Homemade biennale. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] You don’t necessarily need to go to Venice or Kochi to enjoy a biennale. Every home has its art installation, as unique as a fingerprint. Young bookseller Rishabh’s central Delhi apartment that he shares with parents (see photo) has a display case in the living room adorned with objects most important to him. Here’s a guided tour of some of the many elements making up the installation. Artificial guldasta Mumma purchased the plastic bouquet online. She also maintains a small garden in the balcony—real potted plants. Tulsi, sadabahar, curry leaves. lemon grass, kela, karela… she believes that plants help mantain sukh-shanti at home. Father’s photo with singer Daler Mehendi Before he became a full-time bookseller, daddy

The unseen side of Sunday Book Bazar. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Sunday tends to be most special for Delhi’s booklovers. They head to the Sunday Book Bazar, which every week gets crammed with thousands of random books. The booklovers fish out their favourites and go back home. Some return to a non-reading household, its members already resentful about too many books hijacking too much of the limited space in the house. What of a Book Bazar bookseller? How is his home like? What does his family feel about the books? Step inside bookseller Manish Kapoor’s first-floor home, in north-west Delhi’s Rohini West. Bulky book towers claim half of the drawing room. They are almost touching the ceiling. The room has a

High-altitude living. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] This is a tree. This tree has a nest. This nest has a bird. It is the very heart of our smoggy megapolis—a small plaza in commercial Connaught Place, right outside the Palika Bazar. The peepal has shed almost all its leaves. The clearly visible nest is nestled towards the top of the naked tree, see left photo. The nest overlooks the hulky Jeevan Bharti building. The bird cannot be seen in full, but at times she moves about in the nest, flashing something of her black figure. The shoppers underneath the tree are unaware of the bird. One anyway comes across enough birds in this megapolis rich with 234

His morning walk. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] His iPhone’s pedometer reading is galloping as fast as a bullish stock market index—1.009 steps… 1,100… Morning walk is daily life’s ordinary aspect. Businessman Arshad Fehmi’s 6 o’clock ritual is not so ordinary. For his morning walk unfolds on his sprawling roof, which overlooks an intimate and yet sweeping view of Old Delhi’s historic Jama Masjid. “Purani Dilli is too noisy and crowded, but right now all is silence. See, the gali below is empty. The sky is also empty of pigeons. No kite-flier either.” The slender soft-spoken Arshad points out most Old Delhi wale are asleep for the moment. “Because people here go to bed very late at night.” He himself is an

Old address. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The sunlight falling on the tall blue walls quivers softly, making the concrete look liquefied. The staircase to the roof is crisscrossing upwards into a series of landings. And the sehen, the courtyard below, is marooned in shantih. This house in Old Delhi’s Chawri Bazar belongs to one of its most eminent families. Around, the market is noisy, crowded and chaotic, but the house feels far from this agitation. Until 50 years ago, any letter reaching this residence wouldn’t mention Chawri Bazar. Houses had no number either. In the old days, the address written on the letter would tend to start with what is nowadays written last. This was the old postal address of

A citizen's inheritance. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The tangled malti vines are cascading down the high wall like a long waterfall. Scores of eensy-weensy birds are popping out of their dense foliage, looking like bubbles in the water—sparrows! Delhi’s rarely sighted state bird. Framing the dead-end of the minuscule Gali Salim Muhammed Shah, the 170-year-old haveli is nestled in one of the most cramped and chaotic parts of the Walled City. But Qaiser Manzil itself is marooned in space and silence. This afternoon, the porch inside the street-facing gateway is alive with the soft melodious gossiping of these restless sparrows. The drawing room within is calmer, a sanctuary of unostentatious chandeliers, slender lamps, and closets filled with vases so delicate

Home in the city. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The day was clear and sunny, so the night will be much colder. This is his analysis. The bearded gentleman is one of the nine labourers—Kalam, Saleem, Kumrul, Abil, Javed, Raziq, Prakash, Mannu, Pappu—living together in a small street-facing enclosure close to the Delite Cinema in Old Delhi. It is evening, the deserted lane outside is plunged in semi-darkness. The enclosure is dimly lit with a small white lamp. The place feels as isolated as a hut in a village where each home becomes a solitary island after the sunset. Most of the men are huddled around a dying fire; a few others are lying sprawled towards the corners, absorbed

Cold night comrades. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] It is one of the coldest nights in the city so far this winter. Under the foggy sky, a group of young men are huddled around their cooking stove, its fire rustled out of wood pieces collected randomly from “idhar-udhar.” Dinner is almost ready. It is pitch dark. The stove’s dancing flames are momentarily lighting up somebody’s eye, somebody’s nose, somebody’s forehead. These seven colleagues work and live together, and are right now sitting on a great pile of the broken remains of a demolished bungalow—a house whose final days were featured a few weeks ago on this page. The men specialise in the systematic dismantling of bungalows. “Every day old bungalows are

The last sehen. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Old houses in Old Delhi were made of onion-like peels. There would be kamra, the room, often called the mehman khana to receive the guests. It would open into dalan, an intermediary space between the interiors and exteriors of the house. It, in turn, would open into sehen, or aangan, the courtyard. Only a few such residences survive in the Walled City. Hameed Manzil in Gali Nal Wali is one of them. The long departed Hameeduddin, a merchant of gold laces, built it in 1910. This afternoon, his grandson Fazle Haque, and this venerable gent’s two sisters and a nephew, are huddled quietly around the dining table, having finished with their lunch.