Life of a bookshop. [photos by Florian Morin; text by Mayank Austen Soofi] February 26, 2016: Balraj Bahri Malhotra, the 87-year-old founder of Delhi's iconic Bahrisons Booksellers bookstore in Khan Market, passes away. (The Delhi Walla wrote his obituary here.) February 27: His funeral takes place at Central Delhi's Lodhi Crematorium. The bookstore remains closed. February 28: At 10.40 am, some employees of the Bahrisons are seen standing in front of the shop—its shutters are down. The shop is supposed to open at 11 am. Soon, the rest of the staffers start to arrive one by one. Some of them have chai on the pavement. They chat for a while. Two staffers gently remove the placards put up yesterday to announce

[By Mayank Austen Soofi] Can you touch a Facebook post? Yes, you can. Friends, the first batch of my select Facebook posts--both photographs and texts--have been adapted by Venice-based designer Anna Gerotto into the soft texture of a hand-woven muslin fabric. The fabrics will be displayed at two venues in Venice. Details below. 17 Printings on hand-woven Khadi muslin (17 stampe su mussola Khadi tessuta a mano) Mayank Austen Soofi/fotografie e testi, Anna Gerotto Somewhere in Delhi è un progetto che materializza un incontro tra Mayank Austen Soofi, narratore e fotografo di Delhi e Anna Gerotto, designer veneziana residente part-time in Delhi. Dal 2009 Mayank Austen Soofi racconta, attraverso storie ed immagini, la complessa vita quotidiana di una città di 14 milioni di persone. Ogni giorno porta

A temporary art exhibit. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Old Quarter of Delhi is known for many wonders. The art of spitting noisily has been cultivated to a high form here. Many tourists, of course, come to see the Mughal-era monuments and buildings of this historical district. These days the sophisticated travellers—the kind who seeks realistic experiences—also look out for dead rats lying squashed on the narrow streets. The city has now started to draw the tourists to a new attraction--a contemporary work of profound multi-layered creativity that seems to have clearly been inspired from the great creations of artist Subodh Gupta. It’s a newly formed hill at Chitli Qabar Chowk, a deliciously chaotic crossing near the great Jama Masjid. The

Living with the Bard. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Disclaimer: This article has stolen many phrases from the complete works of a writer who had a history of taking inspiration from people’s lives. In Sufism, the death anniversary of a mystic is not mourned but celebrated, and the celebration is called Urs. Now, this “brave new world” is celebrating the 400th death anniversary of a man who was no Sufi, certainly, but one of the world’s greatest writers, whose very name today is a “tower of strength”. William Shakespeare “passed through nature to eternity” in 1616, and since then his readers have been having “too much of a good thing”. The world—which has been described overwhelmingly over these last four centuries by the

The symbol of Delhi. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] The DL number plates given to cars, auto rickshaws and bikes registered in Delhi frame the view of the city’s roads and streets. These two alphabets arranged together speak for the capital: its heat, smog; its aspiration to be a ‘World Class City’. The DL number plate is also symbolic of our pretension, showiness and vulgarity. Our honking. Our uncivilized traffic manners. DL also indicates Delhi's status as the world’s most polluted city--in January 2016, the city's government introduced the 15-day odd and even registration number driving rule for cars to curb pollution. But when you are in some other land, far from Delhi, and suddenly a car overtakes you bearing

The low life. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Hello feet. So, what do you plan to do today? Why not again go to Salim Bhai’s tea-stall in Kucha Chelan and have chai in one of his disgusting white plastic cups? Will you pay respects to yet another dead rat on the road? Are you still naughty, stopping beside dirty foreign magazines at the Sunday Book Bazaar in Daryaganj? In any case, I don't want you to lose your flamboyant nature. Please show off your beautiful body again in some South Delhi party as you did a couple of nights ago? Or, at least bitchily compare your shoe-dress with that of your more glamorous rival? By the way, aren't you tired of lounging

Colors of Sufism. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Orange, purple and green. These were the colors of that magical night. The Delhi Walla was in the Dargah of Sufi saint Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. The shrine’s courtyard is always empty at this late hour. But this night it was filled with a great crowd. There were qawwal singers performing their famous qawwalis. The entire shrine was decked up like a Christmas tree. The dome at Hazrat Nizamuddin’s tomb glowed orange. The central dome of the adjacent Jamaatkhana mosque was lit up in purple. Its two side domes were bathed in green. “The lighting has been organised by an industrialist family,” said one of the shrine’s caretakers. “They are celebrating

Friend of the tomb. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. This is true only up to a point. There is a lazy dog, indeed, but no brown fox. Instead, there are many graves here and the lazy dog is slumped on one of them. The Delhi Walla is in a small unmarked graveyard in South Delhi’s Mehrauli. The brown dog is sprawled on a stone tomb. He seems sad. He gets up and looks straight ahead. He turns around and stares at the tomb stone. He peers closer. He walks away lazily. The grave is finally left to itself. Remembering a friend? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

A scrap dealer's shed. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] One morning The Delhi Walla enters the shed of scrap dealer Raju, who uses only one name. The decade-old shed is situated in an open ground in Vasundhara, a suburb of new multistorey apartment buildings just beyond Delhi’s city limits. Mr Raju says he spends his day pulling his cart from one housing sector in Vasundhara to another. He stops at every apartment complex, calling out loudly, “Kabadi walla, kabadi walla” ("I'm the scrap dealer"), exhorting the residents to give away the junk items of their households to him for cheap. No wonder then that Mr Raju’s shed looks like a museum of rejects. There is of course the inevitable mound of

Smartphone and the man. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The other evening The Delhi Walla saw the Modern Man. I was at the café in Ajay Guest House in Central Delhi’s Paharganj. The man was seated alone at a corner table. He was having his dinner. His lonesomeness in a place that teemed with lovers and friends rendered afresh the melancholy of big-city solitude. A closer look, however, revealed that the man was not alone. His smartphone was placed against the breadbasket and he was intently looking towards the screen. This is a portrait that is becoming common. After developing intimate bonds with the smartphone, we are now in the second stage of this marriage. The visual evidences of that relationship