Bombay 26/11 - Pakistan for Mumbai

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Not all Pakistani hands are stained with the Indian blood.

[Compiled by Mayank Austen Soofi; picture by Arko Datta]

This is a blogsite on Delhi. It should have nothing to do with Bombay or Pakistan. But these are extraordinary times. This is no time to go romantic about Old Delhi bylanes. On the day the siege of the Taj Mahal Hotel ended in Bombay, Aaj Tak, an Indian TV channel, announced that the hands of Pakistanis are now stained with the blood of Indians. I disagree. These are a few of Pakistan's top bloggers and it seems Mumbai is their heritage, too.

Common war

Mumbai carnage is a tragedy shared by all Pakistanis who are victims of terrorism themselves. The most important thing is not to fall into the trap laid out by forces that want India and Pakistan to be on the warpath. We have to fight it together because all problems and their solutions are shared in common whether we like it not. There is no alternative to cooperation. Voices of sanity must not be drowned by the shrill call for more violence.
Raza Rumi, razarumi.com

Karachi becomes Mumbai

I, too, am a Mumbaikar today. I do not know who did this. Nor can I imagine any cause that would justify this. But this I know: No matter who did this, no matter why, the terror that has been wrought in Mumbai is vile and inhuman and unjustifiable. And, for the sake of our own humanness, we must speak out against it. And, so, to any Mumbaikar who might be listening, I say: "I stand with you today. In prayer and in solidarity."
Adil Najam, pakistaniat.com

Crying for Bombay

As a Pakistani I genuinely sit down and pray for the well being of each and every Indian who suffered on 26th November.I hope that you have the courage to rebuild Mumbai from this disaster. Mumbai is bound to rebound and I hope it rebounds to achieve far greater heights then every before. Living in Karachi we too have been through one too many similar disasters and it is the resolve and commitment of the citizens that bring life back into the city. Mumbai I must assure you despite our differences many peace loving Pakistanis have shed a tear with you on the 26th. Our heart bleeds with you. Mumbai we are with you.
Dr Wahab Alvi, teeth.com.pk

A familiar rage

We feel some of the rage which Indian must be going through. But get it right. In Pakistan we face such problems on a daily basis and tell me how many Indians really feel for our tragedies? Stiill, despite our differences, we are all humans and so we can feel when someone is killed or is dead.
Ameer Hamza, ameerhamzaadhia.blogspot.com

We know the feeling

Brought up in Karachi during troubled 90s and being in Lahore/Islamabad during the current wave of terror attacks, one can relate to what the Mumbaikars went through. It was terrifying. The Mumbai incident probably surpasses any individual terrorist activity. I just hope that its the end of this kind of experience for the people on the other side of the border, and they don't go through the continuous and serial attacks that we are going through these days.
Muhammad Ali, riseofpakistan.blogspot.com

Bombay 26/11 – Delhi is Far

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The show goes on in the Capital.

[Text and picture by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Bombay, the site of 27/11 terror attacks, is far from Delhi. Here the metro train is speeding towards Mandi House. The traffic light is turning green at Bhagwan Dass crossing. The Faridabad EMU is chugging on the railway overbridge. All seems normal.

I walk to my office in Connaught Place. A colleague teases me about my Pakistan connections. "Mayank, you should no longer hang out with Pakis or you too will become a terrorist," she advices. "What does your Arundhati Roy have to say," another asks.

I go to the window and look at the city outside.

Here is the skyline. Regal building, L-Block, Palika Bazaar Parking, Statesman Tower. I think of Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay where terrorists are still holed up with several guests as hostages. I've never been to that hotel and yet today it feels like a lost home. Its old wing in tatters. Its dome destroyed. Its rooms burned.

If such an attack takes place in Delhi, where would it be?

India Gate? Red Fort? Where's the Delhi's heart?

But it doesn't matter.

I take an auto to the Taj Mahal hotel in Mansingh Road.

The entrance is heavily guarded. I slip inside and walk up the driveway. Something's amiss. On entering, my shoulder bag, my jeans pockets -- everything -- is frisked. I walk under a metal detector, and then... the usual 5-star sights -- the speckless glass door, the turbaned doormen, the pretty hostesses and the handsome duty manager.

The show must go on.

While their most prestigious property is now a war zone, the facade of it's-just-another-day is at full play in the lobby here. These serious luxury hotels just don't have to pretend that nothing has happened but they also have to make sure nothing happens. The music playing on, the houseguests on sofas, and friends chatting in the tea lounge. But something's amiss. Two Delhi Police cops sitting at a corner with rifles on the table.

Strange times, strange sights.

I walk over to Khan Market, into Full Circle bookshop and up the stairs at Café Turtle where I see an expat family. I want to have coffee with them and talk about Bombay. But this Australian family isn’t aware that my country is hit by its worst-ever terror attack.

You can't get lonelier.

