Their jhappi of art. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The museum has a double bed. A cushiony gaontakiyan lies across it. On the walls are photographs by Nony Singh. This evening, three guests arrive at Nony’s Vasant Vihar apartment. Her daughter, photographer Dayanita Singh, had WhatsApped earlier in the day: “Nony Singh museum invites you for a special preview (with dal chawal) at 7 pm.” Dayanita and her mother lead the guests into a bedroom. A handwritten note on the door announces “NONY SINGH MUSEUM.” Framed black-and-white photographs cover the walls. Most are Nony’s photographs of her family. One series shows Nony’s mother wearing Nony’s father’s clothes. Elsewhere, her sister sits on a chair, her sari regally spreading towards the floor. Nony,

Two lives. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Most of the day, she is lying silently on the pavement, her head flopped down. Behind her, over the same hours, he stays super-busy rustling out one round of tea after another. The young man stands by his gas burner, his arms a blur with the stirring and pouring of chai for his customers. While she occasionally curls deeper into herself, lowering her face towards her paws. Neither looks at the other. But it seems each might miss the other if one were not there. The dog is Lucy. The tea man is Jawed. All the other people living and/or working on this stretch of a Central Delhi road-side call her Lucy too. Jawed

Precious archive. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The iron trunk had been lying unopened in their attic for decades, hidden amid suitcases and bags, when Arshad and Sheeba accidentally stumbled upon it last week. Inside were old photographs, some fading, a few slightly torn around the edges. It is a discovery within a home, but of some significance to the wider city outside. For the couple belong to Old Delhi’s Fehmi family, which used to publish the legendary journal Din Duniya. The photographs show people connected to the family, with the collection reaching back to Delhi’s early twentieth century. One photo bears the handwritten date “30-12-1937.” Among these many dozens of photographs, one shows a boy wearing a striped sherwani over wide-bottomed

A place at 75. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Labourers in shirts and pants are kneeling on the market’s dusty floor, fitting a paving tile into place. Nearby, two women labourers with their heads covered by their sari pallus are working among similar tiles and pans of mortar, while barefoot children sit at the edge of a newly paved stretch. Now, a woman in a crisp outfit walks past the labourers, sunglasses on her head, a white Satya Paul shopping bag on one arm. Were this scene of labourers paving a path for well-heeled shoppers in a novel, the setting might have seemed too pointed. This is the front lane in Khan Market, one of India’s most expensive shopping places. The

Passing of a Connaught Place icon. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] He was there every day, presiding over India’s oldest toy shop. He had looked after Ram Chander & Sons in Central Delhi’s Connaught Place (CP) for more than seven decades. One of the last people who remembered the colonial-era CP as it was in its early years, Satish Sundra died this Tuesday, aged 88. The shop at Odeon Building, in D Block, Middle Circle, opened in 1935, and its teakwood shelves and sliding doors have stood there ever since. Even as the rest of CP changed, with legacy showrooms and bookshops giving way to ever-changing restaurants and cafés. But he remained behind the toy shop counter. On any given day,

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

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

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