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Sunday, August 30, 2009

City Neighbourhood – Karol Bagh, West-Central Delhi

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It has energy, warmth and sinful street food.

[Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi]

If Chandni Chowk-ites must keep masakallis for pets, then the only business in Karol Bagh must be searching for saris and sehras.

That’s the cliché about Karol Bagh, a residential and commercial district in west-central Delhi. Once home to a large number of Muslims, most of whom left for Pakistan after the Indian Partition, it changed its character with the arrival of Hindu refugees from Pakistani Punjab.

Today the area is popular as a shopping destination for middle-class Delhiwallas. Infact in 2006, Miranda House’s English Literature professor Manju Kapur set her novel Home about an unhappy middle class family in this neighbourhood. Guess how the family made its living? It ran a saree showroom!

“Sorry, Manju Kapur’s Karol Bagh with its suppressed women and incestuous men is not my Karol Bagh,” protests Ms Anuja Chauhan, a Gurgaon-based author whose bestseller The Zoya Factor was about a spunky Karol Bagh girl. “Mine has energy; it exudes warmth,” she adds.

Vibrancy, the bazaar certainly has. Giant hoardings turn the skyline into a multi-coloured fantasy, mannequins seem as alive as the sales assistants, and the crowd shops around as if recession is yesterday’s headline. On Ajmal Khan Road, the area’s premier shopping district, the flea stalls (handbags on tree branches; chappals on car bonnets) co-exist harmoniously with their big brand neighbours. This happy marriage doubles the varieties on sale. If Roopak is the house of spices, Impressions has the nailpaints and eyeliners, and at Sirs & Hers, you risk ending up all barcoded.

“I spent six years in Karol Bagh,” reveals Ms Chauhan who lived in her grandfather’s bungalow on New Rohtak Road. Initially she was uncomfortable about the address. “Everyone in my DPS Mathura Road school came either from Sundar Nagar or Def Col,” she says, “And I would tell myself, ‘God, I’m from Karol Bagh!'”

However, the neighbourhood quietly cast it charm on her with its “lovely Ajmal Khan Park behind Dadaji’s house”, the ‘ladies’ park’ and the sights and sounds when Ravan effigy was burnt on Dusshera.

If still indifferent to the place, surely you can no longer stay that way if we talk of… well, Karol Bagh’s food - Anjalika’s sandwiches, Roshan ki kulfis, Sardar ki tikkis, pavement popcorns, and the shakarkandis and ganderis. Factory-made burgers, too, have retail outlets here.

Across the road, is the Ghaffar Market, famous for its smuggled iPods and iPhones. Though you can be forgiven for feeling transported to a Jane Austen country. The streets are lined with pretty buttons, laces and, lest we forget, imported clips! “Earlier I was sheepish about living in Karol Bagh,” Ms Chauhan confesses. “But now I’m proud of it.”

Wired view

High-cal snacks

A steal!

A Karol Bagh walla

A Typical West Delhi Guy (Shh, just a cliche!)

Karol Bagh gentry

He want factory burgers

This too is Karol Bagh

First floor, Karol Bagh

Dressing up for the day

Careful!

See ya, Karol

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Photo Essay - Delhi@Night

It's dangerous, but beautiful.

[Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Delhi is considered an unsafe city at night. They say that the instant the sun sets in Janakpuri, Connaught Place’s Outer Circle starts getting crowded with sex workers. While in the Mohan Nagar-Anand Vihar stretch, commuters become easy prey to bike-riding mobile-phone snatchers. In Basant Lok car parking area, the possibility of molestation gets real. And, of course, we all know that if an unsuspecting girl decides to walk down on the Ring Road from Medical to South Extension, she might be mistakened for a call girl.

Yes readers, the Capital is dangerous after 9pm. Yet, can you deny that the city becomes more beautiful then? Check out these pictures.

Mahipalpur

Connaught Place

Gurgaon

Subz Burz

KG Marg

Rivoli Cinema

Lodhi Road

Khan Market

LIC Building

Bhagat Singh Road

ITO

Matia Mahal Bazaar

Vaishali

Nizamuddin Basti

India Gate Maidan

Near Regal Cinema

Daryaganj

Place unknown

Paharganj

Near Scindia House

Noida Mor

Jahanara's Tomb

Thursday, August 27, 2009

City Life – A Love Story

A thumri singer on the love of her life.

[Text by Vidya Rao, pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi]

She comes to greet me, limping a little.

As she grows older, her bad leg, injured in her childhood, gives her trouble. Yet when she was young you wouldn’t have thought she had a bad leg, she was so limber!

She stands on tiptoe and she tells me how much she has missed me. I hug and tell her I’ve missed her dreadfully, too. I tell her how happy I am to be back, home again, home to her.