Security Check outside Taj Mansingh

Dateline Bombay – Oh Taj, 26/11

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All Delhi wallas are Mumbaikars today.

[By Mayank Austen Soofi; above picture taken by Arko Datta]

Today Delhi has become Bombay. The Delhi Walla is now a Bombay Walla. I talked to a few eminent people who shuffle their time in both cities.

Anjolie Ela Menon, Delhi-based painter
I was at home in Nizamuddin East when news channels broke the news. My son is visiting Bombay and I was panicked. But he is safe in Shivaji Park. However a businessman friend of mine is trapped in the Taj.

Anita Kaul Basu, TV producer, spends time both in Delhi and Bombay
It’s like being in Kashmir.

I was at home in Andheri West and since last night I haven’t gotten up from the TV. We thought terrorist attacks happen in crowded places like railway stations but this time they targeted luxurious hotels. They targeted People Like Us.

Even South Bombay is not safe.

Of course, I’m sorry about so many deaths but it breaks my heart to see the fire razing in the old wing of the Taj. That was exactly the place where we shot an episode of Mastermind India a few years ago. There are rumors of the central atrium filled with bodies. It’s tragic. Although all my friends seem to be safe but you don’t know just who are trapped inside those hotels. We had a TV shoot today in Goregaon but of course we have abandon the plans.

Roshan Seth, Delhi-based actor
Since I don’t have a television, I got the news this morning from newspapers. That all this happens in the name of God is so ultimately depressing. We are in a state of war without being in a state of war.

Anoushka Shankar, Delhi-based sitar player
I was at home in Panchseel Enclave when I saw the news on TV. I immediately smsed my friends in Bombay. Till late last night it seemed the situation would come under control but I woke up in the morning and realized the enormity of it. I’m shaken.

Vir Das, Bombay-based comedian
I was busy in the shoot of my new TV show in Kandivali East and I came home only this morning. I’m sleepy but thank God all my friends are safe.

Samit Basu, Delhi-based novelist
I was at home in CR Park when I got the news and I immediately thought of my friends in Bombay. Thankfully none of them live in South Bombay. Which is good in many ways. But I’m not catching the news on TV. I don’t have a cable connection.

Oh Bombay (picture by Peter Keep)



Oh Bombay (picture by Arko Datta)



Oh Bombay (picture by Gautam Singh)



Shock in Delhi



Shock in Delhi

Capital View – The Best of Delhi

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What do ex-Delhi wallas miss about the city.

[Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi]

I love Delhi. Imagine my distress when I met Craig and Tracy, my American friends who have been living in the Capital for two years, and now in the process of relocating to London. Craig said he is ecstatic at the thought of getting rid of Delhi.

He was too frank.

Tracy nudged him softly and Craig changed his tone, changed his expressions and said with a click of tongue that they would miss the friends they made here.

I suspected he was not being frank and so I set about asking other Delhi friends who have gone abroad as to what they miss about this city.

Patrick McNiel (lived in Delhi for 3 years, now in Chicago): I miss saying hello to the barber who set up shop outside my apartment near Mandi House. I miss having clothing altered for $1. I miss the kebabs. I miss driving down the Raj Path toward the Rashtrapati Bhawan.I miss being treated like any other rider of DTC buses and Delhi Metro. I miss the chikoos. I miss shopping in Bengali Market. I miss swimming outside year round. I miss that feeling of accomplishing something big by accomplishing something little. I miss the fact that I actually enjoyed living in Central Delhi rather than South Delhi.

Harsha Khare (A Delhiwalla who now lives in London): I miss the servants.

Sarah Hine (lived in Delhi for 11 months and now back in NYC): I'm somewhat ashamed to admit it but I miss being treated well. I'm ashamed to admit this because I think this royal treatment comes, at least partly, as a result of my white skin. As I fumbled for proper change in Grand Central Station in New York City (seriously, I don't recognize nickels and dimes as quickly as I used to), I sensed the cashier's impatience. I realized that most businesses I patronized in Delhi were extremely patient with me whereas here, I'm just another American.

Daniela Schwarz (lived here for 1 year, now in Germany): I miss the abuses that ring in your ear wherever you go in Delhi, and the opportunity to hurl just about anything back at anyone without them cocking an eyebrow. I'd probably not miss the trail of fans that follows me everywhere, especially the scrubby male ones asking for dates. And above all I'd miss the ingenious ways Delhiites have to block any effort the Delhi Metro makes to teach them how to stand in line.

Padmini Vaidhyanathan (lived for 23 years in Delhi, now studying in New York): I miss having no rights as a pedestrian.

Anonymous (this friend doesn't want to be named; she lives in US): I miss the songs on the radio reflecting my mood even as I don't understand them. I miss the bad art that sells for crores. I miss giving people a kiss on each cheek. I miss all the awful techno and snooty clubs.

