City Season – Gulmohar Blossoming, Around Town Nature by The Delhi Walla - May 14, 2021May 14, 20210 Red rising. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] There’s fire raging these days across the city. The gulmohar trees are in scarlet bloom. Their flowering tend to be unpredictable. Sometimes they’re just a few vines of blossom in the tree’s dense foliage, looking like a flash of lightning in the sky. And sometimes the whole tree becomes an entanglement of that red, as if a flame is leaping about uncontrollably. The first flowers start popping out in late April, and by May the gulmohar’s glow covers the city like a blush spreading on a shy man’s cheek. One of the best places to spot them is in... well, Gulmohar Park, the neighbourhood. Nehru Park, too, possesses a few gulmohars of the
City Faith – Lockdown Ramzan, Jama Masjid, Gurgaon Faith by The Delhi Walla - May 13, 20210 A world in pandemic. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The forever-optimistic Nashir Ahmed Khan in gloom? Impossible, you would think. But the second surge in the coronavirus pandemic has changed everything. “I’m badhal (in bad shape),” he says, “everyone here is badhal, everything is down.” A biscuit seller outside the imposing Jama Masjid in Gurgaon’s Sadar Bazar in the Greater Delhi Region, Mr Khan, 71, is talking on phone. This late morning he is standing by his two carts, he says, waiting for the few customers who might drop by. During the ongoing lockdown in the Millennium City, shops in this part of Sadar Bazar are allowed to function from 6 am to 11 am, he informs. In the final week of
City Life – Covid’s Street Life, Old Delhi Life by The Delhi Walla - May 11, 20210 Life in the pandemic. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] This narrow lane in the Walled City doesn’t go past any historic monument. No beautiful doorway opens into it. And yet, the lane shows so much. Especially these days, with its scenes conveying the oppressiveness and distress of the curfew and coronavirus pandemic. Here’s an anthology of impressions collected over a handful of days. 6am: An elderly beggar is sitting on the street-side, his arm resting upon a cloth bundle of what presumably gathers his possessions. The man is without mask, and his back is resting against a shuttered store named Discount Medicura, a pharmacy whose banner announces “free home delivery” and “20 percent discount.” The street is otherwise empty, save for a
Mission Delhi – Chumki Sen, Sector 50, Gurgaon Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - May 10, 20210 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Why oh why did she get a house overlooking the main road, she feels, ten years after moving into it. At least she would have been spared the direct proximity to the seemingly continuous wail of ambulance sirens. This is one of the many dismal thoughts claiming Chumki Sen’s mind during these dark days of coronavirus pandemic. Ms Sen, 51, formerly a media professional, lives with her husband, daughter and mother in a ninth floor apartment in Gurgaon’s Sector 50 in the Greater Delhi Region. Her long balcony looks to a park that is “like any manicured garden of any Gurgaon (apartment) society.” The dining room window
City History – Souvenir No. 1, In Search of Central Vista Lost Life by The Delhi Walla - May 7, 2021May 7, 20210 The place that was. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Delhi’s Rajpath and the India Gate Grounds are being renovated as part of the Central Vista project. The beloved place as we knew it will cease to exist, but it shall survive in my blog The Delhi Walla’s archives. Here’s one of the pieces I wrote on the place. MONDAY morning rush hour has finally been surmounted, leaving the grassy expanse at India Gate nearly deserted. Even so, a few guys are lounging about, so The Delhi Walla decides to check them out in the very best spirit of investigative journalism. What are they up to – or not up to – while the world is working? The guy who studies Anant Singh
Mission Delhi – Protiti Bhattacharyya, West Kidwai Nagar Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - May 6, 20210 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] She is young and living through intense grief in this season of collective loss. Protiti Bhattacharyya, 22, a history student in the University of Hyderabad, kindly agrees to share a glimpse of her current life. Connecting on WhatsApp video from her house in Delhi’s West Kidwai Nagar, she is sitting on the chair that belonged to her father. You lost your father and grandmother last month. Baba had Covid and had been on the ventilator for a few days. The news of his death came in the way of a solemn phone call from the doctor, one of his colleagues from the same hospital he worked in. Ma
City Season – Amaltas Bloom, Green Park & Elsewhere Nature by The Delhi Walla - May 5, 20210 A season of loss. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The tree is clothed in golden-yellow, but of a very pale shade. Amaltas flowers are known for more glow, more flamboyance. This tree, here in Green Park, must be an exception. It is that giddy time when summer begins and Delhi avenues lit up with the blooming of the amaltas. But in this year of pestilence, when people we personally know are dying due to the coronavirus infection, the blossoming might not bring that same happiness. This evening, nobody stands under the tree. Nobody is to be seen on the road either, except for a masked guard outside a bungalow. Indeed, this year, one can’t go out to view the amaltass in
City Life – Maryann Taylor’s Pandemic-Day Diary, DLF Phase 5, Gurgaon Life by The Delhi Walla - May 3, 20210 Her life, these days. [Photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] No home is left untouched, directly or indirectly, by the current surge in the coronavirus pandemic. So how’s our daily life like? Freelance writer Maryann Taylor, 36, in Gugaon’s DLF Phase 5 in the Greater Delhi Region, shares her day-long diary. In her own words—from morning to night. 6.30 am: I wake up to the third day of a persistent migraine sinking its fangs into my skull. Somewhere outside a koel is cooing. I check the time on my phone (awful habit). 7 am: I go to the kitchen. My husband who now sleeps in the guest bedroom since my mother’s arrival is still asleep. I make tea for my mother, coffee for me. My
Mission Delhi – Muhammed Huzaifa, Covid ICU, AIIMS Trauma Center Mission Delhi by The Delhi Walla - May 1, 20210 One of the one percent in 13 million. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] These days, everybody wants to be a doctor’s best friend. So say hello to Muhammed Huzaifa, 24, a junior resident doctor in surgery at Delhi’s premier All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). A Bangalore native, at the time of writing this piece he is on duty in the Covid ICU, where he, along with a team of fellow doctors, cares for some of the most critical cases of Covid patients. Dr Huzaifa doesn’t have a fixed routine, for his 6-hour-long shift rotates daily. Today is his weekly off and he is chatting from the quietude of his room—the hostel is inside the AIIMS campus. “Pigeons are