Following the cataclysmic 2026 flash floods. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] In the relatively inexpensive rooms of South Delhi’s Chirag Delhi village, young working people from Nepal live alongside residents from other parts of the country. Nepali is heard in the cramped lanes along with Hindi, and shop signs advertise “money order service to Nepal.” Gurugram’s Rajiv Nagar, too, has a substantial Nepali presence, while a music shop near the city’s bus terminus has long stocked songs in Nepali. Hailing from Nepal’s well-known political Koirala family, actor Manisha Koirala did part of her education at the Army Public School in Dhaula Kuan. At Delite cinema in Daryaganj, Mukti Ram Parajuli, a native of Nepal, has worked since 1992, spending most

A horror not to be surveyed. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] In Connaught Place, after sundown, a bald man in a black suit and tie is sitting alone, without even a mobile phone, on a low cement ledge close to Anil Book Corner, shut for the day. He is looking down. A few feet away, Delhi continues. The one-way road behind the solo citizen is crammed with cars and autos. The showrooms on the other side of the road are glowing with light. The sight of someone alone in a crowded space is an ordinary one in a big city. It brings to mind poet Emily Dickinson’s haunting portrayal of loneliness as a “horror not to be surveyed.” Perhaps nowhere in

City through time. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Gurgaon, the Millennium City of corporate complexes and residential towers, looks so vertical that it seems to have no past. Even its newer name, Gurugram, sounds too modern, rhyming with Instagram, though gram here means gaon, or village. But saying Gurugram has no past because it looks new would be like saying a new migrant to the city has no past. Walk through the city and see how the impression changes. In Jacobpura, a bungalow is being demolished by migrant-labourers from Bundelkhand. The skeletal frame still reveals old-fashioned courtyards and doors. A handful of similar structures are still standing intact in adjacent lanes. One has a wooden door bearing carved designs, the parapet above

The way city speaks. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] “Stephen, his blood wooed by grace of language and gesture, blushed." — James Joyce in Ulysses Every generation is wooed by its own language. It falls for fresh words, gives inherited words new meanings, and discovers slogans and catchphrases that become the soundtrack of its youth. If you wanted to hear Delhi's newest words in circulation, Jantar Mantar was recently the place to stand. Students had gathered beside the centuries-old solar observatory to protest paper leaks in competitive exams. The air was thick with contemporary slogans, many destined for Instagram, alongside words already entering Delhi's everyday speech. Every decade, Delhi sounds a little different. A decade or two ago, college students called anything impressive jhakaas.

Literature and the city. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Perhaps America’s 250th independence anniversary does matter to us in India. The United States has shaped global cultural life, giving the world jazz, Hollywood, and generations of influential writers. American literature, in particular, has been moulded by a staggeringly diverse range of voices and lived experiences, from writers as distinct as Toni Morrison and Ocean Vuong. One such writer is Jhumpa Lahiri, whose work spans lands, languages, and pehchan, reflecting many of the idiosyncratic qualities that define American writing. Born in London to Bengali immigrants, raised in the United States, and now a resident of Rome, she visited Delhi earlier this year. One slice from that visit provides a fitting way to

Literary scene in climate chnage. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Oops! Only one person as audience in the hall for a literary gathering. See photo. Blame the heat. Temperatures are in the 40s. The heat index makes it feel above 50. The programme is due to begin at 5pm. It is the monthly prose meet at Central Delhi's Ghalib Academy. Open to all, every participant is invited to the podium to read a short story, essay or some such piece of prose that they have written, in any language. But before anyone can read, there has to be an audience. Yes, dear reader, this is what some of the literary life can look like during Delhi's extreme summer. Just weeks earlier, despite the

City and its lifeline. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Before we talk of the rising inches. Most Delhiwale are reminded of the Yamuna only when the monsoon arrives, the river spills across its plains, and flooding takes over the front pages of our newspapers. (A. K. Ramanujan’s A River best encapsulates this annual phenomenon; a line from the poem inspires the opening words of this dispatch). Just before the rains, as now, the city’s Yamuna appears narrow, lazy and sluggish. Buffaloes graze on its temporary islands. The blackish water giving no hint of the river’s bonds to the city. Yet this may be a suitable time to see the Yamuna not as a crisis but as one of Delhi's defining landscapes. Coming down

One city, one nation. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] See the photo. It alone is enough to tell the whole story. An auto-rickshaw is parked on a Delhi roadside bearing a “Happy Birthday America!” placard announcing the forthcoming 250th anniversary of American independence. The placard is part of an outreach initiative by the US Embassy. Behind the auto rises Dilli Gate, a monument that had already stood for more than a hundred years when the United States was born on the Fourth of July, 1776. This is not an attempt to diminish the story of present-day America. The photo simply offers perspective. When the American colonies declared independence from Britain, Delhi was already a very, very old city weighed down by centuries