City Walk – Chhatta Shaikh Mangloo, Old Delhi
Life of a lane. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It flows like a nadi from under the shadow of the Jama Masjid. But a citizen walking on the street won’t see anything of the grand mosque. Flanked by…
City Walk – Asaf Ali Road, Old Delhi
Road by the vanished wall. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Like people, places grow, reach their pinnacle, and then decline. Something like Old Delhi’s Asaf Ali Road. Its cordon of grand buildings once housed la-di-da institutions. Today, modest…
City Walk – Faseel Road Part 2, Old Delhi
Path by the wall. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Some uncertainly say it exists. Most say it doesn’t. The Faseel Road signage is elusive. The road’s name does occasionally pop up on shop hoardings, but no dedicated signboard…
City Walk – Faseel Road Part 1, Old Delhi
Path by the wall. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The dictionary meaning of the Persian word Faseel is ‘qile ki diwar,’ the fort wall. Once the entire Old Delhi was gheraoed by a 5.5 miles-long city wall, punctuated…
City Walk – Sir Syed Road, Old Delhi
Scholar’s lane. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Our Dilli has no dearth of books for those who have a taste for old buildings. Published in 1846, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s illustrated Urdu classic Asar-al-Sanadid (Relics of Past Things)…
City Walk – Monsoon Stroll, Civil Lines
Civil Lines impressionism. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] A well-known couple residing in upscale Civil Lines, in north Delhi, recently checked themselves for a few days into a room at the India International Center (Annexe). Reason: their area…
City Walk – Ghamand Sarai Street, Gurgaon
True paradise is the paradise lost. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Some believe a land becomes our own only after its soil grows fertile with our memories. A city too begins to truly belong to us only after…
City Life – Gali Chamre Wali Part 2, Old Delhi
Life of a lane. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Walls have ears, we know that. But doors with mouths? That’s the magic happening in this gali—two facing doors are chitchatting, that too in human-speak. Blame the twilight dark….
City Neighbourhood – Pahari Bhojla, Old Delhi
‘Hood on the hill. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The congested mohalla of Pahari Bhojla is nestled about a pahari, a hill, and is said to have been the hideout of Bhojla daku, back when the Walled City…
City Walk – Jama Masjid Road, Old Delhi
A way of mixed feelings. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The setting sun has made the sky incarnadine. Or, is the sandstone minar turning the sky red? Tall and utterly alone, suspended in the thin air, this lean…
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