A serene circle. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] You can cross the entire Gole Park in Central Delhi’s Windsor Place in five minutes flat. It is a traffic roundabout. While there are the usual trees, flowers, grass and bird songs, there is no getting away from the city. You may clap a hand over your ears to shut out the traffic roar, but you will still see the towering Le Meridian hotel on one side, and hotel Shangri La on the other. The park is not perfect. There are bald patches on the lawn and a little bridge straddles a dry pond. Yet, this park soothes our senses. Though nothing like Safdarjang Enclave’s Deer Park or the North Campus ridge, the

Souvenirs of our past. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The National Museum in Central Delhi is a guide to India. Opened in 1960, it has 2, 00,000 exhibits -- the older dating back to 2500 BC and beyond. The bronze sculpture of a dancing girl from Mohenjadaro is traced to 2700 BC. A clay pot is traced to 2900 BC. There is a 5th century Shiva, a 6th century Buddha, a 9th century Chola Tripurantaka and a 16th century illustrated folio of Bustan. There is a lion throne of the king of Benares. There is a painting depicting Sufi ascetic Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya absorbed in a sitar recital of his disciple Amir Khusro. In a city marked by Islamic and

The magical greenhouse. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] From October to March, it is a country of roses, tulips, poppies and dahlias – all available at bargain basement prices. Government Sunder Nursery - Sunder means 'beautiful' in Hindi - is India’s largest state-owned nursery. The rest of the year the plant sales outlet is less showy, but it still greets the eye with shades of green and lavender. Hundreds of different kinds of plants are grown here. The Delhi Walla asks you to come here to savour the open space and its serene ambiance, and to watch crows perched on display boards. You could walk for about half a mile along the length of the nursery until you reach the walls

Dining with the VIPs. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Request the fifth table on the right. For before he became president, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam would take his vegetarian thali there. The table was also preferred by late prime minister V.P. Singh. Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi has dined at the same spot. The Dining Room at the India International Centre (IIC) feeds those people who feed our daily news feeds: politicians, bureaucrats, editors, Supreme Court lawyers, authors, painters, actors and other similarly-moulded personages. This first-floor hall and the sunnier Lounge downstairs offer a window into a Delhi institution that was conceived “for the deepening of true and thoughtful understanding between peoples and nations”. Ranjana Sengupta, author of Delhi Metropolitan: The Making of an

When buses will fly. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Delhi’s international airport is named after Indira Gandhi, while Maharana Pratap has to make do with its main inter-state bus terminus. Unfair? Bus terminals, or bus addas, are not considered half as romantic as train stations and they lack the surcharged mood of an airport’s arrival lounge. They are our last resort—when the plane ticket is too steep and it’s too late to get a confirmed booking on the Shatabdi. In April 2012 the aforementioned inter-state bus terminus (ISBT) momentarily grabbed the attention of Delhiwallas, who refer to it as the Kashmere Gate ISBT—it’s at a stone’s throw from the Mughal-era gateway. For the revamped ISBT reopened after an ambitious makeover by the

The ideas den. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The floor is of Kota stone. The benches have wooden sheesham tops. There are no doors. Designed by the Delhi-based Romi Khosla Design Studio, this is Castro Café in Jamia Millia Islamia. It looks out on a garden and stays open till 7pm. The staff wear gloves. The house cat is called Adrian. A students’ canteen, Castro Café first came to notice in 2008 when it featured on the cover of The Modern Architecture of New Delhi, a photo-heavy volume featuring landmarks like the India Habitat Centre, Lotus Temple and the American embassy building. The book called the “semi-open air café” a “blur of the inside and the outside through a space that

The Walled City dictionary. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Once, it was a land of galis (lanes) and kuchas (residential alleys usually inhabited by people having the same occupation). But little remains of Purani Dehli’s canals and tree-lined passageways bespeaking the Mughal era. Windowless hovels and dangling power cables fit the modern description of Old Delhi, aka Shahjahanabad. Its neighbourhoods retain almost nothing of their original character. Even so, swiftly-shifting Old Delhi offers a glimpse of its early days in the place names of its lanes and localities. These identities are derived from professions and peoples, landmarks and landscapes. A stroll helps trace the foundations of a royal capital that endures and thrives. Regular excursions to the Walled City do not mean

A cushioned world. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] In the summer, the blooming flowers of the park’s Amaltas trees paint BK Dutt Colony a shade of gold. During the rest of the year, however, the park looks as ordinary as the neighbourhood in which it is situated. A residential locality in Central Delhi, BK Dutt Colony is named after Batukeshwar Dutt, a freedom fighter who, along with the celebrated revolutionary Bhagat Singh, bombed the Central Legislative Assembly during British rule. Walking in its lanes transports you to the world of colonies – those autonomous republics found across South Asia that have their own government houses, community gardens, and defined boundaries. The clichés of domestic life are the principal characteristic of these subsidized

Single screens and multiplexes. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The pink chandeliers are from Italy. The carved pillars are of wood. The LED screen displays the exact air-conditioned temperature inside the auditorium. The balcony seats—headrest included—are of velvet jacquard. The maximum ticket price is `125 and the minimum, `50. This is the lobby of Delite Cinema that sits on the border of Old and New Delhi. Now, cross over to south Delhi. The poster windows advertise Lufthansa and Citibank. A Samsung kiosk stands next to a Whipped Dessert Boutique. The snacks at the lobby counter include dishes with long names like “honey mustard chicken ham with honey oat”. The men’s loo has screens on each urinal showing a cola ad. The maximum

The Delhi underworld. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Omwati sweeps the place. Anil sells guavas and apples. Dinesh Kumar hawks mobile phone covers and chargers. Baneshwar Sahu keeps application forms for passport and PAN (permanent account number) card. Manoj Kumar has a collection of ties, with dozens of them in different shades of red. Raju sits behind his pile of gloves, socks and monkey caps. The rest of the people are a blur of legs, arms and conversations. Connecting the two sides of Kasturba Gandhi Marg (KG Marg) is a pedestrian corridor, one of the six underground pedestrian passageways in central Delhi’s Colonial-era Connaught Place — it is also the liveliest. The rest of the subways, all on the Outer