Craig (he got frank with me, again): I will miss the monuments and also monuments and then I will miss the monuments some more and yes of course there are monuments and monuments too and beside the monuments I will also miss the monuments and of course, the monuments too.

City Classic - Sablok Clinic, Daryaganj

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The Capital's legendary sex clinic promises a 'cure' for homosexuality.

[Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Other than gonorrhea, syphilis, impotency, night discharge, the city's legendary gupt-rog clinic discreetly claims to cure gay men of their homosexuality.

Sablok Clinic, in its own words, is one of the "oldest and most authentic sex clinic." Established by Mr Hakim Hari Singh Sablok in 1928 at Lahore, it shifted to Delhi after the Indian partition.

Since then by advertising itself with pictures of happy-looking straight couples, Sablok clinic has grown to be a part of Delhi's landscape.

One afternoon I met sexologist Dr Vinod Sablok (FRSH, UK), the late founder's son, in his slickly designed first floor clinic at Daryaganj and introduced myself as a gay man tormented by man-to-man orientation. I said that my approaching wedding is making me nervous since I like having sex with men, not women.

Dr Sablok immediately asked me to unzip.

After examining my you-know-what with a magnifying lens, the venerable doctor assured me of full recovery. I was told that at the end of a month-long treatment, costing Rs 5,500, I would start desiring women, not men.

It happens only in India? Not really.

Not in India alone is homosexuality perceived as an illness curable through medicines and therapy sessions. It was only 34 years ago that the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. Pentagon continued with that classification as late as 2006 when it moved the 'illness' to a list of conditions ranging from bed-wetting to fear of flying.

Delhi's Dr Sablok shares the distinguished rank of those crazed medical practitioners worldwide who have been tirelessly attempting to cure the homosexuals of homosexuality.

In the 1920s, medical researchers in Germany implanted testicles from corpses into the bodies of gay men. Electric shocks and hallucinogenic drugs were other popular treatments. In contrast, Dr Sablok's remedy is pretty painless—one-month expensive medication and every gay in town could strut his stuff for a girl.

"It's all bogus," says Mr Rahul Singh, gay rights activist who works with the Naz Foundation at Kailash Colony. "People want to cash on to the insecurity of gays who are socially uncomfortable with their identity", he says.

I also talked to Mr Ashok Row Kavi, UNAIDS Consultant and perhaps India's most famous gay rights activist. "There is a whole branch of psychiatry in India that still believes that homosexuality is curable through 'aversion therapy'," he says. "Gay men are given electric shocks after showing them pictures of naked males and subsequently given chocolates/mithai after being shown photos of naked women."

This whole 'therapy' is driven by market sources where parents bring in their single male children to the 'mental health specialist', say a couple of months before marriage, when the son complains that he is not sexually aroused by women.

Mr Kavi noted that one has to be careful with quacks as so many are homosexual themselves. "One such man eloped with the handsome patient he was supposed to cure," he says.

Whether Mr Sablok himself is homosexual is something I cannot claim with confidence. His face remained expressionless when I took out my you-know-what.

Where Near Golcha Cinema, Daryaganj Ph 23278787 Website sablokclinic.com

Straight & Sablok-ed

Maximum City -- Being Indian in the Indian Capital

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A lady from Northeast India is called 'chinky noodle' in Delhi.

[Text and picture by Mayank Austen Soofi]

One day Ms Sonam Tsomo was the eldest BA-pass daughter of respectable middle-class parents (papa in fire brigade, mummy a housewife).

The next, she is in the capital of her country and ceases to be respectable. Instead, she's an easy catch, a "chinky noodle", a "Chinese", a woman who is asked her "rate" as she walks down the road.

Those slurs have nothing to do with who Ms Tsomo is – but what she looks like. Her small eyes and flat nose set her apart from the people of the city, and for them, her appearance is her CV.

"Each time people make opinions about me because of my racial features, I feel as if I don't belong to India," says Ms Tsomo, 30, who first came to Delhi 10 years ago, working as a receptionist, then a restaurant hostess, a television producer and finally a public relations executive.

"It hurts," she says, reaching out for her banana muffin at the Defence Colony Barista. We were sitting by the window-side. "But you try to ignore it, as you can't go around slapping those guys."

Back home in Kalimpong, a hill town in West Bengal, "where there are no opportunities" Ms Tsomo was just another face in the crowd. But she was worldly-wise and had a fair idea of what she was getting into when she took a bumpy bus ride to New Jalpaiguri, and from there a 16-hour train journey to Delhi.

"I knew we people would be teased as chinkies," she said, wearing a long flowing white skirt. "But I didn't know I would be treated so differently from other Indian girls."

She had never imagined she would be looked down as "a lady of loose character."

"Of course, it's not articulated in words when somebody thinks that we people from North-East are prostitutes but there's that hint in the air. I can recognise their prejudice."

Ms Tsomo recall instances when bouncers in nightclubs turned her and her friends away.

