The great chef’s life in Delhi. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Buckling up the seat belt, she normally drives out into the world far from home… she’s en route to the office. But not anymore. Payal Singh didn’t think much about the routines in her working life—until the coronavirus lockdown forced her to stay confined in the family flat with husband and daughter. Actually she lives in two flats. Ms Singh’s elderly parents reside in a similar apartment two floors down in the housing complex in Ghaziabad in the Greater Delhi Region. “Sometimes I make lunch for us all and sometimes Mummy cooks dinner for all... so it’s now going on as smoothly as possible.” She’s talking on WhatsApp from

The great chef’s life in Delhi. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Forced into self-isolation, she closes her eyes and sees herself turning into “a tiny speck of dust.” And now, she, this dust particle, floats into the air, flies across the spaces and oceans, to her friend Charu’s home. Charu has been forced into self-isolation too. Coronavirus is everywhere. This dust particle is Farah Naaz, as she imagined herself. She is an advocate and lives in Gurgaon in the Greater Delhi Region. Charu is a friend of her youth, who lives in distant California. “We spent six years of our college life together, in AMU (Aligarh Muslim University),” recalls Ms Naaz, sitting in the drawing room of her ground floor flat in Sector

The great chef’s life in Delhi. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] If you want to taste some of Delhi’s best homey non-veg dishes, then you have no choice but to plot and scheme your way to become author Sadia Dehlvi’s buddy. She rustles out truly memorable meals that are always sweetened-and-spiced with a generous helping of love and gossip. Her delicious aloo saalan and safed daal has acquired mythical proportions among her wide circle of lucky friends. In her 60s, Ms Dehlvi has written two books on Sufism. In fact, her drawing room shelves are weighed down with fist-breaking tomes on that subject. Her third book had an altogether different theme. It was her memoirs, embedded in a collection of family

The great chef’s life in Delhi. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] This is that icy season of the year when our chachis/chachas and mamis/mamas surprise us with delicious bathua parathas. Some home kitchens rustle out rotis and raitas out of these aromatic winter-time green leaves. Some add bathua to flavour their dals. But have you heard of bathua risotto? Risotto is a rice dish from Italy, the land that doesn’t grow bathua. It’s actually a Delhi woman who invented this rarity. Designer Elena Tommaseo, a native of Venice in Italy, lives in Greater Kailash Enclave I. She is the sole dweller of her tasteful South Delhi apartment—her bookshelves and the accompanying divan make for a perfect paradise. The shy woman agrees to share

The great chef’s life in Delhi. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] In the age of fake news, here’s fake omelette for you. (Disclaimer: it’s not as easy to rustle up as fake news) Nidhi Rishi’s kitchen in Ghaziabad’s Raj Nagar is unusually big—as spacious as any respectable Delhi drawing room. But then besides being a homemaker, Ms Rishi, 61, is also an unusually passionate cook. Everything that’s laid out on her dining table almost always happens to be home-made including the refreshing plum sherbet she has offered to her guest this steaming afternoon. Ms Rishi conducts cooking classes, too, and dabbles in a variety of cuisines from Chinese to Continental. Perhaps her instinctive flair for experimenting with a diverse range of

The great chef’s life in Delhi. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Narrowing her eyes, she says, slowly and carefully, emphasizing each word, “Miscook the pasta and all is spoiled.” The Delhi Walla is at Elettra Verrone’s kitchen. A First Secretary at the Italian Embassy in New Delhi since 2014, she lives in a handsome books-filled apartment in the central part of the city. Explaining the intricacies of making pasta, Ms Verrone warns us to never ever trust the accuracy of the cooking minutes specified on the manufacturer’s packet. Speaking in a grave tone, she says, “Some people, like me, want their pasta a little undercooked, and some others prefer it over-cooked… they are the losers, of course.” Lounging in Ms Verrone’s

The great chef’s life in Delhi. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Here is a brief account of a day in the life of Archana Das, a 26-year-old working woman. 5.30 am. Alarm rings on the mobile phone. Ms Das wakes up in her one-room flat in East Delhi's Chilla village. She immediately enters the kitchen to prepare a meal for the family. Husband, Shuchitro, and sons, Shubroto and Shudipto, are still sleeping. Not long after, she wakes up the kids. 7 am. Ms Das escorts the boys to the bus stand outside the village and waits for the school bus to arrive. She then hurries back home and gets ready herself. Her husband, a paint-mixer, will leave for his work a little

The great chef’s life in Delhi. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] It’s no child’s play to crack Ghalib. Even high-brow Urdu literates find his poetry formidable—Ghalib is all allusions and metaphors, or so The Delhi Walla has heard. And to make life more difficult, Delhi’s great 19th century poet also wrote extensively in Persian, and that part of his oeuvre is considered challenging by serious Ghalib scholars, too. Of course, some of his verses are also so simple and romantic that even roadside Romeos swing to them. Since it seems impossible for non-Urdu readers to become a true Ghalibite in this lifetime, at least, I'm always looking for an easy shortcut to get intimate with the legend. Why not, for instance,

The great chef’s life in Delhi. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Theatre person and former Doordarshan news reader Sunit Tandon has one of the largest collections of western classical music CDs in Delhi. Not many know, until now, that he also has one of the city’s best home cooks specializing in the authentic cuisine of Uttar Pradesh (UP). If you ever plan a theft in Mr Tandon’s apartment in Safdarjung Enclave, skip his CDs and books and even the beautiful drawing room piano. Just steal the quiet Surinder Kumar. This gentleman will make you the city’s best UP-style arhar dal (with just that rumor-like hint of heeng). His sukhe aloo ki subzi is so delciously addictive you would like