City Season – First Semal Flowering, ITO
Red spring. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] They fall down with a thudding sound one after another, the red semal flowers. Their blooming marks the arrival of Delhi’s most pleasant, though most brief season—when it’s neither cold nor…
City Season – Floss-Silk Flowers in Bloom, Lodhi Garden Lake
Season’s gift. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Pink, but slightly faded—this is their colour. The flowers of floss-silk — or kurejia — trees are blossoming across Delhi. A brash display stands near the ITO crossing. Another is showing…
City Nature – Corona Sky, Sunder Nursery
The pandemic-era paradise. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The best way of experiencing Delhi’s extraordinarily brilliant pandemic-era clear blue sky is by heading to Sunder Nursery, just across the road from Humayun Tomb. This time, refuse to be…
City Season – Monsoon’s Sunset Hues, Around Town
Heaven’s canvass. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It comes unexpected. Suddenly the grim, grey sky disappears to be replaced by a haze of deep shades of blue, with hints of pale red or pink. This is an extraordinary…
City Season – Bougainvillaea Bloom, Lodhi Garden
Season’s second gift. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] What a sight. So full of flowers. Thousands and thousands of them. These two bougainvillaea trees in central Delhi’s Lodhi Garden make one of the city’s most stunning spectacles, though…
City Season – Amaltas & Gulmohar, Around Town
Shades of summer. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The world economies are in shambles. Untold number of people worldwide have lost their jobs. A great many are dead. The pandemic is transforming the world. There’s no knowing when…
City Life – Leela Kanuga’s Mango Tree, Mayfair Gardens
Life with a tree. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] In these days of lockdown, people can easily spend waking hours absorbed by the changing patterns of sunlight on their drawing room’s walls. But Leela Kanuga recently gazed upon…
City Season – Bougainvillea, Udyog Vihar, Gurgaon
Season’s colors. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] There are few respites from Delhi’s unforgiving summer. One is the blooming of amaltas flowers—but that will happen only around the month of May. The other is the widespread blossoming of…
City Season – Raluca’s Spring, Green Park
A European’s Delhi spring. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Smelling a pinkish powder-puff (calliandra) flower, Raluca Sidon, a visitor from Bucharest, Romania, says, “I’m seeing it for the first time. It doesn’t grow in my country. I think…
City Season – Fireside Bonds, Chemlsford Road
Winter’s friends. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s a super-cold December evening in central Delhi’s Chelmsford Road. Five men are huddled around a pavement fireside. Three are sitting on their haunches; the others are standing, including Bholu who…
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