Her stay-at-home consolations. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] Dressed in a many-hued hand-woven Murshidabad silk sari, craft activist Laila Tyabji, 73, is sitting in her book-lined drawing room in south Delhi’s Shantiniketan. Behind her sofa is a huge glass window through which all you see are sky, clouds and trees. As she chats, the birds fly past the window—like fish swimming in the aquarium. During the lockdowns last year, “my drawing room window reminded me that looking out is as important as looking in,” she says. “Things have their own beauty, but also the beauty of memory and the people with whom you associate them.” She tells The Delhi Walla about 5 cherished objects that were a source of comfort during the homebound

A house of windows. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s midnight. Her fourth-floor house is quiet. Her daughter, husband and ma-in-law are sleeping. She settles down on the durrie by the window, lights a diya, pours herself a glass of red wine, and opens her much-scrawled copy of Madame Bovary. Sugandha Sehgal, 36, teaches this novel to grad students. An assistant professor in Delhi University’s Jesus and Mary College, she has taken leave from work to finish her doctoral thesis on “bodies out of context: politics and aesthetics of social media feminism.” Late last month, she shifted from her longtime house in Delhi’s Dwarka to Gurgaon, in Sector 62, Golf Course Extension. Trying to strike a friendship with the new home, she tells

Old house, new home. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It looks like a museum. Nothing like this old-fashioned balcony exists anywhere else in the immediate vicinity. What is it like to actually live in this building? It turns out that this elegant Walled City mansion is a rent-free home to a dozen labourers. They work for a construction material supplier who sits in the shop below, here in Mohalla Qabristan neighbourhood. The building belongs to him. “It’s at least a hundred year old, but our family moved to a bigger house, nearby, a long time ago,” he says. The entry is dramatic. The steep unlit staircase abruptly opens into a tiny, cluttered courtyard. It doesn’t feel like the same building — that from the

An unusual dwelling. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] He has one of the most unique addresses in the city. He lives in a graveyard. Alone. “This has been my home for 28 years,” mutters Asmuddin Ansari. In his mid-50s, he stays in a little cemetery tucked in one corner of the Sufi shrine of Hazrat Khwaja Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki, in south Delhi’s Mehrauli. This winter afternoon, Mr Ansari is sitting in a sunlit corner of the graveyard, silently staring upon the graves—some of which are more than 100 years old and some are more recent. “The latest burial took place four months ago,” he says, explaining that it isn’t a public graveyard, and is reserved for members of select families. Dressed in

A private paradise. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] All roses here are white, though some have a pale pink flush, as if a drop of blood had spread through their veins. This is a private garden. What makes it unique is that it stands on one of Old Delhi’s highly perched rooftops, on the fourth floor, and gives a sweeping view of the historic quarter’s skyline. Look there! That’s the dome of the great Jama Masjid. And above your head, the Walled City’s ubiquitous paltu (pet) pigeons are crisscrossing their hyperlocal sky. But strangely these views, so celebrated in stories and movies, doesn’t seem as fascinating as these commonplace potted roses. Indeed, these blossoms appear to encapsulate the very essence of the

Home sweet home. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Kavita Arora, 47, is a psychiatrist. Ankita Khanna, 36, is a psychologist. They occasionally share their eight-floor apartment, in Gurgaon in the Greater Delhi Region, with residential complex pigeons or with Zuzu, the neighbour’s dog. Ms Arora’s elderly father, who resides in south Delhi’s Alaknanda, stayed with them during the early uncertain days of the coronavirus pandemic. Ms Khanna’s parents, who live in Dehradun, visit them annually. Ms Arora and Ms Khanna have been living together for eight years. They first met at work, in the child and adolescent mental health clinic that Ms Arora co-founded with two other mental health professionals. Chatting to this reporter on WhatsApp video from their drawing room,

A household's new friend. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It is taking so much space in the small kitchen. But Babua Singh won’t crib about that. “You stack the bartan (dishes) in it, go to office, and when you come back in the evening everything is spotlessly clean and dry,” she says. A textile designer, Ms Singh is showing her newly acquired dish-washing machine in the Ghaziabad flat that she shares with her husband and college-going daughter. Like many middle-class households, Ms Singh used to depend on the services of a part-time house maid for washing the dishes. The coronavirus pandemic changed that as visits from the outside now involve fears of getting the virus. Ms Singh says she nevertheless

In a musician's world. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s late night. He picks up his guitar, strums the strings and starts to croon Feeling Good. The Nina Simone classic instantly catches Rumi’s attention. He leaps up to the chair, jumps on the writing table, and listens intently to the rendition. Rumi is used to these guitar songs. Because Rumi’s roomie is a musician. Rumi is a cat. His mate, Ehmad Ridwan, is a human. This is their pad in south Delhi’s East of Kailash. They are the only guys in the flat. Both the other flatmates are women, who have their own rooms. “While I often play the guitar in the drawing room, our common room, I prefer to listen to music alone in

Private is public. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] A blue lungi is hanging in front of a shuttered shop, folded within a mishmash of power cables. Nearby, a baniyan and underwear are on a similar exhibit. Across the road, a pair of shirt and pants are on a string hitched to electric poles. This is a morning scene in Old Delhi’s Chawri Bazar. The streets are decked with thick power cables looped around tall bent poles most haphazardly. Dangling over the pavement, these wires resemble the zigzag lines that complicated graphs are made of. The spectacular anarchy somehow works, and the electricity is successfully supplied to the surrounding buildings. The more visible use of these cables (the ones in plastic coverings) is

Far from 'des'. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Their true home, they say, is their village, which they call des (country). But while they are in the capital, for practical reasons, they have to make it a home too in the form of a pavement shelter where they cook, rest, sleep and spend empty time together. The middle-aged Nand Ram lives with his wife, Beni, and teenage son, Bablu, in Green Park, a genteel neighbourhood in South Delhi. Mr Ram’s house is not far from the area’s market, full of elegant cafes and sophisticated gentry. His accommodation consists of one room. The roof and walls are made of yellow, blue, black and white plastic sheets. “We bought these at wholesale rates