Intimations of a new season. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Delhi’s seasons are extreme. Winters are so freezing that it is impossible to imagine that this city could ever survive even a gentle rise in temperature. Summers are so intolerably hot that winter seems as out of reach as Saint Petersburg. Yet, the shift of seasons in Delhi is so imperceptible that before you know it the winter has already changed to summer. (We don’t have a place for spring, really.) It was not the case this year, however. The first day of summer arrived with a majestic ceremony in the evening sky. The small puffs of white clouds spread into the clear blue as undisciplined cotton from a torn pillow.

Life in the world's most polluted city. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] “Fashion in dystopia,” a friend commented while showing The Delhi Walla a photo on her phone of a young woman wearing a mask, the kind one sees in Hollywood movies when the bad guys lob a smoke bomb in a hostage situation and the good guys smartly put on their masks and save everyone before viewers can draw a tense breath. Well, someone lobbed a smoke bomb—or a smog bomb, or a dust bomb, or… whatchamacallit—at the National Capital Region during a recent weekend, and viewers are still waiting for the good guys to rush in. The bad guys—whoever “they” are—got us by the lungs. We are the hostages.

The heavenly view. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] A freak occurrence, this was unthinkable in one of the world’s most polluted cities. One evening The Delhi Walla saw an incredible sight near the Oberoi Hotel flyover. The normally grey sky was instead dyed in deep blue. Puffy blackish clouds floated like heaps of suspended cotton balls. The sky seemed to have seceded from our everyday reality. To reassure that it was not merely a hyper-local phenomenon, I boarded an auto rickshaw and headed towards the direction of ITO to examine the sky in the north of the city. The rickshaw stopped at a traffic light near the Old Fort. Huge clouds were slowly gathering over the Mughal-era Khair Ul Manzil Masjid

The wet days. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] First, lightning and thunder. That upset the birds. Then a strong wind started. Leaves blew everywhere. One evening The Delhi Walla was in Khan Market when the weather decided to take a turn. It soon started to rain heavily. The market's Front Lane and Middle Lane were at once emptied of their beautiful people though I managed to spot a woman who had just stepped out of The Artful Baker (very nice croissants!). She was carrying cake boxes and was completely drenched. Inside Faqir Chand & Sons Booksellers, the world was dry. The owner, Anup Kumar, was having chai and namkeen. His wife, Mamta, was cheerfully watching the rain fall outside. Their teenage son,

Farewell to summer. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The magic is gone. It’s no longer the same thing. The flowers look pale, many are almost sickly white. To tell the truth, most of these Amaltas trees no longer look like Amaltas. This afternoon The Delhi Walla is again walking under the Amaltas trees of Amrita Shergil Marg. I’d come here a few weeks ago with a poet when the summer heat was at its peak. Then the avenue dazzled with the bright yellow of Amaltas flowers. It was that time of the year when the tree is in bloom and parts of the city are lit up with the golden glow of its flowers. But now the best days are over. There

Impressionism in Delhi. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s a melancholy sight. The flowers are falling noiselessly from the trees on their own volition. One evening The Delhi Walla comes across a few trees in bloom on Central Delhi’s Maharshi Raman Road. The flowers are nestled amid the green foliage of various other trees. The purple-blue flowers seem to be the last-minute interference of an impressionist painter. What trees are these? Are they the jacaranda, which are famous for producing such a color during this season? In his book Trees of Delhi: A Field Guide, author Pradip Krishen describes the jacaranda as “a delicate-leaved ornamental tree—somewhat stunted in Delhi—with an open crown and low branching habit’. He says that the tree was introduced

The true city. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The truth is that the actual city consists of only two bougainvillea trees—the rest of Delhi is an illusion. The two trees stand in Lodhi Gardens. One March afternoon The Delhi Walla went there to experience the spring rhythms of true urban life. The grassy ground was covered with pink bougainvillea flowers. They were falling from the branches of the trees like a continuous monsoon downpour. A clay pot filled with water, too, was covered with the pink flowers. Under one of the trees, a young man was seated on a green bench. A young woman was behind him, seated on the trunk of the bougainvillea. A pink handbag was kept beside

Too beautiful to last. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] At last. Finally. Despite all odds. But who could have believed it? One cold evening the sky of the world's most polluted city opened up. It gently reminded the city's dwellers of its existence. Some of the busy people looked up. It was an incredible sight. First thing that was noticed: the grey nothingness had disappeared. The Delhi Walla was in the central parts of the city when this extraordinary phenomenon unfolded. The February sky was washed with various shades of blue. The edges were tinged with burning streaks of red. The east looked so glorious that it had to be God's heaven. A great portion of the sky were filled up with hundreds

In the world's most polluted city. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Walking in the Lodhi Gardens in central Delhi is always beautiful. This winter, particularly, do look out for that misty haze of PM 2.5 enveloped around the 14th century tombs, which dims the visibility and adds mystery to those aged monuments. The garden walkers get all the romance even as their life span reduces a little. Yes, it has all come down to PM 2.5. If you don’t know what it is, you are probably one of those lucky people who don’t live in Delhi, where this purely technical-sounding term is fast becoming a part of our everyday conversation. The Dictionary of Environment Microbiology calls PM 2.5 a “Designation by the

Larger than death. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Life is a series of disappointments. And then you see something grand and noble, which surpasses life. One ancient morning, a couple of seasons ago, The Delhi Walla came across a giant pilkhan tree, Ficus virens, in Deer Park, Safdarjang Enclave. In his landmark Trees of Delhi: A Field Guide, author Pradip Krishen said of Pilkhan: "A fairly common strangler fig in Delhi with an immense, spreading canopy that displays wonderful changing tints when it renews its foliage in spring. It has long aerial roots like the banyan’s but they tend to wrap themselves around the top of the trunk instead of becoming dangling prop-roots. One of Delhi’s most beautiful shade trees." The tree at