City Neighbourhood – Kona, Old Delhi Regions Walks by The Delhi Walla - January 18, 20250 The Walled City encyclopedia. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Straight, short and lean, the gali quickly hits an impasse, ending into a doorway veiled by a flashy red curtain. The short gali deserves to be recorded—because it's there!—and because every big and small Walled City lane commands a unique personality. One lane near Turkman Gate Bazar for instance is shorter than even this lane, called Gali Nal Wali (already chronicled on this page). This lane though has been denied the formal status of a gali. It is simply referred to as Kona. Kona means corner, and the lane indeed lies in a corner of Haveli Azam Khan Chowk. A pedestrian-friendly intersection, the chowk is like New York City—it never sleeps, energised by
City Neighbourhood – Gali Kalyanpura, Old Delhi Regions Walks by The Delhi Walla - January 17, 20250 The Walled City encyclopedia. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Mohammed Tahir is an unusual type of healer. He is said to help rid people of their inner djinns and bhoot. The healer’s hoarding (hand-painted by Walled City’s iconic Shakeel Artist) is hanging at the mouth of the lane—a long, very long lane. This cold gloomy evening, nobody being accosted in Old Delhi’s Gali Kalyanpura has any gyan to offer on the story behind its name. The easygoing chap at M.S. Mobile Communication suggests badgering the street’s elderly folk. But the elderly face at the facing stationery shop says that those who would have known a story or two are lying buried in Dilli Gate Qabristan. Whatever, the first part of
City Walk – Secret Passage, Old Delhi Walks by The Delhi Walla - January 5, 2025January 5, 20251 The Walled City encyclopedia [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] This secretive Old Delhi pedestrian lane has no shop and no house, no temple and no mosque, and currently neither any pedestrian. It also has no name. There is nothing else like it in the entire historic quarter. Linking the hectic Netaji Marg to the less hectic Ansari Road, the short, straight, almost-hidden passage might be empty of humans this cold afternoon, but is brimming with the traffic sounds of the adjacent Netaji Marg. Even so, the lane’s distinctive silence is stubbornly intact. The track goes past a wasted heath littered with paper cups, cigarette butts, chip packets, thermocol bowls, tobacco sachets, beer bottles, a severely rusting vehicle—and amid all this litter
City Walk – Gali Ansari, Old Delhi Walks by The Delhi Walla - December 29, 20240 On Old Delhi streets [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The cul-de-sac is full of discoloured doors and cobwebbed windows. Suddenly a little white cat slinks out into the empty lane from under a locked door. On seeing an unfamiliar visitor, she starts fleeing towards the far end of the lane, stopping after every few moments, turning her head to make an eye contact with the stranger. Gali Ansari near Turkman Gate has to be among Old Delhi’s least-known streets. It is also a street that has apparently stayed frozen in time. For it hasn’t changed at all since the independence in 1947, insists the venerable Shamshuddin, sitting inside his box-making workshop. He has been living in the lane since his birth
City Neighbourhood – Kucha Chelan, Old Delhi Hangouts Walks by The Delhi Walla - December 1, 2024December 1, 20240 The Walled City encyclopedia [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] This Old Delhi street should be called Gali Good Luck. The street has Good Luck Tailors, Good Luck Tea Stall and Good Luck Hair Salon. The place is actually Kucha Chelan, and it actually has a very bad luck past. Following the 1857 uprising, the avenging British massacred 1,400 citizens here. Those martyrs must have comprised some of Old Delhi’s wealthiest gentry, for Kucha Chelan’s name is said to have evolved from Chehel Amiran, forty wealthy men. Today, no sign of that violent history exists. All is serene along the lane, the serenest aspect being a small gurudwara. Every morning, an elderly lady is seen seated crosslegged beside the holy
City Hangout – Kucha Pati Ram, Old Delhi Hangouts Walks by The Delhi Walla - November 16, 20240 Line of beauty. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] When not much subsists of a city’s material past—after the elderly people are gone, after the things are broken and scattered—what happens of the place? Then, it likely resembles Old Delhi. The Walled City lanes are littered with timeworn wreckage. One street, though, is stubbornly holding onto an unusually substantial portion of architectural heritage, and it is remarkably well-preserved. The façades of Kucha Pati Ram residences remain dense with quaint balconies, windows and doorways. Kucha traditionally referred to any lane where the dwellers exercised the same occupation. And Pati Ram… well, neither shoe repairer Sonu, nor nankhatai seller Heera Lal, or chai stall owner Praveen, could tell anything precise about the
City Walk – Pandara Road, Central Delhi Walks by The Delhi Walla - November 13, 2024November 13, 20240 Path of the Pandavas. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The empty footpath is shadowed by a dense cover of tree leaves. This smoggy November afternoon, Pandara Road in central Delhi is dead silent. The adjacent houses too aren’t showing any outward sign of life. It is like strolling through a deserted city. The ambience nevertheless is not at all hostile. The area is lined with standard-issue apartments and bungalows. These are homes of high-ranking government personnel. According to recent reports, Bangladesh’s exiled leader Sheikh Hasina is currently residing somewhere in the vicinity. Her “safe house” might not exactly be on Pandara Road, but during her earlier exile to Delhi in the 1970s, following the assassination of her father along with
City Walk – Chanakyapuri, Central Delhi Walks by The Delhi Walla - October 28, 20240 A surreal stroll. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] No stars to be seen but the moon up there is lingering like a tiny white hole at the top of the greyish black sky. While down here, the deserted pave is bordered by unwieldly trees which cast upon the ground, wherever they are lit by street-lamps, the Japanese stencil of their shadows. Sudden gusts of cooling breeze is also rippling along from moment to moment. The pavement borders a wide road, presently empty. An evening stroll in Chanakyapuri makes for one of Delhi’s most sublime walks. The premium locality is the address of embassies and foreign diplomats. It is just 8 O’clock in the evening, and the place is as lively
City Walk – Gali Salim Mohd Shah, Old Delhi Life Walks by The Delhi Walla - October 14, 20240 The street of sparrows. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] They are popping out of the green leaves like soap bubbles. Then they spread into the warm dusty air, quickly vanishing (like soap bubbles). Moments later, they are again sighted, as they return to the leaves. These are sparrows. The birds reside amid the cooling darkness of a gigantic hanging garden of malti vines. This must be among the very few places in Old Delhi where you may spot Delhi’s state bird, whose sightings have grown less common over the years. Indeed, the rare spectacle rescues Gali Salim Mohd Shah from ordinariness. Otherwise it has a severely minuscule scope. Some may simply dismiss the gali as a forgettable side-alley of Kucha
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