"They thought we people are too easy-going and would dance around with 10 guys and then there would be ugly scenes," she says. "The bouncer would lie and tell us that the place is already full. However, we would see that 'Indian' people who came after us would be let in."

Since then, Ms Tsomo, an Amar Colony resident, has grown used to insults targeted towards people from her region. But it still hits hard when her sister or close friends come visiting.

"I'm very protective about them," she says. "And it pains me when they have to undergo the humiliation."

Too bad she can do little except asking them to take proper precautions: don't look into men's eyes, don't smile at people, don't react if anyone calls you 'chinky'.

Once a friend of hers, fresh from Kalimpong, went shopping to Lajpat Nagar where a young man rolled down his car window and asked, "Chinky, what's your rate?"

The friend had prepared herself for the worst – eve-teasing, groping, and even rape-like situations, just like any Delhi girl – but she could not stomach this.

"She cried like hell that night," Ms Tsomo remembers.

Despite these horror tales, the lady is not giving up on Delhi.

"I have made many Indian friends … they call me `chinky' only pyar-se (affectionately)", she says.

City Life – Spit Please, This is Delhi

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The capital has a rich spitting culture.

[Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The forcible ejection of saliva from one’s mouth can hardly stir a city like Delhi. People do it all the time. Delhi Metro has a fine of Rs 200 for it. College campuses have lecturers who spray, not speak.

However, on November 6, 2008, all hell broke loose in Delhi University when a young man spat on the face of Professor SAR Geelani, a lecturer at Zakir Hussain College. Mr Geelani was attending a seminar while the spitter was part of the troupe led by Delhi University Student Union (DUSU) president Ms Nupur Sharma, who was protesting against Mr Geelani’s presence. (Mr Geelani was an accused in the terrorist attack on Parliament, since acquitted.)

“This derogatory act was all the more shocking, for it was led by a girl,” says Mr Nikhil Verma, a third-year student in Sri Ram College of Commerce. “One doesn’t expect such aggression from a woman.”

Is spitting, not just on somebody’s face, only a man’s play?

“Not really,” says Ms Rashi Singhal, a final-year student in Lady Sri Ram College. “While men spit more frequently, women are equally capable of it.” She complains that the habit is all too common in her college. “The girls spit all over the place, not realising that they are harming their society.”

Author Mr Farookh Dhondy is more explicit concerning the ‘harm’. “You might have infectious diseases and you could transfer them to the person you are spitting on,” he warns. “Even kissing is dangerous.”

Mr Dhondy’s advice to those who are hell-bent on using face-spitting as a political statement: “Carry a personal hygiene certificate from an MBBS doctor.”

“Please consider the not-so-minor matter of human dignity,” pleads Mr Mujibur Rehman, member of the faculty in Jamia Millia Islamia. “There are people whom I don’t appreciate due to social or political reasons, but I would never spit on them.”

What about those who can’t help spitting on your face? Remember the teacher in Shah Rukh Khan’s film Main Hoon Naa? Most of us know or have known friends who would rain saliva on the listener’s face during an animated conversation. “A few of my friends spit while talking,” says Mr Nikhil Verma. “I request them not to, but the fault lies in their speaking style.”

However, a few say that the fault lies with… well, Delhiites. “This city is a walking spittoon,” observes Ms Sumati Ghosh, a social counsellor. “Delhi has too many people who want to be contrary to what the social norms are.”

“We Europeans, on the other hand, don’t spit on each other’s face unless we are having a fight with our spouse,” confesses a diplomat who lives in a Malcha Marg bungalow. He requested anonymity since he is not authorised by his embassy to comment on India’s domestic affairs. “In Delhi, I’ve seen both men and women spitting all over the place, which doesn’t add to the sex appeal of either.”

Sex appeal, maybe not, but can it boost the spitter’s political appeal?

“No way,” says Ms Priyanka Chakravarty, a first-year postgrad student of political science in JNU. “Such uncivilised people don’t deserve to be in the political domain.”

DUSU’s Ms Nupur Sharma agrees. “It [the Geelani incident] didn’t happen in front of me,” she says. “I would be the last person to even spit on the street.”

“The spit fell not on me but on Indian culture,” says Mr Geelani, the man who bore the brunt. “In any case, the saliva fell not on my face but on my glasses.”

The Geelani Incident (this picture is by Sushil Kumar)



A way of life

City Walk - ITO Crossing

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One morning at Delhi's most irksome traffic intersection.

[Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Not again! My Blueline stuck in the traffic jam at ITO. I curse the bus, the city, and kick my way out of the chicken coop. I run up on the footbridge escalators (yes, an escalator!), show my thumb to the people below, and hop, skip, jump to the other side.

9-6 muggles glumly walking past Delhi Police headquarters to their highrises. What’s this nukkar-ish place: rickety stalls, mangy dogs, lafanga boys and a... chhola bhathura stall. I’m starving! Rs 10 for a plate and worth the grease. Run by a guy from Faridkot, this stall is pumping up people’s paunches since 1978.

