City Hangout – Everest Café, Paharganj
Cramped and cool. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] At an altitude of 239 metres, Everest Café cannot fit more than a dozen people at any given time. Tucked in a shaded lane, it is off the main street…
City Hangout – Sarojini Nagar Market, South Delhi
Everything and more. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Think of Sarojini Nagar, or SN, as the setting of a trashy fairy tale. It is fit for a beautiful princess, robbed off her principality and left with little to…
City Hangout – Khwaja Mir Dard Basti, Central Delhi
The poet’s ghetto. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Khwaja Mir Dard Basti, or Shakur ki Dandi, is crude and poorly constructed. Yet it has poetry, music and handmade art. It is sandwiched between the city’s tallest high-rise and…
City Hangout – Basant Lok Market, South Delhi
Once it was happening. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Dry fountain, broken benches, shoe shine boys, doped beggars, stray cows, and palmists making suspicious predictions. Don’t judge Basant Lok Market by its rundown look. In the heart of…
City Hangout – Maulana Aagan Chaikhana, Mohalla Kabristan
Lovely and sad. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Two blackened kettles, two ceiling fans, some wooden benches, a few plastic chairs and a roughly carved pillar makes it one of Old Delhi’s most charming chaikhanas, or tea houses….
City Hangout – Spell & Bound, SDA Market
Kafka with kebabs. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Those who love their mutton rolls and masala milk may like Spell & Bound at the SDA Market in south Delhi. Opened in May 2011, the bookshop and café has…
City Landmark – Mohan Singh Place Shopping Cum Office Complex, Baba Kharak Singh Marg
A New Delhi oddity. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] In a colonial-era commercial district that is getting colonized by multiplex chains and fast food joints, the Mohan Singh Place ‘shopping cum office complex’ in Connaught Place has no…
City Hangout – Delhi Forests, Around Town
Delhi’s wild side. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Secretive and silent. Intertwined trees, twisted trunks, thorny twigs, rocky slopes, and clumps of grass. The nearest McDonald’s is two miles away. The Delhi Walla is on Delhi’s Central Ridge,…
City Hangout – Half Price Bookstore, Select Citywalk Mall
Affordable trash. [Text and picture by Mayank Austen Soofi] Some of Delhi’s best independently owned book stores (Fact & Fiction, the Bookshop, New Book Depot) don’t encourage discounts. Concessions kill the small players. The 31-year-old Bookworm, a landmark store in…
City Hangout – Shankar’s International Dolls Museum, Near ITO Crossing
People of the world. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] For anyone curious about the world, its civilization and its people, this is a trip more affecting than your grandfather’s stacks of National Geographic magazines. Set up by cartoonist…
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