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Walks

City Neighbourhood – Hamdadrd Chowk, Old Delhi

by The Delhi Walla - 0

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

by The Delhi Walla - 0

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

by The Delhi Walla - 0

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

by The Delhi Walla - 0

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

by The Delhi Walla - 0

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

by The Delhi Walla - 0

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 – Pahari Imli, Old Delhi

by The Delhi Walla - 0

The tamarind hill. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The love song from our grandfathers’ time is streaming out from a window atop the grocery of “Shadab ki dukan.” Up there is Bhai Majid’s “embroidery ka karkhana.” The hard-at-work tailors--Salimuddin, Arif, Shahbuddin and Jawed--are notorious for playing Muhammed Rafi’s romantic ditties all through the day, making this corner of Pahari Imli a shrine to the legendary singer. Elsewhere, the serpentine walkways of Pahari Imli, the tamarind hill, occasionally punctuates with brief flights of staircases, chipped and broken in places. Long before Old Delhi was set up by Emperor Shahjahan, this land was likely a tree-covered hill. One of those trees must have been the tamarind tree that gave its name to

City Neighbourhood- Gali Manihar Wali, Old Delhi

by The Delhi Walla - 0

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 Walk – Rajpur Road & Environs, Civil Lines

by The Delhi Walla - 0

Into serene avenues. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The gate is locked. The tree-speckled compound is strewn with dry crackling leaves. The lone man in the stately porch, a guard maybe, makes no answer. Peering over the rusted spokes of the gate it is clear that the bungalow is uninhabited. The arched portals gape forlorn (see photo). This is a surreal scene on Rajpur Road, in north Delhi’s Civil Lines. You ought to consider a long leisurely walk in the precincts primarily to study the bungalow’s dilapidated dignity—not by encroaching into the private space, but by strolling along the pave that goes past the relic. More distractions exist elsewhere in the vicinity, including many other bungalows, excellently preserved. Then there are

City Walk – Gail Choori Walan, Old Delhi

by The Delhi Walla - 0

Street of the bangle folks [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Did you know that Snow White and the seven dwarves isn’t just a fairy tale? True, those eight folks used to live in Old Delhi, here in Gali Choori Walan, the street of bangle wale. The proof is this aged mansion. Count yourself. One, two, three… eight doors! Count the balconies above—eight. Extraordinarily elaborate cobwebs are woven along these doors. Their translucent strands seem to have been spun out of invisible air. Passing by the doors, bookbinding manufacturer Iftikhar Ahmad (see photo) says that all the houses in this building of eight doors are empty, except for one. He points to the only door that is not locked. Himself a

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