End of an era. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Its over. The last of the old Khan Market is gone. A pivotal event concerning India’s most upscale shopping destination took place quietly, some months back. Khan Market’s last remaining shop owners who still had their home in the market have moved to Defence Colony. The Bamhi family that runs the landmark Faqir Chand bookstore in the market’s front lane sold their residential flat in the middle lane—no. 59—in October. Their Khan Market home is history, their shop continues. The bookstore’s owners were living in Khan Market since 1951, when the market began with 154 shops and 75 flats. The shops were on the ground floor, the flats on the first. Till

A home in the city. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The house is now a debris. A huge mountain of broken bricks has spilled out into what used to be a driveway. It looks like one of those press agency photographs depicting a powerful earthquake in some far-off city. Four men are sitting on the ground, by the semi-dismantled gate. This could be a scene in any upscale neighbourhood in the megapolis. Here is unfolding one of the most familiar and frequent, though unrecorded, stories of our times. An old house is being razed down to be replaced by a multi-storey apartment complex. During this shift between the old and the new, the vacant space tends to be occupied by

The room lives on. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] He is gone, lying buried in Dilli Gate cemetry, but his packed bookshelves are in their appointed places. His mattress and pillows, too. The angle the afternoon sunlight is making thorough the terrace-facing window is also same as before. The Ajanta wall clock is continuing to tick. This is the room-cum-study of scholar Abdul Sattar in Old Delhi’s Pahari Imli. He passed away four months ago, aged 78, leaving behind children, grandchildren, and hundreds of books in Urdu and English. A reader, writer and a collector, Abdul Sattar was born in this room, and in this room he died. The family has made conscious efforts to let the room remain as it

Seeing the city. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] If only you can sneak into this art gallery to visit the tapestry embroidered with a panorama of our city. At first, it looks merely a messy maze of roofs, balconies, windows, staircases. Moments later you notice the maheen detailing. The artist’s insertion of black and white pani ki tankis is particularly clever in evoking the everydayness of life. While the barely perceptible glimpses of citizens ensconced within their homes express urban solitariness as profoundly as any Edward Hopper. This Delhi is more familiar to us than the Delhi of Instagram crammed with tombs, gardens and filtered sunset-selfies. Finally, an honest recreation with ho hum realities. This however isn’t a gallery, but

Their temporary address. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Nizamuddin East is too posh. The dwellers include a nawab’s daughter, a former chief minister, another former chief minister’s politician son, a jet-setting film director, a top notch hotelier, a retired chief justice, and some of the country’s most expensive lawyers. Since the quiet “colony” prefers to stay estranged from the rest of our chaotic city, 8pm here is feeling like 11pm. Residents Shaan, Sehwad and Zafar have just settled down for the night. The young men’s shared bed is a sheet of tirpal, unrolled along a neighbourhood lane. Excerpts from their chitchat. Shaan: We have been here for some days to demolish a bangla. (He gestures to the blue barricades behind.) Sehwad: A

Home sweet home. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The small cooking gas cylinder is limply hanging down the wall, as casually as a cotton gamcha from a wardrobe hook. A chequered gamcha is hung similarly, in fact. There’s also a few pants and shirts, as well as a pithu bag. It is a dimly lit one-room home, and quite extraordinary. The entire floor is piled up with metal pipes, the kind used in construction. The house itself is improvised inside a van. “We live here,” says one of the men in a matter-of-fact tone. The four roommates are labourers, and are stationed today in a monument-facing part of tony Hazrat Nizamuddin East, across the road from the book-lined apartment of

Roomies, a portrait. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] So dark, so musty. It’s like a cave. As the eyes adjust to the dimness, this mysterious world exudes even more mystery. The jagged walls—unpainted, bare— are of long-ago lakhori. These hefty columns—hewed out of stones. The floor—all sand. “It’s Badarpur sand,” clarifies one of the men. This is the extraordinary residence of a bunch of men who haul construction material on wooden carts. Their home is without doubt the remnants of a haveli, here in Old Delhi’s Galli Chooriwallan. But it’s just an old ruin, they mumble, dismissing it as a “purana khandahar” owned by a local builder. The place has partly the look of a godown. Sacks of Badarpur sand are stacked

Home sweet home [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Here, the white cord of a mobile phone charger. There, a blue-rimmed handheld mirror. On a hook, two jackets. On the floor, a blanket. This room is an entire house, tucked within a congested enclave, next to a dhobi ghat, behind GB Pant Hospital. The room is the size of a train compartment, or perhaps smaller. There is no window. Some daylight is entering through the half-opened door. It is the only door. This afternoon, Irshad is at home. In his mid-20s, he is a street hawker of coconuts. So are his older brother and his father. The three men live jointly. The house rent is 3,000 rupees monthly; they have been living here

Home sweet home [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] An entire household is contained in this room. This household contains a life that has largely disappeared. The second floor apartment in Old Delhi’s Gali Chandi Wali houses a family of zardozi karigars (workers) who “design, embroider and manufacture fabrics of zari thread by hand.” This afternoon, Muhammed Afaq is finishing an embroidery on his traditional “karchup” wooden desk. His younger brother Irshad is doing something similar. Both are perched on the floor. Afaq’s wife, Saira Bano, is sitting on the double bed, combing her hair. Their elder daughter Neha is attending a mehndi-design class at Fatima Academy in Lal Kuan. The younger Ilma, a 10th standard student, is at Anglo-Arabic School in