City Landmark – Shama Building & Shama Family, Asaf Ali Marg & DLF Phase 1
A literary icon. [Archival photos belongs to Ali Ahmed Dehlvi and Vaseem Ahmed Dehlvi, text and other photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The building has lost its colour. A tree is growing out of the balcony. What rescues it from…
City Landmark – PCO aka Phone Booth, Meena Bazar
Relic from the living past. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s like coming face-to-face with the indecipherable relics of a lost civilisation. The pale pink wall, here in Old Delhi’s Meena Bazar, is defaced with two acronyms: STD…
City Hangout – Northeast Grocery Shop, Chirag Delhi
Taste of home. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s called Northeast Grocery Shop but it is not in north-east Delhi. It is, in fact, in the southern part of the city, in Chirag Delhi village. And yet the…
City Landmark – Maharani Stella’s Grave, Christian Cemetery, Prithviraj Road
An extraordinary life. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] She was a cabaret dancer in Paris and a maharani in Kapurthala—but her tomb, surprisingly, chose not to mention it. Like all graveyards, the Christian Cemetery in central Delhi’s Prithviraj…
City Landmark – Bharat Tin Traders, Subzi Mandi
House of rats. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] A rare landmark, you won’t easily find another place like this in most of the the city. This shop in Gurgaon’s Subzi Mandi in the Greater Delhi Region deals exclusively…
City Landmark – Rachna Book House, SDA Market
Mom-and-pop. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The small stationery shop is noticeable because it also sells magazines, an increasingly endangered sight in these days of online reading. Then, you notice shelves decked with greeting cards, an increasingly endangered…
City Landmark – Ordinary Village Well, Chirag Dehli
An ordinary wonder. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The city has a village. The village has a square. The square has a well. Delhi is well-known for its centuries old step-wells, or baolis. But in the Capital it…
City Landmark – The So-Called “Mayank Austen Soofi’s Attic”, Hauz Khas Village
A new AirBnB destination. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It was a small room, just enough for one person to co-habit with some books—ok, many books. Its window enjoyed a direct view of Emperor Feroze Shah Tughlak’s Tomb….
City Landmark – Jagat Cinema, Old Delhi
A single-screen. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The grilles are shuttered, but the lobby can be seen through them: the ticket window, the board displaying the show timings and the ticket rates—32 rupees for Box. Some things become…
City Landmark – Blue Wall, Sheikh Kaleemullah Jehanabadi’s Sufi Shrine
Beautiful blues. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] There is something gracefully fragile about the blue colour — especially in Delhi, where blue skies are more of a myth. In our city, every bit of blue, whatever its shade,…
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