City Walk – Haveli Azam Khan, Old Delhi Walks by The Delhi Walla - March 31, 20240 A Walled City street [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The door’s tatty curtain was to hide the once-affluent family’s wretched poverty, its threadbare predicament instead exposed its decline. Yashpal’s iconic short story Purdah immediately comes to mind on gazing at this purdah, here in Old Delhi’s Haveli Azam Khan street. The purdah is actually looking ok, the giveaway is the derelict doorway on which it hangs. The arched portal is made of long-ago lakhori, its damaged portions patched up with modern bricks, the blue paint severely discoloured. Haveli Azam Khan is said to have been the site of the haveli of a Mughal-era noble called Azam Khan. Nobody today remembers the haveli. A new world has emerged sphinx-like from
City Nature – Two Bougainvillea Trees, Lodhi Garden Nature by The Delhi Walla - March 29, 2024March 29, 20240 Season’s spectacle. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Following are a few observations made in a city park one uncomfortably warm noon this week. 1. Currently, the most beautiful sight in Delhi is of two side-by-side bougainvillea trees in Lodhi Garden, close to the duck pond. 2. From afar, the two trees are twinning like Seeta aur Geeta, both being superfluously loaded with dark pink flowers. 3. The flowers are raining down nonstop from the bougainvillea branches, carpet bombing the muddy ground in pink. 4. These two bougainvillea trees bear flowers throughout the year, a park gardener asserts, but the densest blossoming occurs now, after the conclusion of winter. The lush bloom will last through the summer, she says, and will end with
Delhi’s Proust Questionnaire – Inam Khan, Sir Syed Road Delhi Proustians by The Delhi Walla - March 28, 2024March 28, 20240 Into a citizen’s heart. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] He restores torn clothes, for he is a rafoogar—belonging to a diminishing segment of tailors who specialize in the art of darning. A yumna-paar dweller of Khureji, Inam Khan shuttles daily to Old Delhi’s Sir Syed Road, settling outside a dry cleaning establishment, with lazy well-fed street dogs lounging around him. After hushing a barking dog to quiet down, the soft-spoken gent agrees 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. Your favourite qualities in a person. The ability to be happy. What do you appreciate the most in your friends? To attentively listen to
Mission Delhi – Shabana, Central Delhi Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - March 27, 2024March 27, 20240 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Walking snail-like along a sleepy passage lined with residences, she repeatedly turns to make sure the young boy and the little girl are keeping behind her. “My children,” she says. A huge sack on her head and a cardboard carton on her left shoulder, Shabana spends her day picking up discards from the city’s roadsides. At day’s end, she sells the collection to a recycler. This afternoon, Shabana is working the streets of an affluent Delhi locality. She is familiar with the place. “We live nearby, beside a bus stop… our home is just a roadside, so we cannot leave the children alone… I have to always carry
City Nature – Pilkhan Trees, District Park Nature by The Delhi Walla - March 25, 20240 New leaves. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Today is the holy Holi. This day of colours ends in hours, but some of the colours of Holi shall linger amid the trees of Delhi (even though the season’s red bloom of semal tree is reaching an end). All you have to do is to next week visit the District Park in Hauz Khas Village. The place has quite a few pilkhan trees, and most are about to dress up completely in new leaves. The leaves will be special— they glow in striking shades of red. Pointing to a tree, the guard at the park’s entrance identifies it as pilkhan, saying the green leaves will fall any day now. “Naye patte”
Mission Delhi – Nitin Kumar, Outside RK Ashram Metro Station Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - March 22, 20240 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] There’s the cart for gol gappe. The other cart is selling nariyal pani That one is crammed with bananas. The street outside RK Ashram metro station looks ordinary. And then you spot something extraordinary. A cart piled up with hundreds of 2024 diaries. Nitin Kumar got the idea of such a stall way back in 2014 when he first arrived in Delhi and spotted a pavement establishment stocked with diaries in Mukherjee Nagar. He was in the locality for the same reason that draws many other young ambitious folks there—to enrol in one of the many coaching centers for competitive exam preparations. “I found the coaching
City Life – Altering Patterns, Old Delhi Life by The Delhi Walla - March 21, 2024March 21, 20240 Everything is changing. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] One time this used to be an empty lot littered with the detritus of a collapsed mansion. Then a builder raised a multi-storey, with Khan’s Bistro on the ground level. It happened just last year. Everything is changing in Purani Dilli. While childbirths in Kasturba Gandhi maternity hospital and wedding banquets in Mahavir Vatika continue to be punctuated by regular burials in Dilli Gate Qabristan, the fabric of Walled City’s daily life is altering profoundly. Here’s a drone-like survey of some of the million public and private changes pulsating through a tiny segment of the historic quarter. Multiply these shifting minutiae of life a billion times over and this becomes an Homeric
City Obituary – Sona, Ghaziabad Life by The Delhi Walla - March 20, 20240 Passing of a community dog. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Did he slip away on his own free will? Or did somebody whisk him away? The second possibility seemed more likely to his human friends. After all, the serene Sona was such a handsome dog. Who wouldn’t want him? There was so much depth in his eyes; it was trance-like to see one’s own image in them. About a week after his disappearance early this month, the roadside drain started emitting a stench. It was Sona’s decomposed body. Nobody knows just how he met his fate. Suffice to say he went away as mysteriously as he had come. Sona had surfaced three years ago from… nobody knows where. Sona could not be
City Walk – Gali Mazar Wali, Old Delhi Walks by The Delhi Walla - March 19, 2024March 19, 20240 A Walled City street [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The name promises a grave. And there is indeed a grave. Somebody’s mazar flanks the entrance of Gali Mazar Wali, here in Kalan Mahal locality. A mazar often—but not always—tends to be the tomb of a peer, a sufi mystic. In fact, a street elsewhere in the old city is named Gali Peerji Wali (featured recently on The Delhi Walla pages) But that peer’s identity is lost to history, so is his mazar. Over here, while the mazar of Gali Mazar Wali physically exists, its legends too have receded into unremembered territory. Nobody seems to know just who lies buried under the grave. The grave nevertheless cannot be missed. Its size is substantial,
City Season – 2024 Spring, Around Town Nature by The Delhi Walla - March 19, 2024March 19, 20240 Colours of Holi. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Spring is a time of colours, and colours mean Holi. This year, the festival is falling quite late, on March 25 (it was on March 8 last year). Even so, these days, colours are everywhere. The Delhi sky is dark blue on this late morning. A green-and-yellow auto rickshaw passes by the Oberoi hotel. A tree standing by the hotel’s staff entrance is covered in white flowers. A guard in white says it is a kachnar. Many kachnars bear lavender-shaded flowers. One such tree is just inside the gate, the guard says. (Delhiwale in Purani Dilli make a subzi out of these flowers—it is delicious but the flowers look prettier otherwise). Some