City Nature – Yamuna River, Near Hazrat Nizamuddin Bridge Nature by The Delhi Walla - September 5, 20250 City river in monsoon. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The galloping muddy water is flowing with the pace of a furious mountain stream. Trees are lying marooned in the water. White birds with long yellow beaks are perched atop the leafy crowns of these half-sunk trees. Such is the September scene about the Yamuna between Akshardham Temple and Nizamuddin Bridge. Outside the monsoon months, the same river seems slow, narrow and sluggish, giving no sense of its sprawl within the megapolis. The river in fact travels 22km within Delhi, flowing under more than 15 road bridges, travelling 48km in the entire capital region, and, in return, becoming extremely polluted by the thankless city. These days, following heavy showers, the Yamuna has breached
City Nature – Dead Tree, Lodhi Garden Hangouts Nature by The Delhi Walla - August 20, 20250 Like an art work. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Delhi’s Lodhi Garden is full of trees and monuments. One tree was itself like a monument. While it had died a long time ago, it had continued to stand, giving the park a haunting beauty. Park visitors would sit on the bench under it. Some weeks ago, the tree fell on its own accord. Days later, a spindly stalk was seen standing on the exact spot where the tree would stand. It was probably hoped that the new plant might one day grow into a tree. That stalk too is gone. Now, the spot has absolutely no sign of its recent arborous past. It is a signal to shift our affection to another
City Landmark – Sunder Nursery, Near Humayun Tomb Hangouts Landmarks Nature by The Delhi Walla - August 4, 20250 Park by numbers. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] 5 million. This is the number of footfalls Sunder Nursery has accumulated since the day it opened to us Delhiwale six years ago—according to Aga Khan Trust for Culture that created and now manages the park. The milestone was reached late last month. High time to statistically dissect a destination whose many gardens and monuments have become the capital’s capital refuge. 01/12/2018 Date of the park’s opening. 15,000 Total number of park trees. 300 is the number of tree species. 10 of these are so unique to the park—such as Brazilian Ironwood and Satin Leaf— that you won’t see them anywhere else in India. (Why so? Wait for a forthcoming dispatch!) 177 Number of benches in the park.
City Nature – Trees of Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi Hangouts Nature by The Delhi Walla - July 31, 20250 Chandni Chowk arbour. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The martyrs’ bodies were hanging from the trees, here in Chandni Chowk. That’s one of the legends Purani Dilli wale tend to recall of this Walled City avenue. The executions were said to have followed the doomed 1857 uprising against the British. Many of the trees were later felled by those colonial occupiers. Today, Chandni Chowk is overloaded with trees—unlike the rest of Old Delhi, which hardly has any. A few of the trees are even furnished with stone benches. Indeed, over the decades, Delhi’s many chroniclers have extensively dissected Chandni Chowk for its many historic monuments and landmarks. Time to make a note of its many trees as well. Let’s start with a tree
City Season – Cloud Watching, Around Town Nature by The Delhi Walla - July 28, 20250 Stalking the monsoon sky. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Dull, smoggy, grey. Almost a rotting corpse. That’s our Dilli sky most of the year. The same asmaan resurrects into life during the monsoon. It is the year’s A-1 time for Delhi nephophiles, the cloud lovers. (This is also the time to re-read Kalidas’s Meghaduta, The Cloud Messenger). One afternoon last week, a massive cavalcade of very many small clouds were seen right above the business towers of Nehru Place. The clouds were not rainy black, but cottony white. They were moving very slowly. The pitch blue sky, visible in patches from behind the cloud cover, was instead giving the illusion of motion. The same day, some distance ahead from Nehru Place,
City Landmark – Banyan Tree, Kautilya Marg Landmarks Nature by The Delhi Walla - July 16, 20250 A gentle giant. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Consider this banyan. The tree’s massive trunk looks like as if hundreds of separate snake-shaped trunks had fused into each other. These are actually the tree’s aerial roots. Also known as prop roots, they grow out from the tree’s branches, going downwards. This particular tree has to be among the Delhi region’s most extraordinary banyans. To be sure, the megapolis is full of dense ridges and forests, not all of which are easily accessible to citizens. Those unexplored spaces might be harbouring even greater banyans. That said, this banyan is extraordinary in its scope and beauty, and reaching it is easy. The tree stands by the roadside, on Kautilya Marg, beside Jammu &
City Hangout – Rain Places, Monsoon 2025 Nature by The Delhi Walla - July 1, 2025July 1, 20250 Rain falling upon citizens [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Monsoon rains have always been a dependable muse for artists. But for us Delhiwallas, the actual lived experience of the season tends to be more complicated, especially in the landscape of our everyday life. The inconvenient puddles on way to the office, the sudden floods in the colony, the threat of (dengue!) mosquitoes at home, the snake sightings in the friendly park... the extra spendings from the hard-earned cash—take e-rickshaw driver Mushtaq. As the first monsoon showers raided the capital on Sunday, he was obliged to shell out hundred rupees to buy a plastic rain coat. So did many of his fellow drivers, here in Old Delhi. And while only a
City Life – Jamun Season, Around Town Life Nature by The Delhi Walla - June 20, 20250 Purple prose. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Plop! That’s the sound these berries make after they fall from the tree, their purple juice sometimes squirting out in all directions on hitting the hard earth (see left photo). The stains explain that why the Walled City hawker Kishore is no longer hawking the bananas. He is instead carrying a basket of these berries on his head, walking all day from gali to gali, hoarsely crying, “jamun walla, jamun le lo.” Say hello to Delhi’s jamun season. This evening, in a central Delhi roundabout, scores of men have gathered around a jamun tree, violently shaking its branches, causing the berries to fall one after another. These jamuns will later be gathered for an impromptu feast. Some distance
City Season – Landmark Trees, Gurugram Landmarks Life Nature by The Delhi Walla - May 15, 20250 Heatwave arbour. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Millennium City of Gurugram has rightfully earned its status as a land of high-rises. The same land may also be noted for its more traditional high-rises—the trees. Take the Amaltas tree standing on a traffic island in Sukhrali village. It is currently in a luscious summertime bloom. But there is a world beyond the eye-catching Amaltas. Here are three landmark trees of Old Gurugram, remarkable not for their beauty or blossoms, but for the relationship they have built over the years with us citizens. Like a nakhlistan in registan, the peepal in the otherwise bleak and dusty Masjid Udyan makes its consoling presence felt as intensely as any desert oasis. The most generous
City Season – Amaltas Blossoms, Around Town Nature by The Delhi Walla - April 29, 2025April 29, 20250 Where the stones give no sound of water [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] No doubt, the street lamp’s glow is brighter. But these tiny lamps emit a more soothing light, casting a cool, calming glow over the faintly smoky midnight air of this central Delhi neighbourhood. These are amaltas flowers, in the first flush of their great annual blossom. Some of the flowers have already completed their life cycle and fallen on the lane, shrivelled and smashed. Among these pile of corpses, a lone flower has drifted toward the middle of the road, resembling an inverted star. It has five petals. Delhi is an arbour of very many blooming trees. There’s the red of semal and gulmohar, the purplish-blue of jacaranda,