Why are so many young men in polyester shirts crowding under a neem tree? I squeeze through and there flutter pink-coloured leaflets announcing vacancies for lower division clerks and naib tehsildars. These folks must be the city’s unemployed.

This being a recession time, I too may be fired from my day-job. Will I, too, then come here to apply for the post of railway clerks? Umm, most likely I’ll spend daytime reading Jane Austen in... where?

The nearby building of Jamait Ulaima Hind, an Islamic organisation, is an unlikely spot for reading in solitude but trust Delhi to spring surprises in most unexpected of places.

This place is quiet, spacious and mysterious: a modern structure topped by an antique-looking dome. No one stops me as I enter. The stairs are lined with potted plants. Three boys are reading an Urdu daily. “Brother, where’s the way to the dome,” I ask. “Go inside, and up.”

Inside is beautiful: a pool, palm trees, and lampposts like the one around which Auduery Hepburn danced in My Fair Lady.

I’m now facing a stylishly-built masjid with low-hanging ceiling fans. But where’s the dome? "Up, upar," says the man at the reception.

So, up the stairs. Cold air and traffic noise sneaking in from an arched window. While paint peels on the wall suggest the map of USA (or is it Zimbabwe?).

Hush, there’s no one here. I reach the first landing, lumber across to the other end, creak open a cobwebbed door, walk up more stairs and step out onto the roof. The dome is inaccessible and invisible.

The destination remains elusive but what the heck, it’s beautiful out here. So quiet that you wonder if you really are in ITO.

Few minutes of sunshine and I’m out of the Jamait building and back in the nukkad. And wiser.

ITO is more than a traffic bottleneck. This is where Old Delhi merges with the New. On one side lies the Mughal glamour: Khooni darwaza, Dilli Gate and Red Fort. On the other, the British razzmatazz: India Gate and Rashtrapati Bhawan.

Even the landmarks here speak of this mix: from Delhi’s Last Mughal (Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg) to Delhi’s first Deputy Mayor (Ram Charan Agarwal Chowk).

But the present is more rocking. Look around the bazaar and marvel: the sports stall (cricket bats, tennis raquettes, footballs), the Uttaranchali music stores (singer Narendra Singh Negi is the bestseller), the patri wallas (cigarette lighters, wrist watches, TV remote covers) and — the best part — people watching at the traffic light. Angry-looking commuters in buses, hijras pestering for money, chikki-wallas, and bike couples clung tightly to each other as if there’s no tomorrow.

But this is the lung, a rather smoky lung, not the heart of ITO. The heart lies across the crossing on Deendayal Upadhaya Marg. Here, tucked in between tree leaves is a small box where a traffic cop is operating buttons that decide when that blessed red light will turn green.

"ITO is a VIP intersection," says Mr Cop who did not wish to be named because well, he did not wish to be named. "The Chief Minister pass here daily." Wow.

9 am moment



Let's eat grease, outside the chhola bhathura stall



Need a job



What's the way to that dome?



Inside the Jamait Ulaima Hind



It's a mosque or a resort?



Want a chikki?



Mountain melodies, an Uttaranchali music store



The heart of ITO

Capital Neighbourhood -- A Booklover's Life in Ballimaran

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All he want is some quiet.

[Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi]

How is it like to live in Ballimaran, an Old Delhi neighbourhood?

The dominantly Muslim mohalla boasts winding alleys, decaying havelis, crumbling balustrades, half-lit carom-board clubs, and chatty chai stalls. It is most famous for being the final address of Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib. More recently, film star Aishwarya Rai shook her buttocks to the chartbuster Kajra re song whose lyrics included the word BALLIMARAN.

Be it morning, noon, evening or midnight, Ballimaran is always toasting up in hyper energy. Madrassa children skating down the street, bakeries sending out fumes of fresh breads, Bihari laborers hobbling ahead with load on their head, stunningly beautiful girls shopping along with their sharp-eyed mothers and on every street, shop, corner, lamppost – a cluster of flat-stomached, broad chested, testerone-powered, clean shaven boys. Swearwords on their lips, lust in their eyes. While the background prop is made up by stores selling stylish goggles, silver chains, leather sandals and multi-coloured glass bangles.

Such are the scenes of Ballimaran. An outsider may mistake it for a carefree 24/7 club where no one struggles with James Joyce, no one has a mean day job; where most know their Ghalib and everyone glows in a halo of good sex life.

Not true.

"There's no peace here," says 25-year-old Muhammad Asim Khan who lives in Ballimaran and has a…day job. I met him one late evening in the courtyard of Fatehpuri Masjid, a 17th century mosque. He was performing ablutions in the mosque's pool. A cold wind was blowing and it had already grown dark.

"Those who live in suburban apartments harbor romantic vision of Old Delhi," he says. "But here is much noise, less romance." Asim's house, as it happens, is in Gali Qasim Jaan, just 200 meter from Ghalib's haveli.

