City Landmark – H.A. Mirza & Sons, Faiz Bazar Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - May 28, 20250 A super-rare Delhi book. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Thousands of books have been written on Delhi. Historians, novelists, poets, journalists and photographers continue to mine the inexhaustible megapolis, producing even more books. One of these volumes is truly precious. Published around 1900, it is largely unknown, and so rare that it isn’t available even in any online bookstore specialising in books of such themes. This reporter discovered it recently in a shop for old random used books in a most unlikely place: a small town in Normandy, France. The book was originally priced at rupees 5; it was now acquired for 10 euros (around a thousand rupees). The book is actually the size of a booklet. The title is simple:
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 Landmark – Hanuman Mandir Plaza, Central Delhi Faith Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - May 9, 20250 The world of Hanuman ji. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] One monkey is swinging from a tree branch. One is scooping out the fleshy remains of a discarded melon. One is clinging tightly to her little baby. Peaceful and amiable, these monkeys loiter all day long in the plaza outside the Hanuman Mandir of Connaught Place, on Baba Kharak Singh Marg. Dotted with peepal trees, the plaza teems with men, women, children (and monkeys!) throughout the day, late into the night. The tiled ground is also dotted with stalls offering henna services, palm reading, or selling pakori and kachori. The temple to Hanuman ji stands in a corner. The plaza is so strongly identified with this temple that even the underground
City Landmark – Bargad Tree, Malcha Marg Market Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - April 7, 2025April 7, 20250 A monumental tree. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Dozens of roots are suspended in mid-air, hanging down the bargad tree. Grained and hued like pale wood, the texture of these aerial roots exude resilience, as if toughened by time and climate. On touching it, the coarsened root does feel like wood. The roots are anyway tightly fused with one another. Impossible to disentangle one from its neighbour. The roots in fact seem to constitute the entire trunk of the tree, something common to bargads. Anyhow, the trunk is massive. No photo can convey a true sense of its great bulk. You have to see it in real. The extraordinary bargad stands at Malcha Marg Market. The sleepy Central Delhi place overlooks the
City Landmark – Graveyard for Transgenders, Ghaziabad General Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - April 2, 2025April 2, 20250 A secretive place. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Believed to be a Lodhi-era graveyard, the Hijron ka Khanqah lies snuggled in a congested bazar in south Delhi’s historic enclave of Mehrauli. It certainly is not as famous as the nearby UNESCO World Heritage Site of Qutub Minar. It however enjoys a cult status among the city aesthetes who pride themselves in being intimate with Delhi’s lesser-known monuments. As the name makes it obvious, the old graveyard is identified with the transgender citizens. It comprises of an airy courtyard containing dozens of graves; the principal grave is worshipped as the shrine of “Peer Baba.” But not even the all-knowing Google is aware of another graveyard linked to the transgender community. It
City Landmarks – Road Names, Around Town Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - March 13, 20250 The Irvin Road mystery [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] So weird. The mosque’s gigantic signage is calling it Masjid Irvin Road. A masjid sure is standing on the spot, but Delhi has no road of such name. And yet here is worker Omvati (see photo) washing anew the municipality signage that confidently bears this non-existent road name. Actually Irvin Road is today known as Baba Kharak Singh Marg. Irvin was a British administrator in colonial India. Kharak Singh was an Indian anti-colonialist. And stuck between these two is this mute roadside landmark forgetting to update its name. This is how a city’s identities sometimes get flummoxed—when new times rawly reinterpret the olden times into a contemporary context. What was in
City Landmark – Kwality Restaurant, Regal Cinema Building Food Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - March 12, 20250 Quality by any other spelling. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] To turn 85 is a privilege. It means you have lived a decade beyond your golden anniversary. This year, two Delhi institutions meet this milestone. One is a novel. The Delhi Walla celebrated Ahmad Ali’s Twilight in Delhi earlier this week. The other is a restaurant. The year of founding—1940—is embossed on the glass door. Kwality restaurant at Regal Cinema building is one of the longest surviving landmarks of Connaught Place (CP). This is a rare accomplishment considering that at least three other landmarks of Regal Cinema building have become history: A Godin & Co. piano shop, Gaylord restaurant and People’s Tree boutique. Even the Regal Cinema hasn’t
City Landmark – Garbage Hill, Ghazipur Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - February 27, 20250 A place in the city. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The black birds are omnipresent. These hawks are perched along the taut lines of the power cables. They are also circling upon the hill. The garbage hill. This massive heap of waste, brought daily from across Delhi in hundreds of trucks, claims a portion of the capital’s eastern outskirts. The hill in Ghazipur doesn’t climax into a peak but fans out in a sort of plateau. This afternoon, the long drain flowing by the garbage hill is shimmering under the bright sun. The water is black, but it still is clearly reflecting the garbage hill, which lies inverted under the blackened surface. This remarkable view is accessed from a narrow
City Landmark – Rajesh’s Veggie Stall, Ghaziabad Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - February 26, 20250 You've Got Mooli. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Red, brown, purple, and many shades of green. Rajesh’s vegetable cart is full of colours. The red is of course the red of tomato. But there is another red present, sighted not on the veggie cart, but beside it. This is the red of the letterbox. Letterboxes used to be intimately linked to the daily life of an earlier generation, in an era when people used pen and paper to write what we today say in e-mails and WhatsApps. The handwritten pieces of paper would be folded and inserted inside an envelope, the address jotted down on the envelope, and a stamp pasted towards the lifafa’s top right (its sticky back
City Landmark – John Hall, Gurgaon Landmarks by The Delhi Walla - February 25, 20250 Century scored. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Some facts are as unbendable as iron. Gurugram is so old that it traces its name to the ancient days of Mahabharat. Gurugram is simultaneously so new that it is also known as the Millennium City. Then there’s the universal acknowledgement that unlike next-door Delhi it is not so easy in Gurugram to spot a truly old building. But this year a landmark in the Millennium City is observing its centenary—Swatantrata Senani Zila Parishad Hall. Founded in 1925, the edifice is tucked in a sprawling compound in the town’s genteel Civil Lines. Rechristened to its present name a few years ago, it was earlier called Gurgaon Agricultural Hall. It is actually better known as