City Season – Palika Bazaar Park, Connaught Place General by The Delhi Walla - February 16, 2010May 23, 201011 Short and beautiful. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] The sky is blue, the grass is wet and the flowers are blooming. Delhi’s strangest and shortest season – from mid-February to mid-March – has begun. Neither hot, nor cold, the city loses its harsh tones and pretends to be gentle. To soak in the weather, you may go to any of the open spaces in the city: Lodhi Garden, Shantipath lawns, India Gate Maidan, Purana Quila ruins, Dilli Haat, or Ansal Plaza’s amphitheatre. The best is in the shopping district of Connaught Place: the park above Palika Bazaar parking. It is bright and cheery, perfumed and coloured. Dahlias are dyed in orange, yellow and passionate-red shades. The yellow and white
Sujan Singh Park Diary – My Life with Khushwant Singh Culture Life by The Delhi Walla - February 15, 2010August 11, 20154 Author Sadia Dehlvi on Delhi’s legendary writer. [Text by Sadia Dehlvi; pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] If you ask me about the women in author Khushwant Singh’s life, I would say I am the only one. That’s how special he makes all those around him feel. Women are drawn to him because he doubles up as confidante, friend, father and mentor. For women afflicted with heartbreak, Khushwant readily provides his shoulders to dry the tears and at celebration time he shares the cheer. He has the remarkable ability to suffer all kinds of people, often getting bullied into inviting them home to his evening durbar. I know many women whom Khushwant helped get jobs, admissions, transfers, and senior government posts. Many authors including
Mission Delhi – Deen Dayal, Safdarjung Enclave Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - February 11, 2010December 11, 20177 One of the one per cent in 13 million. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] A firecracker goes up into the cold night sky and burst into a shower of sparkles. “That must be from a wedding celebration,” garbage collector Deen Dayal says. The Delhi Walla meets him on a Safdarjung Enclave pavement. The 40-something Mr Dayal is standing beside two pungent-smelling trolleys filled up with rotting food, vegetable peels, eggshells, empty beer bottles, cardboard junk, and used sanitary napkins. “A MCD (Municipal Council of Delhi) truck will come to empty them.” Mr Dayal arrived in Delhi more than a decade ago. He started by collecting garbage from individual households but now picks up only from street dustbins. Employed on a contract
City Region – Kamla Market, Central Delhi Regions by The Delhi Walla - February 9, 2010May 23, 20105 Asia’s big air-cooler bazaar. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s a Dickensian sight. The driveway through the entrance gate is rutty. The clock on the clock tower doesn’t work. Men pee on the boundary wall. Mechanics drill holes into steel. Laborers haul cargoes in hand-pulled carts. All around are arranged thousands of air coolers, electric geysers, washing machines, water pumps, sandwich toasters and steel trunks, sometimes packed in colorful cardboard boxes. Situated next to Ajmeri Gate in central Delhi, Kamla Market came up in 1951 to provide livelihood to the Partition refugees who came from what is now Pakistan. (Don't confuse the place with Kamla Nagar Market, which is in north Delhi.) Inaugurated by Dr Rajendra Prasad, India’s first President, and
Dateline Stockholm – The Delhi Walla Enters the Nobel Prize Club General by The Delhi Walla - February 7, 2010May 23, 201021 The blogger’s photography gets recognition. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Delhi Walla has got the Nobel Prize for literature. Well, almost. A picture taken by me has been put up in the official website of the Nobel Foundation, Nobelprize.org. In November, 2008, the South African Nobel laureate in literature, Nadine Gordimer, came visiting Delhi. It was her first visit to India in 14 years. I too went to India International Center to listen to the author of acclaimed novels such as A Guest of Honour, The Conservationist, Burger's Daughter and July's People. More than 150 people had squeezed into the auditorium to be with the writer who during her Nobel Prize lecture in 1991 had famously referred to the South Africa
Mission Delhi – Sumanta Roy, Khan Market Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - February 5, 2010March 12, 201615 One of the one per cent in 13 million. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] “Where’s the doorman?” Outside the entrance of Sidewok, a dimly lit Chinese eatery in Delhi’s upscale Khan Market, Sumanta Roy refuses to go in till the guard appears and opens the door for him. A man of style, he is a brand-sensitive consumer of classy dressing and fine taste who expects good service when paying for it. Dressed in Ed Hardy sweatshirt, blue-sequined Zara top and royal-blue jeans, this 29-year-old IT professional walks up the stairs carrying a snake-leather Coach bag and a Louis Vuitton wallet. His left arm bears a Chinese language tattoo and his right hand shows a Guess gold watch studded with Swarovski crystals.
City Secret – Hardayal Municipal Public Library, Daryaganj Library by The Delhi Walla - February 1, 2010November 1, 20100 The newspaper readers' club [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] In these iPad times of 24X7 news channels and streaming video sites, when the death of the newspaper is considered a certainty, a small bookless library in Daryaganj is doing well with its reading room full of those supposedly dying entities. “We have 19 dailies in Hindi, English and Urdu,” says Mohammad Alam, the attendant at Hardayal Municipal Public Library. Situated on the perennially clogged Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Marg, close to Golcha theater, about a hundred readers come here daily. “We also subscribe to 25 magazines, but most people prefer newspapers,” says Mr Alam. The bare library has no sofa, lounger or air-conditioner. This is just a large airy room with one
Mission Delhi – Rakesh Chandra, Connaught Place Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - January 29, 2010May 23, 201010 One of the one per cent in 13 million. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] With a cloth tied to the end of a wooden rod, the bookseller is busy cleaning the shelves – “wooshaaaacck” goes his duster. Puffs of dust rise all around The Delhi Walla. “We have to do it every morning,” says Rakesh Chandra of the New Book Depot, Connaught Place. “Otherwise, you won’t be able to touch the books. It gets so dusty.” Mr Chandra has eight people on his staff, but every morning, he leads the battle against the Delhi dust. Finicky about his books, he occasionally gets into tiffs with customers who show no respect for the bound volumes. “There are a few who do not
City Landmark – Chanakya Cinema, 1970-2007 Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - January 28, 2010December 1, 20100 1970-2007 [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Last night, at 9:45 pm, I dreamt I went to Chanakya again. It seemed to me I stood by the box office that sells Rs. 30 front stall tickets, and for a while I could not see the clerk inside for the window was barred to me. Ticketless, I walked towards the glass door. It was locked. I called in my dream to the cinema security guard, and had no answer, and peering closer through the dirty glass I saw that the theater was uninhabited. No crowd was waiting in the foyer, and the little frames that should have displayed movie posters gaped forlorn. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with
City Landmark – Khan-i-Khana’s Tomb, Nizamuddin East Monuments by The Delhi Walla - January 28, 2010May 23, 20104 Scarred with beauty. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] A stone-paved lane hedged with marigold flowers leads to one of Delhi’s strangest monuments. The 16th century tomb of a Mughal noble, Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khana, is both ugly and beautiful. Its exterior stonework is stripped off. The plaster on its inside walls is chipped. Its niches are cobwebbed. The ceilings are scrawled with romantic messages. But before you notice the flaws, the weathered dome, as well as the chhatris and the arches take you in. The underground tomb is inaccessible but the sarcophagus in the upper chamber is bare, quiet, dark and windy. Bordered by the tony Nizamuddin East bungalows on one side and the noisy Mathura Road on the other, the large