And he knows his Ghalib.

"I'm fond of Ghalib's verses," he says. Methinks that young people like Asim are perhaps rare in Ballimaran. I've talked to quite a lot of them during my earlier strolls here and have always put the same question – "Do you read Ghalib?" Most shook their head.

It's understandable. In these times when Urdu language has been left to rot in Muslim ghettos, when a bastardized form of Hindi (Hinglish) is celebrated in Bollywood films and when English is looked upon as the tongue of the successful, Ghalib has been justifiably exiled into the musty drawing rooms of old world fuddy-duddies.

Blame Ghalib, too.

"Ghalib's language is difficult and there are too many Persian words," says Asim. "It's not just the vocabulary but also the way he presents his ideas." Asim then gave me an example which, according to him, is a classic example of Urdu-Persian mishmash:

Harife matlabe mushkil nahin phusune niyaz,
Dua kubool ho ya rab ke umre khizra daraz.

[Sorry, no translation; Asim himself didn't knew the meaning!]

However, what honked me out of my Ballimaran>Muslim>Urdu>Ghalib stereotype was when Asim confessed his attachment to Toni Morrison. Toni Morrison! Fancy someone walking down a Ballimaran alley carrying a Toni Morrison. "I read her Beloved in my college,". Asim remembers. "It was difficult to get a copy since there's no bookshop here selling English novels."

In fact, Asim, who speaks a flawless Urdu and an almost-flawless English, is the only one in his family who reads English language books. His cousins read "only a bit of Ghalib and lot of Urdu magazines" while he has a library of around 600 books.

Asim was recently thrilled when he spotted Arundhati Roy at the Indian Social Institute, in Lodhi Institutional Area. "She had poured all of herself into The God of Small Things," he says.

But the author closest to Asim's heart is Joseph Conrad.

"Isn't the mood of Conrad's The Heart of Darkness very far from the kind of place you're living in?", I ask. After giving a deep thought, Asim answers: "I don't desire the terrifying loneliness that Conrad evoked in that novel but I'll be happier with some solitude. We have a joint family of 12 people living in a house of five rooms. Even if I shut off my room, the noise and the intrusion never stop. I'm unable to read in peace. Whether I'm inside the house or outside, there's always a little too much of life when what I seek is a little bit of quiet."

A long pause follows. We fall silent. Soon the muzzezzin's call fill the empty courtyard.

As we get ready to perform the namaz, Asim tells me: "When I go to other parts of Delhi like Connaught Place or the Citywalk mall in Saket, I get thunderstruck by their cosmopolitan glamour. But these places shut down by late evening and they have no inner life. That nightlife and soul can, however, be always found in Old Delhi, in Ballimaran."

Give me peace, Asim in Fatehpuri Masjid



But where's the peace, Gali Qasim Jan

Capital Community -- How Delhi Treat its Biharis

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There's a kind of soft aggression against the community.

[Text and picture by Mayank Austen Soofi]

There's a saying in Hindi that everyone salutes a rising sun. Biharis are different. On the second day of the three-day-long Chhatt puja, which ended on November 4, 2008, the capital's substantial Bihari community gathered in Yamuna ghats near ITO and Wazirabad, waded into the river and prayed to the setting sun instead.

Hailing from different walks of life -- chartered accountants, media professionals, IAS aspirants, Metro rail labourers, rickshaw-wallahs -- they could as well have been praying for the sinking image of their home state.

The popular perception of Bihar is hardly flattering. "They have nothing in Bihar," says actor Mr Roshan Seth. "They come to other places for work where they are exploited by others."

According to a 2007 report by the Center for Advanced Study of India, Bihar has the lowest human development index ranking among Indian states. "Biharis deserve a better life in their own state so that they don't have to migrate to other states," says model Ms Lakshmi Rana.

Until then they have no option, even if things are getting worse for them. On October, 2008, Bihari job-seekers were beaten up a group of native Marathis in Mumbai. In Delhi, they fare better by coping with nothing more than a kind of soft aggression.

Mr Kaushal Kishore Mishra, a media professional in Siddhartha Basu's Synergy Adlabs Ltd, has not been able to forget his first day in Delhi University in 1998.

"Noticing the inferior paper quality of my graduation mark sheet, the clerk wondered aloud how Biharis could make their way through fake certificates," Mr Mishra says. Ten years of living in Delhi and he is still unable to feel at home here. "Home is Gaya," he says. Gaya is one of Bihar's largest cities. "There, I can freely chat in my language, while here I have to speak in a different accent to fit myself."

This is not the fate of Ms Nimisha Sinha, a 25-year-old marketing manager.

Ms Sinha is a yuppie Bihari: she watches Friends on Star World as well as Bhojpuri soaps on Mahuha Channel; she speaks in that peculiar sing-song Bihari accent at home but switches to perfect babalog English at Khan Market; she enjoys the pasta at Big Chill and has also a taste for home-made litti-chokha.

