new fireplaces. The man supervising the demolition says that an apartment complex is to replace the bungalow. This ground floor, he mutters, shall become a parking lot for the new occupants. His eyes darting down a wall, the man suddenly notices an intersecting tapestry of threadbare lines—termites! The bungalow’s courtyard
City Vox Popili – A Life in Jasmine’s Day, Batala, Punjab General by The Delhi Walla - December 12, 20230 As part of The Delhi Walla series asking citizens to “write down everything you did in one day.” Send yours in 400 words max to thedelhiwallasoofi@gmail.com [Photo by Jasmine Dhaliwal] [By Jasmine Dhaliwal, a doctor] This morning when I got up, I had a lump in the throat and a load of needless thoughts weighing down the heart. But as soon as I found a peaceful spot to shed a few tears, a call came from the hospital about an emergency patient. Thus ended the process of self-imaginary healing by dripping some tears. -Once free from the patient, called up daughter who was stressed out as she had her finals. -One of the cars had to be sent to the service station as its engine had
City Neighbourhood – Ganj Meer Khan, Old Delhi Regions Walks by The Delhi Walla - December 10, 20230 A place-name in the Walled City. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The suburbs are wild with five-storied housings, dwarfed by even taller multistories. But this five-storey is looming Everest-like in Old Delhi’s cramped, narrow Ganj Meer Khan, where it came up some years ago. Oddly, the modern-day stalagmite looks rooted to the centuries-old neighbourhood, its ground level hosting the services of a butcher, a cook, a pharmacist. Some distance ahead the street-side debris of an old house, which locals say fell some years ago, too looks rooted to the land, a part of the texture of Ganj Meer Khan’s daily life. This afternoon, passers-by are passing by with no one looking at the surreal sight of an entire house in heap.
Delhi’s Proust Questionnaire – Rupin Walter Desai, East Patel Nagar Delhi Proustians by The Delhi Walla - December 8, 2023December 8, 20230 The parlour confession. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] This retired English Literature professor is India’s greatest living Shakespeare scholar (he is also an authority on Yeats!). Rupin Walter Desai founded the legendary Hamlet Studies, “an international journal of research on The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”. A festschrift dedicated to him is coming out next week—the all-knowing Wikipedia describes this German term as “a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime.” Turning 90 in two months, the professor’s current project is “Poems I often revisit.” Ensconced in his book-filled East Patel Nagar apartment, he agrees to become a part of our Proust Questionnaire series in which citizens are nudged to make “Parisian parlour confessions”, all