The sufi princess. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Razia Sultan, Nur Jahan, Princess Diana. The most famous women in history are usually caricatured as saints or sluts, or both. Their lives are reduced to tragedies or travesties. Jahanara…
Searching for the stylish. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla saw this young man in a street in Chitli Qabar, a neighbourhood in Delhi’s 17th century Old Quarter. He was wearing a mustard-green woolen blazer, black…
Groomed help for the house. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] The maid is in the mall, bar-coded. Standing in a glass display case, she is in a spotless cotton sari, barely there make-up, buffed nails and no jewellery….
Strange encounters in the city. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] It was over in a minute. The Delhi Walla was outside McDonald’s in Janpath, Connaught Place. The traffic light turned red. The cars halted. One was a silver-colored…
An exhibition. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] Flags, according to a Delhi-based novelist, are bits of coloured cloth that governments use to first shrink-wrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead. In an exhibition at the American…
A musical evening with the essayist. [Pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] While launching Broken Republic – Three Essays at the India Habitat Center in May 2011, Arundhati Roy read the book’s introduction that touches upon the lives of Delhi’s street…
The beautiful Delhi instant. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] One morning The Delhi Walla was at a flat in Vasundhra Valley Apartments, a grey-colored housing complex in Sahibabad, a township beyond Delhi’s eastern limits. Sitting cross-legged on a…
The capital shame. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Messy, smelly and non-stop, Jane Austen would have described it as a continual state of inelegance. Delhi’s biggest embarrassment, it is also the title of a Bollywood film. The phrase…
One of the one per cent in 13 million. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Blushing, she covers her smile with the red dupatta and lowers her eyes. Starting to speak, the dupatta falls off her face, which instantly…
Seeking a Shangri-la. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] One summer evening, The Delhi Walla spotted a turbaned man in the Indian Coffee House, Connaught Place. With its weak coffee, soggy sandwiches, oily cutlets, watery sambhar, creaky sofas, slow-moving…
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