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…
The final volume of The Delhi Walla series. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] The fourth and final volume in The Delhi Walla series – Portraits – reached the bookstores in late June, 2011. While working on this book,…
The beautiful Delhi instant. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla is on the rooftop of a house in Farash Khana, a congested neighbourhood in the Walled City. It is evening. There is a boy and a…
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