We’ve shared this house for so many years now. We were both young when she came to live with me. We had met, quite by chance one rainy afternoon. She was dodging the traffic at a busy intersection. She had no umbrella and she was soaking wet. I’d stopped at the traffic lights. And I saw her. I had offered her a ride in my car. She had jumped in, settled herself comfortably — and before I knew it I was inviting her home. And she had accepted that invitation. She was looking for a place to live, and I was happy to have someone like her to share my home. How trusting she is, I’d thought then. But perhaps we were both trusting. I’m glad we were. Or where would I be now without her.

That was many years ago. She was young then, and as I said, limber. I was younger too. Now we are both getting on — I have an assortment of aches and pains, and I tire easily; she has trouble with her liver, and has to be on a diet which she hates. Now we are two old people. We stumble along, glad to have each other.

A few days ago, travelling in the mountains, I had awoken to a bright cold morning. Spring in the mountains , I had thought as I watched the sun’s rays glimmering on the still snow-clad Dhauladhars. In the still clean air I could hear so many birds. Further down the mountain, children calling to each other, the bleating of a goat. And temple bells chiming. I’d thanked my life for this gift of work that takes me all over the world, has shown me mountains and oceans, snow and burning sand, and given me friends from a hundred countries. And also for the gift of my home, and for her presence in my life.

I’d reached for my shawl - sunshine notwithstanding, the air was cold. Then I saw it on my shawl, a single hair, variegated, two-toned, as mine is too. But this wasn’t my hair. Mine is softer, wavy, longer. This straight, short, slightly wiry hair could only be hers. I plucked the hair off my shawl and held it up to the light.

In that instant, she is very close. This one small hair brings her into this room that’s so far away from the home we’ve made together.

I miss her, her body’s warmth, her cool affection.

Now I am back. And she is here with me. Contentment seeps into my bones.

I wash my face and hands, getting some of the train’s grime off myself. I brush my teeth. Then I switch on the geyser. Soon the water will be hot and I can take a shower.

She watches me intently as I unpack, tossing soiled clothes into a bucket full of soapsuds. Lots of clothes to wash, I tell her grimacing a little. It is always so after a trip. She doesn’t help me. She never does. I don’t expect her to either. It is enough that she sits by me as I work, that she looks at me, that she smiles.

She follows me to the kitchen where I fill the kettle with water, switch it on, and make myself a cup of herb tea. I don’t make any for her. She doesn’t share my passion for tea. Or in fact for fruit, salads, or soups…. none of this soppy herb tea- heath food stuff for her!

I ask her if she’d like some warm milk. Its good for you I tell her. She agrees to have a little. Just to keep me company.

I take my cup and sit by the window that looks out over our tiny garden-in-pots, and she comes to sit by me, quiet as always. I offer her a biscuit and she takes it straight from my hand. Her mouth nuzzles my fingers.

A squirrel scampers up and down the garden wall, chittering cheekily at us. She looks at the squirrel, so focused, she might be meditating on the form of her ishta devata. I remember when she was young and could move so swiftly, so lightly, despite her limp. She’d run races with the squirrels. I used to think she’d leave her shadow behind. She was so swift.

I hold her close. Are you thinking of how it was when you were young? I ask her. There is a small pause. Then she turns to look at me with her large beautiful eyes. Is that reproach? Have I upset her by reminding her of those days?

She turns back to look at the squirrel. A parrot joins the squirrel. It perches on the railing of the balcony, green and gaudy against the grey of the cement railing. Two pigeons waddle up to the water- bowl. Beyond the garden, in the forest, I hear a koel. The first koel of this year. I tell her I want to celebrate that. She smiles benignly and accepts another biscuit.

I finish my tea, but this time that we spend together is so precious that I don’t want to get up and start the usual rush-rush-rush. Time enough for that I think. Now is a pool, quiet, still, deep as her eyes. We sit in silence for a while, a golden full silence that is as nourishing as a bowl of hot soup.

It is so good to be back, I tell her.

She jumps off the table by the window. She jumps into my lap. She reaches out and touches my face with a little velvet paw. She licks my cheek with her pink sandpaper tongue. Then she curls up in my lap, moulding her body to mine, and she begins to purr.

[The author is a thumri singer. She lives in Mehrauli, very close to Qutub Minar.]

You may also like to read: Profile - Vidya Rao, The Singer and Her Sufi.

Hello darling

Two for company

Is she jealous?

Mother-Daughter bonding

In love

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

City Life – The Joys of Childhood

Two in 13 million.

[Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Mr Haroun (right), 11, and Mr Rahul, 12, sleep on a footpath near Oberoi flyover. The Delhi Walla caught up with them in Qureshi hotel, a no-fuss eatery near Kalan Masjid in Nizamuddin Basti. They were supping on salan and rotis.

