City Street – Gali Surkh Poshan, Old Delhi Regions Walks by The Delhi Walla - June 15, 20240 Red lane. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The fakeer’s deep-throated singing voice is wafting probingly along the weathered walls of the narrow cul-de-sac. The other much younger fakeer is silent, holding a small polythene thaila filled with surkh-red tomatoes. Both men are attired in white. Gali Surkh Poshan must have its share of dwellers, but nobody else can be seen this afternoon. No matter, the fakeer continues to sing with feeling. Dur hoon Medine se, Aur isliye udasi hain. (Being far from Medina, Is the cause for sadness.) Meanwhile, it is unbearably hot, but it is so outside the lane, where the lane merges into the open expanse of Gali Choori Walan. Within the cramped Surkh Poshan, it is like being in cool
City Neighbourhood – Brijmohan Marg, Old Delhi Life Regions Walks by The Delhi Walla - June 9, 20240 A lane in the Walled City. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Buildings evoke eras. With its arched doorway and carved balcony, a mansion of lakhori bricks in Gali Chooriwallan instantly transports the gazer to the late Mughal times. Some streets away within the same historic quarter, in Ganj Meer Khan, a multi-storey apartment complex resembles the contemporary aesthetics of the distant suburbia. While towards the eastern walls of the Walled City, here at Brijmohan Marg, these contemplative houses are indicative of… just which era? These buildings are neither as ornamental as havelis, nor as toneless as flats. Take this mansion of modern-day bricks. It doesn’t look old, it also doesn’t look new. The hulky facade is partitioned into equal halves
City Neighbourhood – Gali Andheri, Old Delhi Life Regions by The Delhi Walla - June 3, 20240 The darkened street. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] No darkness tonight in Gali Andheri, not even a spot of it—though the name translates to ‘darkened street.’ The twisty long-winded Old Delhi lane is momentarily landscaped with unwieldily patches of white and orange luminosities. These lights are emanating out of scores of street lamps and house windows. Young Moosa, a Gali Andheri dweller, is standing at the street’s colourfully painted gateway, where it meets Pahari Bhojla’s crowded bazar. He informs that his street had no wayside lamps until about the turn of the century, and that it would return to total darkness each day after sundown. An eighth grade student, the boy naturally doesn’t have a lived experience of
City Neighbourhood- Gali Manihar Wali, Old Delhi Regions Walks by The Delhi Walla - May 13, 20240 A Walled City Lane. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] When the Walled City nostalgists muse about its early days, they refer to that long-ago time as “badshahi ke daur mein.” Indeed, it was “during the era of emperors” that almost all the Walled City galliyan and kuche acquired their names. These specific nouns richly tell of the past but rarely of the present, for the world has drastically altered in the historic quarter. The story goes that “badshahi ke daur mein” Gali Choori Walan used to be the street of choori traders. Today, not a single bangle store is here. Same ended up being the fateful kismet of a Choori Walan side-lane. Gali Manihar Wali used to house
City Neighbourhood – Laddu Ghati, Paharganj Regions by The Delhi Walla - April 24, 20240 The laddu valley [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Lady with a dog. Gentleman with a chai kettle. A temple. A peepal tree as immense as Kipling’s jungle. A water pyau. And manning the entry of this introverted world are pomegranate seller Rajinder, ice-cream seller Lalji, marigold seller Ramesh Kumar, and aloo-tikki seller Chunnilal. This street is in a megapolis, but feels like a friendly small town, with its slow sequence of uneventful days. Such towns probably don’t exist for real, but the charmingly named Laddu Ghati—valley of laddu—does exude the ambiance of unrealistic havens. It lies in the backpackers’ district of Paharganj, but is free of cafés, lodges and backpackers—though a few rooms of next-door Hotel Relax overlook the street. Some
City Neighbourhood- Gali Godo Wali, Old Delhi Regions Walks by The Delhi Walla - March 4, 20240 A secretive world. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] With its extreme narrowness and darkened ambiance, Gali Godo Wali has the mood of an underground tunnel . Plus, it is so secretive that it doesn’t exist even on Google (until the moment this dispatch goes online!). Sunny afternoon notwithstanding, the short, straight claustrophobic lane is lying pickled in a cooling musty dampness. A door ajar reveals a warren of additional doors—what had seemed to be a single house might be consisting of many houses. From a window ahead comes the muffled rattle of deep freezers; that’s in fact a cold storage for a nearby biryani eatery. The next window bears a handwritten flier for festive dresses. The lane ends into an
City Neighbourhood – Gali School Wali, Old Delhi Regions Walks by The Delhi Walla - February 26, 20240 Lane of doorways. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Standing outside an archaic blue doorway, a man in blue (see photo) is singing a tragically worded lullaby, pleading for alms. He pauses, stands silently for some time, and walks away, going past a pink doorway, similarly patterned, past a green doorway, similarly patterned, past… oh well, this Walled City lane is extraordinary for being full of arched doorways. Each is an intricately detailed piece of art, many revealing a skeletal frame of slim narrow lakhori bricks, the building material of yesteryears. The only structure in Gali School Wali that looks contemporary—meaning, as grey and featureless as any building—is the municipality-run school from which the gali gets its name. On a more considered
City Neighbourhood – Anjuman Chowk, Old Delhi General Hangouts Regions by The Delhi Walla - January 22, 20240 Heart of the world. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Anjuman Chowk is the center of the world. This belief is firmly instilled into the sensibilities of the Anjuman Chowk gentry. After all, almost all the galis that matter to them drain into this square. One gali flows in from Chitli Qabar Bazar, which has Delhi’s best bakery for breakfast rusk, and which also has Delhi’s best shop for dress buttons of all kinds. One gali emanates from Bulbuli Khana where lies Empress Razia Sultan’s grave. One gali comes from Gali Ghantewali that had a clock tower to which dwellers from other galis would walk over to check the hour of the day. (Gali Salim Wali, which too runs into
City Neighbourhood – Gali Ghisi Int, Old Delhi Regions Walks by The Delhi Walla - January 13, 20240 A street with an unusual name. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] It feels like Vladivostok. Just as remote, as isolated from the crowded and familiar world. This silent Old Delhi street, on the slope of Pahari Bhojla, is the side-lane of a side-lane of a lane. On this cold windy afternoon, most doors and windows are shut closed. The plaque bearing the street’s name is partly hidden behind a loopy tangle of black cables (see photo). The name is extraordinary--Gali Ghisi Int, the street of worn-out brick. The only open door is that of a silversmith’s workshop. The young owner’s family has been living on the street for generations, but he cannot shed any light on its name. He instead points to
City Neighbourhood – Gali Ghantewali, Old Delhi Regions Walks by The Delhi Walla - January 9, 20240 A street of the bell. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Lazy but punctual, it comes back every hour to mark the passing of time. Sometimes its sound is so muted by the daytime blabber of the streets, and one could imagine it has stopped. But there can be no confusion at night—the sound spreads in ripples, its prosaicness distilled out of a reservoir of poetry. Or rather, that is how it must have been like, for it no longer exists. That almost mythical grand bell—It was believed to have adorned the mansion of a silver merchant—that gave its identity to a street in Old Delhi, on the slopes of Pahari Bhojla. Today, the only ghanta in Gali Ghantewali is in