City Walk – Gali Lal Darwaza, Old Delhi Regions Walks by The Delhi Walla - August 26, 20240 A Walled City lane. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The yellow door headlines the saffron doorway, and the wall around is light blue. The sight dazzles the eye. It is one of the many compulsively clickable private doorways on this Walled City street, which is actually named after a doorway. Gali Lal Darwaza is entered, naturally,, through a lal darwaza, red doorway. This long lane near Bazar Sitaram goes past a series of residences and temples before ending into a… well, doorway. Here’s a severely truncated tour of Lal Darwaza darwazas. —An unusually tall wooden door graced by a sculpted Ganesh ji forms the portal to Jugal Bhawan, marked with the year 1953. —A doorway’s dark-wood door is arrayed out
City Neighbourhood – Gali Haveli Kallu Khawas, Old Delhi Hangouts Regions Walks by The Delhi Walla - August 17, 20240 The world of a long lane. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] What to write about it? This is just a narrow lane remarkable only for looking too-too unremarkable. Its mouth at the bustling Chitli Qabar Bazar street is flanked by a bangle stall. Whatever, the gali seems short and dull, it must end some dozen steps ahead on reaching that facing wall. The lane reaches the wall, but doesn’t end there. It veers to the left, goes straight, turns sharply to the right, goes straight, to the right again, straight, to the left, finally ending into a panel of partly pink doorways. Contradicting the first impression, the entire path turns out to be dense with many sights and many sounds. Such
City Neighbourhood – GB Road, Old Delhi Walks by The Delhi Walla - August 11, 2024August 11, 20240 A place in the city. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Garstin Bastion Road has colonial-era landmarks—Siddiq Building is from 1939. It has a Hanuman temple and a sufi dargah. It has shops for bathroom fittings, and for machines with names like mechanical seals, rubber dori, and nylon sandwich belt. It has an “all women police post.” It even has a monument—Ajmeri Gate is one of the few surviving gateways of the Walled City’s mostly vanished wall. GB Road is extremely accessible. It is next-door to New Delhi railway station, a mere 15-minute walk from Connaught Place. Indeed, the many scenes of GB Road are also the scenes of any other place in the capital--cars, bikes, bullock carts (see photo!). rickshaws,
City Neighbourhood – Gali Pyaun Wali, Chawri Bazar Faith Regions Walks by The Delhi Walla - August 4, 20240 Lane with a well and temple. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Maa Durga, Bhagwan Krishen with Radha ji, Devi Sita with Bhagwan Ram, and Hanuman ji… all these divinities are present, their portraits sanctifying the temple’s blue walls. The eyes though are first drawn to Shiv Bhagwan. The life-like statue’s right palm is bestowing a blessing, while the wrists are adorned with marigold malas. The eyes next wander down to something less common for a sanctum sanctorum. A blue hand-pump. It stands where a kuan is said to have existed. For centuries, that well diligently served this part of the Walled City, a passer-by says. Inevitably the place came to be identified as a general pyaun of drinking water for the
City Neighbourhood – Kucha Baqaullah Khan Hangouts Walks by The Delhi Walla - July 27, 20240 One of the two brothers. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Once upon a time there were “do bhai”— Rohilla Khan and Baqaullah Khan. Both brothers were Mughal nobles. The assertion is forcefully made by a handful of men idling this humid evening at Kucha Baqaullah Khan. (The same claim was asserted one afternoon months ago by a few men idling at the neighbouring Kucha Rohilla Khan—a street already featured on The Delhi Walla). The entry to Baqaullah’s blind alley is like a hole in the wall, sandwiched between the hole-in-the-wall shops of Chitli Qabar Bazar. Fortunately, the green-bordered signboard bearing the street’s name is easily discernible. The other marker is the huge black tank perched atop the tricoloured gateway. Inside, the unpainted
City Neighbourhood – Hamdadrd Chowk, Old Delhi Hangouts Landmarks Walks by The Delhi Walla - July 27, 20240 Circle of birds. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] This humid afternoon the circular traffic island of Hamdard Chowk on Asaf Ali Road is filled, as always, with hundreds of pigeons. The traffic noise is reaching into the sprawling circle weakened and indistinct. A man in white kurta pajama is slowly walking about the circle, stopping frequently, picking up things from the circle’s surprisingly high platform, and he is putting those things… into his mouth! These are broken pieces of mithai that somebody must have placed for the pigeons, he says. He doesn’t give reasons for consuming these himself. ‘Partner in pain’ in Urdu, the chowk’s name comes from the facing headquarters of Hamdard Laboratories At night, the traffic circle’s surroundings--the
City Life – Ramjas Path, Daryaganj Life Walks by The Delhi Walla - July 7, 2024July 7, 20240 Of silence and song [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The lane is steeped in ‘pin drop silence,’ just the thing the teachers at the school ahead might expect from their students. The short Ramjas Paath in Daryaganj is lined with a handful of enormous pilkhans, whose thick brown branches gently spread upon the lane, colonising the upper altitudes, hiding much of the sky from the earth. A pair of vessels are hanging from a branch high up in the air; one of those is said to filled with grains for the birds, another is filled with water. Aam Panna seller Yameen shows a rope-and-pulley apparatus equipped around the tree’s wrinkled trunk. “It brings down the vessels to our level for
City Hangout – Gali Teeke Wali, Old Delhi Hangouts Walks by The Delhi Walla - July 7, 20240 Doorway lane. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Sixty-paces-long, the narrow Gali Teeke Wali is a tributary of the much larger Gali Choori Walan. The lane is stamped with a few “car body parts” shops, along with a few printing presses. Sometimes a sweating labourer is seen hauling a mountainous stack of paper sheets on his bent back. This afternoon, the primary sound is of a printing press machine’s rhythmic rattle. People popping up infrequently along the street don’t have much to say on its name except that “the naam has passed down from the old times.” A woman in black burqa suggests that the lane must have originally been the “address of Brahmins who would apply sacred teeka on their
City Walk – Bhairo Marg, Central Delhi Walks by The Delhi Walla - June 25, 2024June 25, 20240 Road with a view. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] This building is very new. That building is very old. Like a hoard heaped by the road, Delhi’s severely disparate versions lie on the opposing sides of a same avenue. Bhairo Marg is flanked by the gigantic complex of Bharat Mandapam, as well as by the similarly gigantic Purana Qila. The former opened in 2023. The latter was completed in 1538. The avenue’s long wide sidewalk runs along its northern perimeter, skirting past Bharat Mandapam. A leisurely stroll shows panoramas of both the Mandapam and the Qila, which is across the road. This evening, the walker-friendly pathway is deserted, enabling the citizen-pedestrian to patiently appraise the extraordinary contrast between the two far-apart eras
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