One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Uniformed in blue, he is stationed at the posh neighbourhood’s entrance, here in central Delhi, attending to his day shift as a gateway guard. Saurabh is 23. He arrived in Delhi five days ago from his home district of Rewa in Madhya Pradesh. It is his first time in the city, he says. He informs he did his postgraduate master's degree in commerce from Rewa’s Awadhesh Pratap Singh University. Saurabh was awarded the degree a year ago, but he did not immediately try to search for a suitable employment. Instead, he stayed at home, pressing pause on his private plans to focus on performing a grandson’s duties.

One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] His wife of two decades died this week on August 20, and “I don’t have a single photo of Salma,” Shehzad says, three days after burying her in a graveyard in Madangir. Shehzad sells chooran and similar digestives on a small trolley outside Old Delhi’s Turkman Gate gateway. His establishment is close to the area’s police post, beside a fruit seller’s stall. He has seven children but only Rukhsar and Aleem are with him this afternoon (see photo)—“others are with relatives.” Salma was the family breadwinner, says Shehzad. The couple had arrived more than two decades ago from Agra. He started in the Walled City as a labourer,

One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The barefoot man is lying on the long pavement wall. Perched precariously along the narrow width of the wall, he is silently watching the evening traffic on the road, here in central Delhi. One wonders what is going on in his mind. But first a brief account of the citizen’s life and circumstances that have propelled him to this seemingly mundane moment. In his mid-20s, Abdul Ghaffar grew up at his Bihar village in zila Darbhanga. His late father was a tailor. His mother works as a dish washer in village households. Soon after his marriage, he became a “raj mistri,” a labourer skilled in demolishing old buildings

One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Every year his ageing umbrella helped him survive the wet monsoon months. The umbrella lately suffered from a slight cut in the middle. Pavement barber Rameshwar Thakur have been administering his hajamat (shaving) stall for more than 35 years. It’ lies on the border between New Delhi and Old Delhi, near the historic Ramlila Maidan. The gentle-mannered gent had acquired the beloved umbrella years ago on the occasion of a family wedding. Being the souvenir of a cherished time, he found it difficult to let go of the torn umbrella. At one point, he had it mended by a pavement cobbler. That was a temporary

One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The afternoon air has no breeze. Waiting for a “sawari” near Shiv Mandir in Chirag Dehli village, the profusely sweating auto rickshaw driver Kuldeep Prasad picks up his punkah and starts fanning close to his face. The hand fan is actually a white cardboard sheet, one side scrawled with something in Hindi. “My son’s handwriting.” A few weeks ago, Kuldeep’s younger child had copied a few lines on the sheet as part of his classroom assignment; afterwards he dumped the thing in a corner of the house and forgot all about it. On a recent morning, while leaving for work, Kuldeep spotted the sheet lying on the floor.

One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Its construction began in May 1639, it was completed almost a decade later in April 1648–Old Delhi’s Lal Qila, the seat of the Mughals. This Lal Qila is in New Delhi and it is getting completed in mere two days. Manoj is giving finishing touches to the monument. “I am,” he says matter-of-factly, responding to a query if he is an artist. Attired for the intensely humid afternoon in workday shorts and T-shirt, the Faridabad dweller’s current studio happens to be a roadside pave near Bharat Mandapam in Pragati Maidan. The canvas is an outer wall of a busy underpass, the road underneath echoing with the steady

One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The woman clad in a sari is among the regular faces of N-Block, Outer Circle, Connaught Place. No matter how unbearable the weather, Rani is sighted everyday, sitting on the floor of the colonial-era colonnade, a white chaadar spread by her side, with dozens of jhumke, or ear-danglers, on display. This afternoon, the discomfort of late June’s high temperature is worsened by the pre-monsoon’s high humidity. The colonnade though is lined with air-conditioned showrooms and cafés, and people behind the glass walls look at ease. Now, a person walking along the corridor slows down to gaze at the jhumke. Rani greets her with a smile. The smile

One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The elderly man is sitting by the crowded market lane, on a brick cushioned with a folded plastic bag; His right arm is raised forward, holding five packs of matchsticks. A few packs are lying in a small black polythene bag, between his feet. Ram Charan is a hawker of matchboxes. This has been his career for a long time. “Some people arrive in the city and get into the business of selling balloons, some start to sell budiya ke baal, some sell seb-aur-amrood… I started selling maachis when I arrived in Dilli 20 years ago from my village in Budaun,” he says. The profession has helped him

One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Can fiction save a life? It did for a young “jumna paar” poet and music student in east Delhi’s Mayur Vihar Phase 3. Mukul is one of those rare Delhiwale who have read “cover-to-cover” a book universally acknowledged to be among literature’s most difficult novels—James Joyce’s Ulysses. As the world prepares to celebrate the annual Bloomsday on 16th June, the date in which the great 1922 novel is set (Leopold Bloom of Dublin being the novel’s hero),this devoted Delhi Joycean gets frank on his relationship with Ulysses. How was your first encounter with the novel? It was post the monsoon of 2019. I had just quit my

One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] It is evening. He is lying flat on the floor, upon a mattress, at his Ghaffar Manzil pad, close to Jamia Millia Islamia University. Akram Ansari turned 24 today. Staring up at the ceiling, he is mulling over life, especially his college life. The Lucknow walla arrived in Delhi in 2019 as a law student in Jamia. Here he encountered some completely novel experiences of academia civilisation, and not all were nice—-such as flunking in four papers during a semester exam. It was traumatic, something like this had never happened to him before, he couldn’t bring himself to tell it to parents back home. “Yes, there have been