On Delhi’s great institution.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

There is more than one way of exploiting Delhi’s fabulous Sunday Book Bazar. Every week the exhibition ground of Mahila Haat on Asaf Ali Road is carpeted with thousands of used books sourced from across the world. Many of these much-thumbed paperbacks contain itsy-bitsy stuff belonging to their former owners—receipts, cards, letters, newspaper clippings, photos, flowers, etc. These lie pressed between the book pages, perfectly preserved. The Delhi Walla has amassed hundreds of such titbits over many Sundays. Each fragment transcends time and space, at times bringing one tantalisingly close to the texture of some unknown person’s daily life. Here’s a sample.

1. A yellowed torn clipping of Hindustan Times front page (the masthead is easily discernible) dated April 5, 1967. Shows a park photo captioned: “Examination fever: Two students concentrate on their books in New Delhi’s Lodi Gardens, oblivious even of the afternoon idyll in the background.” (The idyll obviously refers to the romantic couple captured discreetly in the picture!)

2. Train ticket from Diemen in Netherlands to Amsterdam Centraal, 4.80 euros, dated 31-03-2019.

3. Moustachioed man’s yellowing photo, dated 1904. Such long-ago print formats were common during the early years of photography and were called cartes-de-visite.

4. Bookmark of London’s Foster Books bookstore, bearing a Virginia Woolf quote—“Second hand books are wild books, homeless books.”

5. Clipping of a presumably Delhi newspaper headlined “Chanakyapuri stays, Chanakya to go”. Opening passage: “On December 27, while bringing down the curtains after the night show, the ushers and attendants at Chanakya Cinema will also be bidding adieu to over three decades of matinee shows, stall tickets and whistling in the front row.”

6. Punched ticket to Rudolf Nureyev’s ballet in Hamburg. Dated 22 April. No mention of the year; should predate 1993, the year the legendary dancer died.

7. Typewritten letter sent from London’s Sunday Times to one H. Thearle, Esq., in Liverpool, dated 3 September, 1962. Signed on the editor’s behalf by the newspaper’s then music critic Derek Jewell, who died in 1985.
“Dear Sir,
The Editor regrets the delay in acknowledging your letter, for which he thanks you very much. It was hoped to publish it, but pressure on space has unfortunately made this impossible. Your faithfully…”

8. Handwritten sheet of paper listing all the Vermeer paintings, grouped under the cities where they were then on exhibit at museums, starting from The Hague in Netherlands to Boston in the US.

9. Ticket to the Jewish Museum of Dubrovnik, Croatia, bearing the Star of David in blue.

10. This clip is a poem cut from a newspaper or magazine. Google reveals the poet to be a Serbian-American writer, who died last year:
“There is nothing quieter
Than softly falling snow
Fussing over every flake
And making sure
It won’t wake someone.
—Charles Simic “