The Old Delhi encyclopedia. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The lanes pause at Gadhe Walon ka Chowk. One lane runs towards Chitli Qabar. Another slips beneath Turkman Gate and out of the Walled City. A third heads towards Chawri Bazar. The fourth goes to Teliyon ka Phatak, making this a proper chowk. Overhead, a huge banyan tree leans from one building to another. Its thick branches thread through a maze of cables. Beneath the tree stand Shahji Doodh Bhandar, Bismillah Bakery and Standard Chicken Point. Around them crowd meat shops, stationery stores and photocopy kiosks. Scooters squeeze past battery rickshaws. Men on motorcycles stare at their at their screens. Citizen Moinuddin, who runs a tea stall here, says the name Gadhe Walon

City from above. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Pigeons occupy the bronze statue of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, plus the adjacent traffic lights, and every ledge that can hold a bird. The flyover begins near this statue at Barakhamba, from which it takes its name. Most Delhiwale experience the Central Delhi flyover through a windshield. That is a mistake. It is best experienced on foot. And this infrastructural utility is truly uncommon, for It links New Delhi to Old Delhi. The walk takes barely half an hour. Yet the city changes steadily under your feet. Traffic here never stops. Cars, motorcycles and auto rickshaws stream past. Mixed among them are handcarts loaded with pipes, rods and sacks of cement. This humid evening, an

The Walled City encyclopaedia. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Plaster peels from the walls, old brick shows through, and one white door is decorated with painted flowers. Gali Master Shiv Prasad lies discreetly in Turkman Gate Bazar, sandwiched between the modest establishments of Jawed Lassiwala and Muhammad Doodhwala. The lane is so narrow that it stays dark even at noon. At its dead end, where the lane opens into a small square and the afternoon daylight finally enters, a young man steps out of a doorway. This Old Delhi street was written about years ago. New info has since come to light, making another visit necessary. The young man is Umair, see photo. He is heading to his family's handicraft shop near

The Walled City encyclopaedia. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Old Delhi’s Farash Khana begins with two stories. Both try to explain how the street got its name. One account says the locality was settled by masons who laid the stone floors of the Red Fort. By this account, Farash is a corruption of farsh, the Urdu word for floor. But venerable Akhlaq Ahmad of RK Tailors, a Farash Khana establishment, offers an alternative account. According to him, the locality was home to men who carried ceremonial torches in the Red Fort. The torchbearer, he says, was called a farrash. So here we are, caught in a love triangle of two stories and one name. As for the second word in

The Walled City encyclopaedia. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The street is in constant motion this afternoon. Labourers are weaving through the cramped way bearing hefty parcels on their backs. Delivery boys hurry on, balancing glasses of chai on round rusting metal trays. A man in old-fashioned safari suit goes past carrying a stack of old-fashioned file folders. A few dogs are sitting motionless through the commotion, looking carefree. Kucha Dayaram is one of the many narrow lanes branching off the choked spine of Chawri Bazar. Shops spill onto the lane. Their signboards advertise hardware, aluminium, sanitary goods, GI strips, springs, and display fittings. None offers a clue about the Dayaram of Kucha Dayaram. Though one signboard gives the street's name

The Walled City encyclopaedia. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Old Delhi’s Gali Shah Abul Khair, aka Gali Shahbul Khair, takes its name from the road it opens onto. Shah Abul Khair Marg, the busy market road outside the aforementioned gali, is in turn named after the eighteenth-century Sufi saint buried in the shrine located on the other side of the road. This revered Shah Abul Khair, the mystic, is said to have lived through the reigns of eleven Mughal emperors. Despite carrying the saint's name, the lane is easy to miss. It appears as a narrow slit opening off the market road. At first glance, it seems to lead only to a doorway standing directly ahead. Only on closer inspection does

The Walled City encyclopaedia. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Dug-du-gi. Speak it aloud. The tongue rocks back and forth across the mouth before landing on the final gi. So musical, this word dugdugi. It recalls the rattle of the small hand drum called… dugdugi.! In older times, street hawkers would walk through neighbourhoods shaking their dugdugi to gain attention. The dug-dugi sound would travel down the lanes, reaching people sitting-sleeping indoors, drawing them to doors and windows. This afternoon, no such dugdugi sound is discernible in Gali Dugdugi Shah Kallan, an Old Delhi street near Turkman Gate Bazar. Instead, the afternoon air is soothingly silent, carrying only the steady drone of air conditioners, punctuated by infrequent ceetis of pressure cookers. It is

The Walled City encyclopaedia. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] How do memories map a place? Just study the photo above. A few weeks ago, this space featured Gali Batashan, an Old Delhi street crowded with commercial establishments dealing exclusively in kagaz, or paper. The piece was read thousands of miles away by a 90-year-old gentleman in England, and soon after, his daughter contacted The Delhi Walla on Instagram. Mohan Behari Lall spent the first 29 years of his life on this Walled City street before leaving India for higher education. His family home, Sukh Bhawan, named after his great-grandfather, had 11 rooms, four kitchens, and three rooftops. In 1984, Mohan eventually settled in England, where he worked as a mechanical engineer. He

The Walled City encyclopaedia. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] The informally named Gali Shyam Bhawan is very short. The roofed lane begins and ends as a passage, leading inward from the light and noise of Daryaganj in Old Delhi. As it stretches ahead, the lane darkens. The lane’s entrance is marked by a stall selling religious posters. This blinding afternoon, Sonu’s display bears images of Ram Darbar, Radha Krishna and Shivji Bhagwan. Further in, where the lane grows dim and feels cut off from the rest of the city, stands its defining landmark, marked only by a tiny, almost invisible scrawl of blue ink on the chipped wall: “tea wala.” Upender’s tea stall is richly detailed. The place is crammed with a