One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] He is standing quietly on a stationery scooter. The Delhi Walla approaches him. The scooter is parked in an alley in Turkman Gate, a congested…
The Raisina show. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Sleekly muscled. Powerful. Well-groomed. These were some of the assertions made in a letter sent by Rashtrapati Bhavan in December 2012. The invitation to The Delhi Walla was for a…
A la recherche du temps perdu. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Today is the 35th meeting of The Delhi Proustians, a club for Delhiwallas that discusses French novelist Marcel Proust. Every Monday evening for an hour we read…
Searching for the stylish. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla saw this man on the Ring Road. He was wearing a blue salwar kurta. His dark-blue jacket was printed with hundreds of delicately shaped green leaves,…
Watched by thousands of people. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] Penguin India, the publishers of The Delhi Walla’s new book, Nobody Can Love You More: Life in Delhi’s Red Light District, sent me a mail: The video for the book has…
Tragedy in the morning. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The cold morning was masked in a gray fog of smoke that leapt out of the 15-storey Himalaya House, an office-complex on Kasturba Gandhi Marg, an avenue in Central…
The world of the washermen. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Oxford dictionary describes a dhobi as “a person whose occupation is washing clothes” and a ghat as “a flight of steps leading down to a river”. Yet…
A la recherche du temps perdu. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Today is the 34th meeting of The Delhi Proustians, a club for Delhiwallas that discusses French novelist Marcel Proust. Every Monday evening for an hour we read…
The beautiful Delhi instant. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It is about noon. The Delhi Walla enters the home of Haji Miyan and his brother Amir Dehlvi. They live in Matia Mahal, a congested neighbourhood in the Walled…
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