Mayank Soofi

1 week ago | hindustantimes.com | Mayank Soofi

In Delhi's summer, traditional shikanji vendors use manual machines to create icy drinks, blending heritage with modern entrepreneurship. So omnipresent on Delhi’s summertime roadsides, the refrigerated cold water trolley doesn’t trade only in refrigerated cold water. The cart vendor also keeps dozens of yellow-green lemons, which he employs to spike up the flavour of his bottled banta drink.

1 week ago | hindustantimes.com | Mayank Soofi

Let us sing in praise of inscriptions. The ones encountered on the opening pages of used books, scrawled by hands perhaps long dead. Indeed, in Delhi’s legendary Sunday Book Bazar, secondhand books on sale often bear such personalised words—sometimes written by the book’s owner, sometimes as dedications jotted by the person gifting the book to a friend or relative. Reading these lines, composed in confidence by a person unknown to us, spawns multiple feelings.

1 week ago | htsyndication.com | Mayank Soofi

India, May 5 -- Let us sing in praise of inscriptions. The ones encountered on the opening pages of used books, scrawled by hands perhaps long dead. Indeed, in Delhi's legendary Sunday Book Bazar, secondhand books on sale often bear such personalised words-sometimes written by the book's owner, sometimes as dedications jotted by the person gifting the book to a friend or relative. Reading these lines, composed in confidence by a person unknown to us, spawns multiple feelings.

1 week ago | hindustantimes.com | Mayank Soofi

The narrow street is splintered into narrower cul-de-sacs. One ends into a wall. The wall has a door. The door opens into a vestibule. The vestibule opens into a courtyard, showing rooms beyond. This particular residence isn’t real. It exists in Ahmad Ali’s Twilight in Delhi. The novel is set in Mohalla Niyaryan, which is real. This Old Delhi street lies behind GB Road’s red light district, crammed with houses, chai khanas, roti bakeries, and very many stalls of all kinds.

1 week ago | htsyndication.com | Mayank Soofi

India, May 2 -- Things are winding down, giving a sense of an ending. This sentiment besets a Connaught Place (CP) stroller, who finally steps into its Outer Circle, after faithfully journeying through all of the preceding circles. In Dante's epic poem Inferno, Hell has nine circles, each denoting a distinct tier of sin and damnation. Similarly, Delhi's colonial-era CP has four circles, each encompassing a world of distinctly different sensations.