City Metro – Last Points, Vaishal Metro Station Delhi Metro by The Delhi Walla - September 17, 2026September 17, 20260 To the ends of the earth. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It is a non-rush hour afternoon at a Metro station. A handful of commuters walk down the staircase and out onto a road crammed with autos, scooters, cars, trucks and UP Roadways buses. Apartment towers rise beyond trees. A banquet hall sits under a blue roof. Power cables crisscross the grey sky. It could be almost anywhere in Delhi. The station sign supplies the answer: Vaishali. This locality is not in Delhi, but in UP’s zila Ghaziabad. The Delhi Metro ends here, but the Delhi-like world does not. This page will visit the last stops of all the lines of the Delhi Metro, and see what lies in them… no, what
City Landmark – Roadside Wall, Mausam Bhawan Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - September 17, 20260 In the light of what we know. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Driver Mahesh is having lunch on the pavement. Seated cross-legged on a spread-out cloth, he is bending over his meal. Behind him, a couple struggles with the heat. The man is pulling open his jacket, the woman is fanning herself with a hat. The temperature beside them reads 40°C. The couple is not real. They are painted on the wall in front of which Mahesh is sitting. The wall belongs to Mausam Bhawan, headquarters of the India Meteorological Department. This stretch of Lodhi Road in Central Delhi carries a panorama of weather scenes created by Delhi Street Art. At first, the wall paintings seem to offer a journey through pleasant
City Nature – September Sky, Around Town Nature by The Delhi Walla - September 15, 20261 Cloud watching, sunset watching. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] This Sunday morning, hundreds of small fluffy clouds covered Delhi’s eastern sky. They were bluish-grey underneath, with edges turned gold by the rising sun. Seen from the terrace of a multi-storey residence, a lamppost atop a neighbouring building rose into the view. These observations of Delhi’s sky come from mornings and evenings during the first half of September. The rains are ending, winter is some weeks away, and there is less pollution in the air. The clouds seem more fully themselves, their whites and greys freshly revealed, like the surface of a kitchen utensil just brought back from the kalai wala bhaijaan. September also happens to bring some of the city’s clearest sunsets.
City Nature – Frangipani Flowers, Sunder Nursery and Elsewhere Nature by The Delhi Walla - September 14, 2026September 15, 20260 The Old Delhi encyclopedia. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] At Sunder Nursery in Central Delhi, a woman is walking beneath the flowering frangipani trees. Her braid is threaded with two white frangipani blooms, one above the other (see left photo). This was another season, but the frangipani at Sunder Nursery has the useful habit of blooming throughout the year. On this September afternoon, a second woman here also has a frangipani in her hair, except that hers is a large white clip shaped almost exactly like the flower. Indeed, Delhiwale wearing such a frangipani clip have been sighted across the city. Frangipanis bloom profusely in the rains and are thus impossible to miss across the capital these days. At Sunder
City Walk – Punjabi Phatak, Old Delhi General by The Delhi Walla - September 12, 20260 The Old Delhi encyclopedia. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Old Delhi’s Badshah Halwai, aka Shamman Sweets, sits on Ballimaran’s main market road, the counter crowded with food photos. Fittingly, directly across the road, the arched gateway of Punjabi Phatak opens into what feels like Ballimaran’s food pantry. For that alley is lined with scores and scores of eateries. Yazdaan Roti Wale turns out rotis. At Shakeel Parathe Wale, parathas sizzle on the tawa beside crates of eggs. Flyers at Abid Breakfast announce khasta kachori and dal wali kachori. Zaiqa Hotel offers bade ka qorma and bade ka keema. Angeethi promises chicken lollipop. A taped notice inside settles a sensitive matter: extra gravy costs 20 rupees. One of these eateries has been
Delhi’s Proust Questionnaire – Chand Baba, Chirag Dehli Dargah Delhi Proustians by The Delhi Walla - September 12, 20260 Portrait of a citizen. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The elderly citizen is sitting cross-legged on a low platform outside the Sufi shrine of Hazrat Chirag Naseeruddin Roshan Dehlvi. The shrine gives its name to the larger South Delhi locality around it. Introducing himself as Chand Baba, the man graciously agrees to take part in our Proust Questionnaire series, in which citizens are nudged to make “Parisian parlour confessions”, all to explore our distinct experiences. The principal aspect of your personality. I live by this dargah. Why should I lie? I beg, I ask for alms from the visiting pilgrims. I use the money I collect to support my family in zila Jaunpur in UP. My wife, our son, his wife
City Life – Auto Art, Around Town Life by The Delhi Walla - September 12, 20260 Auto biennale Delhi 2026. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Look inside this auto rickshaw. The backrest of the passenger seat bears a painting of another auto rickshaw. The painting’s auto too has a yellow roof, a green body, three wheels and an open doorway. So, as this auto rickshaw travels through Delhi, it carries a picture of a fellow auto on its back seat. Paintings and photos are often found illustrated on the passenger seats of Delhi’s auto rickshaws. Five years ago, a survey of auto seat art by The Delhi Walla discovered a kind of auto rickshaw biennale, albeit a mobile one, travelling every day through the city’s smoggy, traffic-clogged roads. The themes were many: hearts, pining lovers, the Taj Mahal
City Obituary – Hakim Masroor Ahmed Khan, Ballimaran Life by The Delhi Walla - September 10, 2026September 10, 20260 Son of Sharif Manzil. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The drawing room is dense with carpets, wooden cabinets and a pendulum clock. Black-and-white portraits of men in topis hang high on the walls. The presence of a window AC fails to disturb the room’s older air. And on the striped sofa he is sitting with an arm along the backrest. He has short white hair, a grey-white goatee and distant eyes. He is speaking softly and unhurriedly, with light pride but without arrogance, while talking of his family and its Old Delhi past. This was an afternoon scene in the upper-floor drawing room of Haveli Sharif Manzil, the 300-year-old family mansion in the Walled City’s congested Ballimaran neighbourhood. Its patriarch, the
City Life – The Classroom, Delhi University Life by The Delhi Walla - September 8, 20260 Homage to a college student's space. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Suddenly, clamour of shoes and tongues. Students are storming into the empty classroom, pithu bags on shoulders, all gabbling as they squeeze between the benches. One young man climbs over a bench instead of walking around it. Another holds a black folder above his head. The room has rows of wooden benches, ceiling fans and what appears to be a projector. The blackboard shows the white chalk words from an earlier lecture: “Great Depression,” “Paul von Hindenburg,” “Hitler takes over the Reich.” This is Aryabhatta College, close to Satya Niketan in South Delhi, where a building housing college students collapsed on Sunday. Many students in the capital live away from
City Season – Monsoon Puddles, Around Town Nature by The Delhi Walla - September 7, 2026September 8, 20260 On an aspect of Delhi rains. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] A rain puddle is lying on the stone floor of Fatehpuri Masjid, this evening here in Old Delhi. The rain had stopped some hours ago. In the unmoving water stands one of the mosque’s domes, upside down. The actual tower is somewhere above. Now a bare foot enters the frame from one side. This is the final and an intense spell of the year’s monsoon. There is little point in romanticising Delhi’s rain. It floods roads, stalls traffic, enters homes, sometimes bringing along sewage-contaminated water. Last week, rainwater entered a part of the airport. Yet, the rain also leaves behind puddles, sometimes just a thin film of water on paved