Letter from Venice – A home in Venezia, Calle delle Canne Travel by The Delhi Walla - May 13, 2015May 13, 20152 Inside a Venetian home. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The first floor window usually remains open during the day. A pedestrian walking on the street outside just have to crane his neck upwards to have a glimpse of jam-packed bookshelves. This is Pia Nainer's drawing room. One early afternoon The Delhi Walla enters her dimly lit apartment. She lives in Calle delle Canne, near the Bridge of the Three Arches on the west side of Venice. Ms Nainer is a painter, though for many years she gave flute lessons in a music school. She shares this 4-room apartment with her husband, Giovanni, daughter, Giulia, and dog, Lilla. Her husband is a professor of architecture. Her daughter attends college. The ground floor consists
Letter from Allahabad – The Last Bungalows, Civil Lines Travel by The Delhi Walla - December 27, 20140 The precious relics. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Allahabad is the land of the Sangam. This meeting point of the Ganga, Yamuna and mythical Saraswati rivers in eastern Uttar Pradesh has been attracting pilgrims for centuries. But one should also make a pilgrimage to Allahabad to see its Raj-era bungalows — those crumbling mansions so atmospheric, so superior in beauty to their modern cousins in Lutyens’ Delhi. While every district headquarter in India has been a beneficiary of the Raj’s architectural projects, this town astounds with the number of bungalows that survive to this day. It’s difficult to give an exact count of how many have lived to tell the tale but old-timers know that over the last decade, many
Letter from Allahabad – Poet Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Jyoti Apartments Travel by The Delhi Walla - December 3, 2014December 3, 20142 The prodigal poet [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Posing in a camouflage jacket and faded denims, poet Arvind Krishna Mehrotra looks like People magazine’s sexiest man alive. He has long black hair, a five o’clock shadow, a cigarette between his fingers, and an intense look. The 1973 photograph is on the cover of Mr Mehrotra’s 2014 book, Collected Poems, 1969-2014. The picture was taken on a farm in Wisconsin, when the 26-year-old Mr Mehrotra was on a two-year writer’s fellowship in the US. Forty-one years later, Mr Mehrotra is posing for The Delhi Walla in his drawing room in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh. He still wears jeans. He has a long white beard and looks like the American poet Walt Whitman. Mr Mehrotra’s latest offering
Letter from Allahabad – Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, Hastings Road Travel by The Delhi Walla - November 20, 2014November 22, 20142 A Delhi writer in spirit. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] One November noon, The Delhi Walla met Shamsur Rahman Faruqi at his bungalow in Hastings Road, Allahabad, a historically rich town 600 kilometers east of of our city. The 79-year-old Urdu writer recently returned from Delhi to launch The Sun That Rose From The Earth, his collection of novellas and a novel, that he himself translated from Urdu to English. He also underwent a series of medical checkups in the capital. A retired officer of the Indian Postal Service, Mr Faruqi commands unchallenged reverence among literary-minded Delhiwallas. His last novel, The Mirror Of Beauty, was a weighty Mughal-era epic set largely in Delhi. His new book, containing fictionalized stories of
Letter from Lahore – Delhi Dreaming, Pakistan Travel by The Delhi Walla - November 7, 2014November 7, 20142 An Indian in a post-Partition world. [Text and photos by Aanchal Malhotra] Lahore was wild today. The sky had suddenly turned dark and it felt like late evening though it was barely noon. Rain poured hard against my window pane. But before the unexpected arrival of the clouds my morning had been spent exploring the beautiful Wazir Khan Mosque with a friend. We parked our car outside the Dilli Darwaza and walked through the grand gateway that pointed to my beloved city of Delhi. The glorious sunshine of the subcontinent poured over us. As we walked to the mosque a strange feeling of déjà vu possessed me, like I’d been down these lanes before, the narrow uneven roads and dusty path. But
City Travel – Pekhari Village, Great Himalayan National Park Travel by The Delhi Walla - July 30, 2014July 30, 20144 The UNESCO heritage site. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Perched almost on the peak, this is a hamlet of gabled houses and fruity smells. Black and Yellow Grosbeaks whistle through apricot trees. Wild mongooses dart through cannabis bushes. The imperially slim men and women grow old working the slanting fields. And down the hill flows the sacred Tirthan river. Today this timeless shell of 80 houses is cracking open, its people waking up to new possibilities. At 2,170m, the far-flung Pekhari village in Kullu district in mountainous Himachal Pradesh is a gateway to the Great Himalayan National Park (GHNP). In June 2014, at a special session in Doha, Qatar, it was included in the Unesco World Heritage list. On its
City Travel – Tid Bit Book Shop, Karachi Travel by The Delhi Walla - July 3, 2014July 3, 20141 Pakistan's charming bookseller. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] The bookstore was in Saddar, across the street from De Paris, my 273-rupees-a-day hotel in Karachi. This was my first journey to Pakistan. I had no camera then. Despite its American-style fast food outlets, the central Karachi neighbourhood of Saddar was a typical South Asian bazaar. All the jewelry stores were lined on one street, the garment shops were bunched together in another, and a separate lane was dedicated to photography studios. The pavements were home to refugees from Afghanistan. I chanced upon the shop while searching for a cheap eatery during the afternoon heat of Karachi. The book-lined room was situated beside an Iranian café. Inside, an elderly man
Letter from England – The Maharajah’s Well, Oxfordshire Travel by The Delhi Walla - May 30, 20142 India's gift. [Text and photos by Solveig Marina Bang] A hundred and fifty years ago, on hearing that a thirsty child had been beaten for stealing a gulp of water from private land because communal ponds had dried up, the Maharaja of Benares (Varanasi) donated money towards the building of a well in the impoverished community. The needy boy was not in India but in the tiny village of Stoke Row in the Oxfordshire countryside. Ishree, Maharaja of Benares, had heard of the child from his good friend, Oxfordshire native Edward Anderdon Reade, who worked as a civil servant in India for decades. Mr Reade had had a well sunk and a mango orchard planted in a local Indian community, and, in return,
City Travel – Views of Paris, Around Town Travel by The Delhi Walla - February 10, 2014February 12, 20147 Made in France. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] In Paris, The Delhi Walla spent many many hours in streets, gardens, bookstores, restaurants and graveyards. I also visited landmarks associated with the life and work of novelist Marcel Proust. When it was time to leave the city, I wanted to stay back and lead a life colored with a new set of manners, memories, traditions and personal history. But I'm back in Delhi, along with souvenirs of Paris. Another world is here 1b. 1a. 1c. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 7a. 8. 9. 10. 10a. 11. 11a. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. (Photo by JMS)
City Travel – Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris Travel by The Delhi Walla - February 4, 2014February 4, 20141 The heart of France. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Its bell tower is the oldest in the French capital. The Delhi Walla is in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, one of the oldest churches of Paris. The ancient abbey has been standing on this cobbled ground for more than fifteen centuries. It has a cross, a 14th century statue of Our Lady of Consolation, a wooden statue of Christ, 13 chapels, a couple of paintings and an organ that was installed in 1813. According to a pamphlet I picked up inside the church, Saint-Germain-des-Prés was named after the bishop of Paris and it was one of the most important intellectual centers of Gaul before it was destroyed by the Norman invasions in the 9th century.