Such seamless assimilation is probably because while Ms Sinha's father hails from Deogarh, Bihar, she herself was born and brought up in Delhi. Schooling in DPS RK Puram, apartment in Mayur Vihar and office in ITO. "Delhi is my city," she says. "I feel bored in Deogarh."

While Ms Sinha never faced any barb directed towards her, her friends, uninformed of her origins, do occasionally pass a salty comment or two at 'those Biharis'. "Most of us Biharis are hard-working, if nothing else," she says. "Unlike in Mumbai, our hard work is respected here."

Mr Mishra doesn't agree. "Delhi's definition of Biharis has changed," he explains. "Now it's not the natives of Bihar, but anybody who looks unkempt or does a menial job is labelled a Bihari."

Mr Jitendra, an IAS aspirant living on the North Campus, Delhi University, is so dejected that he has made up his mind to return to hometown Patna. "They use the word Bihari as a swear word," he says. "Recently, I heard it hurled at a particularly slow-moving petrol pump attendant in Azadpur bypass."

"Things will change once Bihar becomes prosperous," says Ms Shovana Narayan, Padma Shri dancer and an IAS officer whose family origins are in Bihar.

Ms Narayan blames the hostility towards Biharis on misconceptions and points out the state's greatness. "Do people know that Gayati Mantra came from Bihar?" she asks. "That one-third of Puranas and shastras were written in Bihar and that the first republic in the world, Vaishali, was in Bihar?"

On the final day of the Chhatt puja, while worshipping the sun, the fasting Biharis were perhaps praying for the re-emergence of those sunny times.

However, Ms Nimisha is just praying for the Pragati Maidan Trade Fair to start. Then she would get her annual opportunity to buy anarsa, lai, tilkut and other sweetmeats in the Bihar state stall that she can't find in the city's more popular mithai shops -- Nathu, Haldiram or Aggarwal Sweets.

Capital Society - Darker than Obama

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What does Barack's victory means to dark-skinned Delhi wallas?

[Text and picture by Mayank Austen Soofi]

If America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. After breaking the racial barrier by becoming the first black president of the US, Barack Obama has created ripples from Denver to Dar-es-Salaam to Delhi, a city whose brown-skinned people are obsessed with 'fairness' creams.

Ms Shefali, a 27-year-old communication trainer, who describes herself as having a "wheatish complexion", is thrilled that a "dark-skinned" man has captured the world's imagination. "You see, I'm the only one in my family who is dark," says she. "During childhood, my brother and sister would tease me as a 'black sheep', but now I can always shoot back by humming Obamaaaa."

Art critic Ms Amrapali Basu (name changed on request) is another fan of the "hot and happening" Obama. Owing to her "chocolate brown" complexion, she, too, had her share of childhood trauma.

In her B block Vasant Kunj neighbourhood, children would mock her by repeatedly singing, "Kali kaluti baingan looti." After being named the second prettiest girl in Class IX, a boy confessed that she would have been first if she were fair. Ms Basu is happy with Obama's triumph, but not because of the skin colour. "That trauma ended once I turned 15 and got a sense of self," she says. "Besides, it was also the time when we saw the rise of dusky beauties like Bipasha Basu, Nina Manuel and Kajol."

The 'dusky beauty' wave did not leave an imprint on Ms Shefali, though. The years of teasing had taken their toll. "I have a complex," she admits. "I avoid being friendly with fair-skinned people."

Nizamuddin East socialite Sadia Dehlvi, too, suffered from a childhood complex. "I was short, ugly, buck-toothed and worse, dark," she says. Another problem was her gori mother. "Each time mummy would introduce me to guests, they would say that I didn't look like her," Ms Dehlvi says. It didn't help that her brother also had fair skin. "I grew up fearing that I would never be as beautiful as mother."

Ms Dehlvi was overjoyed when Obama swept the elections. "He is a Democrat, a liberal, a Muslim man's son and he has dark skin."

Ms Shuchita Bagga, manager in a knowledge process outsourcing company, is happy with the Obama phenomenon. But not because she is dark herself. "I don't like fair-skinned guys," she says. "My mom, dad, brother and I are all very fair, so I'm attracted to people with darker skin." However, she rushes to add that her support for Obama was never influenced by his colour.

It is Ms Dehlvi who points what the rise of a dark-skinned man to top leadership in a racially complicated country implies: "Obama's win is a morale boost for the underdog."

Dateline Obama - American Center, KG Marg

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Recording the dawn of Obama age.

[Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi]

I was in Delhi's American Center when CNN declared Barack Obama's victory. Americans started crying. Although Delhi’s traffic mess can’t be sorted out, Obama or no Obama, I too shed a few tears. My hands, too, trembled while taking photographs. But now I wonder if I was crying because White House got its first black master or because I was jealous of US of A. He’s their Obama, not ours!

