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…
The beautiful Delhi instant. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] One cold morning The Delhi Walla saw a woman vendor in the F-block of the colonial-era shopping district Connaught Place. The showrooms were still closed. The Inner Circle corridors…
The magic leaf. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] A foreign art critic visiting Delhi’s Connaught Place may be forgiven for thinking its red-splattered corridors are a form of abstract expression. Although the dirty white pillars of the colonial-era…
The legendary bookstore in Connaught Place becomes history. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] New Book Depot, the legendary bookshop in the colonial-era Connaught Place known for its vast collection of classics as well as for its eccentric owner,…
A la recherche du temps perdu. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Today is the third meeting of The Delhi Proustians, a club for Delhiwallas wanting to discuss French novelist Marcel Proust. Every Sunday noon we read his masterpiece,…
Seen better days. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The language of author Ruskin Bond, who spent his early childhood in a bungalow in central Delhi’s Atul Grover Marg, is not the kind of English we connect with ad…
One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Walking down the hilly slope, he says, “It’s like a little museum of what the rocky past of the ridge must have looked like before…
Cramped and cool. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] At an altitude of 239 metres, Everest Café cannot fit more than a dozen people at any given time. Tucked in a shaded lane, it is off the main street…
The holy land of sufis. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The final days of 2011 have ended on a happy note. The Delhi Walla was in the sufi pilgrim town of Ajmer. 400km west of Delhi, it is…
It’s official. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] Published in December 2011, Lonely Planet’s Discover India: Experiencing the best of India is written by Abigail Hole and Kevin Raub. In the ‘Need to Know’ box of its Delhi section, the guidebook refers…
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