City Walk – Window Watching, Old Delhi Walks by The Delhi Walla - December 10, 20190 Up views. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The truth is this: Historic Old Delhi can be frustrating for outsiders. Amid all the monuments and bazaars, how do you go about detecting the domestic world of locals getting on with their lives? Well, here’s one trick. While walking along the Walled City’s by-lanes, keep your head perched upwards. Many homes are tucked above the storefronts. A more private world exists up there, and you’ll encounter plenty of it through their windows and balconies. A woman is now curiously peering out from her sun-dappled window here in Galli Chooriwallan, while over there a guy is shaving in his balcony; even as an elderly woman, perhaps his mother, is shelling peas. One window in Matia Mahal Bazar is
City Walk – 5 am Stroll, Baba Kharak Singh Marg Walks by The Delhi Walla - December 3, 2019December 3, 20190 Early morn world. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] There’s something surreal about cold season mornings when the dark light feels like midnight. The clock just struck about five. The November air is veiled in mistiness. Or is that smog? Nevertheless, even if it is pollution, the scene is looking beautiful as if you have entered inside an abstract painting. The early morning walk on central Delhi’s Baba Kharak Singh Marg is capable of invoking such surrealism. Start the stroll from the Gol Dak Khana traffic crossing. The spires of the colonial-era Sacred Heart Cathedral are still shrouded in semi-darkness. A wheel-chaired citizen is sound asleep near the cathedral gates, his head plopped on the arm rest. While another gentleman walks past
City Walk – The Lane to Cornwallis Colony, Central Delhi Walks by The Delhi Walla - November 10, 2019November 10, 20190 The colonial-era way. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Most British-built neighbourhoods, avenues and streets in our fair city of Delhi have been stripped of their original English names. (Goodbye colonialism!) Post-Independence rulers made certain that Curzon Road, for instance, gave way to Kasturba Gandhi, while Lady Willington Park became Lodhi Gardens. But not all names were changed. Within walking distance of Lodhi Gardens is tranquil lane going past the elegant Cornwallis Colony. Lord Charles Cornwallis was Governor General of British India best known to us for his wars with Tipu Sultan (there’s even a famous painting of him receiving Tipu’s two sons as hostages in the year 1793). He went on to establish a Sanskrit college in Benares and India’s first
City Walk – Strolling With Twilight in Delhi, Old Delhi Walks by The Delhi Walla - September 14, 20190 A good walking guide. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s customary for people to walk through their city’s historic quarters while holding on to informative guidebooks. Delhi is blessed to have inspired many fine novels and these works of fiction too must be exploited as unconventional walking guides. First published in 1940 by Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press, Ahmed Ali’s novel Twilight in Delhi is a sophisticated flâneur’s ideal guidebook to Old Delhi. Keep a copy of the Twilight in your back pocket during your walk and fish it out at appropriate locations. For instance, on reaching Pahari Rajaan lane in Chitli Qabar Chowk, flip to page 14 (of the old OUP paperback edition): “The air was filled with the shouts of the
City Walk – Hauz Rani, South Delhi Walks by The Delhi Walla - September 2, 2019September 2, 20190 Signs of a locality. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] At first glance, this South Delhi village seems very unremarkable as a cluster of ordinary lanes and dwellings. But like so much else in Delhi, Hauz Rani reveals its magic slowly but surely. A simple stroll along the street going past Badi Masjid offers an indication of beauty in the shape and content of signboards. Painted in often fascinating fonts, the boards provide tantalising clues to the neighbourhood’s inner life. Of course, you can’t avoid noticing all those “To Let” posters basically targeted at young single professionals who work in nearby malls and hospitals. And if you turn up in the morning when most shops are closed, you’ll spot a painted shutter giving directions
City Walk – A Lane in Jacoobpura, Gurgaon Walks by The Delhi Walla - August 31, 20190 Another country. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] This is a sudden dive into peacefulness. As if you have not entered into a mere lane but a region of light and void and silence. The very air feels on snooze mode making you wonder if the clock too has slowed. The main road slicing through the Furniture Market in Gurgaon’s Jacobpura is blessed with a harmonious flow of pedestrians, scooters and rickshaws. This afternoon it is marooned in a padding of cosy clatter. The unnamed lane lies on this road so discreetly that its opening is barely noticeable to a passerby. This afternoon the lane is lying resignedly like a meditative prisoner in solitary confinement. It terminates into a cul-de-sac after a distance
City Walk – Chirag Delhi Village, South Delhi Walks by The Delhi Walla - August 14, 2019August 14, 20191 A small town stroll. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Ladies standing by a corner, murmuring to each other in low voices. Idle shopkeepers silently watching the street life outside. Small town vibes are evocative of slow living, letting one experience the passing of time so intimately that it is almost like touching the very minutes with one’s bare hands. Delhi is blessed in having neighborhoods with the character of small hamlets. An aimless walk in Chirag Delhi village illustrates this point most vividly. This afternoon the South Delhi neighborhood seems withdrawn into a self-willed isolation. As if it had nothing to do with the rest of the fast busy metropolis it is part of. A grocery down a street called Main Bazaar, near the
City Walk – Side-lane Strolling, Jor Bagh Walks by The Delhi Walla - July 11, 20190 A passage to exclusivity. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Who wouldn’t want to live right here in Jor Bagh? This upscale neighbourhood in Central Delhi is far from maddening crowds, with graceful mansions safely secured by guards and dogs. Even so, one can sense the flavour of the hushed enclave by embarking on a pleasing stroll through a side-alley connecting to Jor Bagh via Second Avenue Road. The discreetly situated lane takes you past the backsides of the great houses where any number of tiny dwellings provide shelter for staff— plus, there are enchanting views of spiraling staircases going up to the roof. These one-room homes are crammed with beds and tables and entire lifetimes worth of domestic accumulations. Elsewhere, the lovely short
City Walk – Hailey Road, Central Delhi Walks by The Delhi Walla - June 14, 2019June 14, 20190 Loafing through calmness. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Tucked behind the commercial high-rises of a hectic Connaught Place, Hailey Road, by contrast, is utterly serene with its tree-lined pavements, unapproachable residences, scarce traffic, weather-beaten brick walls and a 14th century ruin. It also has a place in contemporary Indian literature. The road—a house on it—was the setting of an Anuja Chauhan novel. Not many people are aware of the fact that the avenue is named after a colonial-era administrator. Sir Malcolm Hailey served as the governor of Punjab and the United Provinces. The famous Jim Corbett National Park was originally named after him. Start the walk from the Iranian Embassy. Persian calligraphy is inscribed on its boundary walls. This is the closest
City Walk – Skywalk Passageways, Pragati Maidan Walks by The Delhi Walla - May 21, 20190 New kind of stroll. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s as if an artistic child had scribbled lines across a blank page. Or this is at least how the Pragati Maidan footbridges, or the skywalk if you will, look like from the ground. Most people use these picturesque entanglements of pathways for the purpose they were inaugurated last year—to walk to their respective destinations without having to cross the traffic-clogged roads. These passages, however, can also be enjoyed for purposeless strolls. Maybe it happened by chance, but this is one of the few airy public places of our walker-unfriendly city, apart from parks, where you can walk for long without any danger of being hit by a car. Such opportunity makes space