Is this true?



It's true!



We won, we won



Hush, Obama speaks



Boo Palin



Tears, happy tears

Obama Special - Barack's Delhi Boys

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How Delhi's Democrats helped Obama become the US Prez.

[By Carolyn Sauvage-Mar, the chair, Democrats Abroad-India. She was elected Delegate for Obama to the Democratic National Convention; picture by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Barack Obama is the next American President. Wow.

We Democrats in Delhi, along with the rest of their counterparts in India and the US, were seriously optimistic about electing Barack Obama to be our next President. However, having been in the opposition for eight long years, we had gotten used to… well, losing.

During the months of campaigning, a friend of mine looked me in the eye and said, “You realise that we’re going to win, right?” I actually hadn’t ever thought that thought, consciously, until he said it out loud. We were too busy organising voter outreach, helping any US citizen we could find in India to vote. Filling out the forms. Explaining deadlines and rules for 50 states. Making sure that signatures were right, addresses correct.

For sure. this was a busy year for Delhi’s Democrats. We did voting registration at Khan Market, held an election special dating game at the American Embassy School, campaigned for Obama in Lodhi Garden, screened his Democrat convention speech at Vasant Continental hotel, organised video-conferencing with his campaign officials in Defence Colony, did ‘phone-banking’ events at private homes in Golf Links, Sundar Nagar and Shanti Niketan and put up a polling booth at Lodhi Colony's Ploof restaurant.

Remembering that the 2004 margin of Republican victory in Ohio was nine votes per precinct – enough, just enough, to put Bush back into the White House for four more years. The bitterness of that defeat still lingers. None of us Dems in India were going to concede this election by a lousy nine votes per precinct.

So here we were: at the threshold of the result of an historic election. Barack Obama has finally changed the storyline in American politics. He has challenged us to believe in hope, in change. And so, the mood among Democrats in India shifted from determined opposition to excitement, anticipation, and that distinctively American, slightly gooey feeling of optimism and patriotism.

This is what Obama supporters were doing in India: they called voters in the US to remind them to vote and gave each individual voter information about where their polling place was located.

This is what Obama supporters did not do in India: predicting we would win, or planning “victory” parties that could jinx the outcome. Instead, we got six cities planning Election Watch breakfasts and Get Down With Democracy gatherings.

Come to think of it, hope may not trump superstition, but hard work always pays off.

[The author lives in Safdarjang Enclave]

City Wildlife - Roar of the White Tiger

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A week in the life of the beast.

[Text by Mayank Austen Soofi; picture taken in the Delhi zoo by Kamal Kishore]

Booker Prize winner Aravind Adiga has dedicated his debut novel The White Tiger to the people of New Delhi. Since the announcement, the white tiger's cage in Delhi zoo has been drawing unprecedented crowd.
15/10/2008

From the Desk of:
'The White Tiger'
A Thinking Beast,
Mathura Road (just off Purana Qila),
New Delhi, India.

Friday: Grrrrr. People of New Delhi! My paw! What about me? That brown guy names his novel after me but dedicates it to the red meat crowd. Have your flesh and eat it too.

Saturday: Oh God, it's the weekend! The crowd is getting too much. Grrrrr, no respite from the book. Everyone is flaunting it. Hey, you... oh, a kid (what tender flesh! Must be soft and chewy) is throwing his hardbound at me. Grrrr, here comes another one! The caretaker tells me that the fools want my pawtograph on the cover. No, no, no. Tell them not to bother me. Why don't they go back to their malls and leave me alone. God, I'm starving.

Sunday: £50,000. FIFTY THOUSAND. Yes cub, that is what he got as prize money. And what I have? Just 120 kg. Life is unfair. If nothing else, give me 5 goats instead of one. Please.

Monday: Shh, I'm reading The White Tiger. The zoo is closed. My weekly off today. Hurrah.

Tuesday: Wow. This evening I gave my hundredth pawtograph. It was a great feeling. Maybe I can also become a Booker prize winning novelist. They say now there's khoob paisa in writing. Fancy what FIFTY THOUSAND pounds can buy! The goats, the rabbits, the bulls and... Corbet willing – the muggles!

Wednesday: Last night after I got done with my tigress, I started writing my novel. Finally. Here are the first few lines of my first chapter. Only for your eyes: "Awwwwghhhh ghrrrrghrrrrrrr worrrrroooohhhhhh. GrrrrrrrGrrrrrrrrr hwgggg ghhhrrrrrrrrr. Mewwwwwww." Booker winning material, eh? I have already decided the title – That Brown Man.

Thursday: I'm in a mess. Arvind Adiga is in town. President Pratibha Patil is hosting a state banquet for him. But he'll be busy with a Barkha Dutt interview. Rashtrapati Bhawana now wants me instead. But I have no dinner jacket! Grrrrr.