Delhi to Tokyo [By Mayank Austen Soofi] The four-volume The Delhi Walla series have become a constant fixture in Delhi’s bookstores. Being its author and photographer, I like to believe that they are considered as a serious attempt to interpret…
The secret of the mutton. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] If you love mutton curry, you cannot ignore gular. The leaves of this tree are the food of goats. Gular, the common fig (Ficus carica) native to West…
One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Wearing a flamenco skirt, she enters the practice room at her apartment in south Delhi’s Greater Kailash I, and breaks into the classical movements of…
A la recherche du temps perdu. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Today is the fifth meeting of The Delhi Proustians, a club for Delhiwallas that discusses French novelist Marcel Proust. Every Sunday noon for an hour we read…
The Delhi-based author on India’s richest house. [Photo by Uttam Ghosh] Is it a house or a home? A temple to the new India, or a warehouse for its ghosts? Ever since Antilla arrived on Altamount Road in Mumbai, exuding…
Inside the walls. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] One cold evening The Delhi Walla met the 80-year-old Manikchand, a retired rag-picker. He stays alone. The entrance of his one-room shelter faces the busy Mathura Road. In a pinkish-red…
End of a mourning. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Today is chehlum, the ceremony commemorating the 40th day after the death anniversary of the Prophet Muhammed’s grandson Imam Husain Ibn Ali. Centuries ago, he and his 72 followers…
The definitive directory of famous Delhiites. [Text by Mayank Austen Soofi; pictures shared by Alkazi Collection of Photography] Like most of today’s generation, you must have been introduced to her photographs in history textbooks. Homai Vyarawalla, 97, originally a Bombay…
A la recherche du temps perdu. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Today is the fourth meeting of The Delhi Proustians, a club for Delhiwallas that discusses French novelist Marcel Proust. Every Sunday noon for an hour we read…
Poet’s last home. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Every 27 December, on Ghalib’s birthday, his admirers march to his haveli in Shahjahanabad with lighted candles and give sound bites to the media on the poet’s relevance. As if…
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