Life goes on. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] It was a pavement stall for used magazines. It had been standing on this spot for decades. One day last year the stall didn’t open. Weeks passed, the stall didn’t open. Months passed, the stall didn’t open. This afternoon the stall is open, standing at its usual spot on Connaught Lane, the pedestrian-friendly stretch connecting Kasturba Gandhi Marg to Janpath Road. “I was unwell,” stall proprietor Rakesh Kumar explains, giving reason for the long absence. The stall looks as rooted to the place as the sky above, making it difficult to believe that it was closed for half a year. As always, it is stacked with the old issues of New Yorker and Economist

For steam engine enthusiasts. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The undulating hills, the winding tracks, and the steam engine laboriously lurching along the narrow gauge. While the carefree coaches behind merrily rumbling by the changing scenery—now passing by a village, now by a misty meadow overlooking a snowy peak. Throughout the journey, the hard-working engine continues to huff n’ puff, the coupling rods clanking over the wheels, the smoke-stack belching out murky clouds into the cold mountain air. This black smoke wafts over the pristine slopes long after the mail is already on the next hill. The mountainous Kalka-Shimla railway continues to operate, though the age of steam engine has vanished. But one steam engine that would routinely traverse through the

First among equals. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Pitch blue sky, so blue that you could raise your finger and risk getting it stained with this bluest of rare blue. And there it is! The tiranga. Atop a tall pole, the national flag is billowing smoothly, inscribing its familiar form in the high altitude Delhi air. The orange, white and green stripes are infusing the atmosphere with a feel of… something that feels larger than ourselves. The monumental flag at Connaught Place is truly a monument. Installed at Central Park in 2014, it is said to be larger than the size of a badminton court. It inevitably sparked off an enthusiasm to hoist larger-than-life flags at prominent places in the capital. Within

Inside a long-shut landmark [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] In the crowded bazar, a deserted building. Inside this silenced building, a strange sort of diffused luminosity. A scratchy wall is glowing in insipid gold. Otherwise not much to be seen. Gradually, eyes adjust to the darkness. A staircase emerges, bending slowly smoothly along its upwards spiral. The staircase’s baluster is stylish. So is the metallic handrail. Old Delhi’s Jagat cinema has been shut for years. This afternoon, by a freak chance, the entrance was open, making it possible to step into the darkened lobby—and into the vacant ticket counter, into the manager’s bare room, and up the stairs into the empty balcony. Nowhere else in the city might anyone experience a sight as

Manmohan Singh's haunt. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Shelves gone. Desks gone. Cupboards gone. Newspapers gone. Those fat file folders gone. And oh, the magical back-room with its stacks of old New Yorker magazines too gone. The place is unrecognisable. It is instead looking slick with scores of neatly arranged tables and chairs, and is buzzing this afternoon with cooks, waiters, diners. Here’s how cities change. One landmark at a time. The P-block address in Connaught Place housed one of Delhi’s oldest companies distributing newspapers and magazines across the country. The place has today transformed into a brightly lit outlet of a Kolkata-based restaurant chain. The air is smelling of some aromatic hunger-inducing spice. The restaurant opened about two months ago, informs Anshu

Tajikistan, Turkmenistan… Filmistan! [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The derelict building is a sprawl of pinkish red concrete. The outer walls are bearded here and there with dry grass. This afternoon, each spear of the long browned grass is trembling soundlessly in the winter’s cold breeze. Delhi is a city of tombs. This building too is a tomb. But it is not a tomb to some fakir or badshah. It instead eulogises an earlier age of movie watching. The vast edifice of Filmistan cinema evokes an era when there were no limitless Netflix movie options and multiplex audis. It was then a civilisation of the “picture hall” where a citizen would watch a matinee or a night show alongside hundreds of

Print edition monument [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Names can be deceptive. But not this zila Ghaziabad kiosk. Its name is Akhbar ki Dukaan, says the owner. And it really is akhbar ki dukaan. The roadside shop is crammed with all the English and Hindi dailies that pour into Delhi afresh every morning. The sight in fact looks like a biennale art installation aiming to commemorate a utility that once used to be as ubiquitous as the chai stall—the newspaper stand. The Vasundhara landmark in Sector 4C has been existing since 2003. Founder Kaptan Singh is a UP native from Gonda, and has been in Delhi region since 1991. He started as a mechanic in a washing machine factory in north

Russia in Delhi. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Go to Janpath, and visit a man there with a long flowing beard. Leo Tolstoy stands by the traffic light. It is the Russian writer’s 114th death anniversary. Tolstoy made a most profound impact on the Indian who most profoundly shaped contemporary India. Mahatma Gandhi was famously influenced by Tolstoy’s ideas on non-violence and chastity. He even set up an ashram called Tolstoy Farm during his years in South Africa. That said, the novelist of Anna Karenina is not the only Russian gracing the Delhi boulevards. Poet Pushkin stands at Mandi House. And though the Soviet Union founder Lenin was no novelist, he stands tall in Nehru Park. Indeed, those Delhiwale who came