Unable to read or write, Mr Rahul could still recite the complete count from one to hundred while Mr Haroun could do that till the figure of eighty. It was not surprising since they do not go to school. Instead, the boys earn money by collecting empty mineral water bottles from garbage bins in Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station. There the cops often hush them away with accusations of petty theft. “But I tell the police that I’m not a chor,” said Mr Haroun. He had fresh injuries on his left cheek, which, he said, had resulted from a street fight with another footpath boy.

Mr Haroun, who had no plans to dress his wound, lives with Mr Rahul. They both belong to a same village in the Darbhanga district of Bihar. Around two years ago, they came unescorted to Delhi as ticketless passengers in an express train. Their parents stayed back.

“We reached here in August,” remembered Mr Haroun. “Everyone was then flying kites.” (During that time of the year, kite flying becomes a craze in Delhi rooftops.)

It was not clear if the boys missed their village. “Life is better here, there’re no jungles and you don’t hear the cry of jackals or ghosts at night,” said Mr Rahul who took on this name after the screen name of a favorite film hero.

Both the boys are film buffs. Even though making no more than Rs 50 each daily, they do not mind spending some of that in watching VCDs at film parlours in Nizamuddin Basti.

When new in Delhi, they had gone to Golcha theater in Daryaganj to watch the blockbuster Om Shanti Om. “I loved the songs and the fights,” said Mr Haroun whose idol is Shah Rukh Khan. However, cinema halls remain a luxury and the last time the duo went to one was at Delite cinema in Aruna Asaf Ali Road to watch Harry Potter. “We saw the 6th bhaag,” said Mr Rahul referring to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, “but the tickets at Rs 40 were very expensive.” Perhaps it was worth it. Mr Haroun loved the movie. “I laughed when they thrashed the bhoot in the end,” he said.

Racing through a life muddled with with garbage bins, abusive cops, Bollywood flicks, pavement beds, and street squabbles, these two children have somehow found time to think on the possibilities of another world.

“I want to be a good man,” said Mr Haroun. On further prodding, he said he would not mind being a doctor. Mr Rahul fancied himself as a teacher. “Then you would have to read daily and so you would end up learning something,” he said.

Mr Haroun's wound

Such is life

Monday, August 24, 2009

Capital News - Jane Austen is Coming to South Delhi

Bollywood is adapting Emma in this city.

[Text by Mayank Austen Soofi; picture of Sonam Kapoor by Jatin Kampani]

It’s confirmed. Jane Austen is coming to Delhi. Film actor Sonam Kapoor is starring in the Bollywood adaptation of Emma, an Austen comedy about a too-clever brat whose penchant for matchmaking other people almost ruined chances of her own match.

The movie is set in Delhi with Emma being Indianised as Aisha. “She’ll be Aisha Kapoor, not Emma Woodhouse,” said Ms Kapoor in a telephone chat with The Delhi Walla. She was getting her hair done in a Bombay salon. “I’m a big Jane Austen fan and have read all her novels,” Ms Kapoor swooned. “They all are so girly and tie up so perfectly in the climax.”

Being co-produced by her film star father Anil Kapoor and directed by Rajshree Ojha, the film’s shooting will start later in August, 2009. The actors, including Abhay Deol who is to play Emma’s beau Mr Knightley, will be all over the town for 45 days. “I’ll play a typical south Delhi girl with a Modern School background,” disclosed Ms Kapoor. “You may see me jogging in Lodhi Garden or shopping in Select Citywalk.”

In the novel, Emma lived with an eccentric dad in an England village where they were the richest family. “It‘ll be same in Aisha though my real father won’t play my father,” revealed Ms Kapoor. “And we’ll be a rich family with a bungalow in Aurangzeb Road.” Once home to Pakistan founder MA Jinnah, Aurangzeb Road is one of Delhi’s priciest residential margs.

But why set this gossipy 19th century drawing room drama in a snooty Punjabified Delhi? “Because south Delhi’s high society is just like that of Jane Austen’s England,” replied Ms Kapoor, a Bombayite who is familiar with the Capital’s social codes since her bua lives in Sainik Farms. “After all, Delhi girls are forever obsessed with getting the right man, right family and right wedding clothes for their marriage,” she added.

To portray the hip South Delhi version of a literary character, said to be Jane Austen's personal favourite and once played by Oscar-winner Gwyneth Paltrow, won’t be easy. Ms Kapoor would also have to get rid of the touch-me-not Walled City reputation she acquired in her February, 2009 release Delhi 6 – a Bollywood musical on Old Delhi. “In real life I’m not an Old Delhi kind of person,” the actor said before explaining, “Inwardly, I may be like Bittu Sharma (her character in Delhi 6) but outwardly I’m more like Aisha Kapoor.” Jane would know best.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

City Secret – Husseini Hotel, Nizamuddin Basti

A poor man’s eatery, since the '40s.

[Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi]

One can be romantic about Husseini Hotel. Tucked in a 14th century settlement, on a lane named after Urdu’s greatest poet Mirza Ghalib, this eatery is feeding hungry people since 1942.

One may also be realistic. Husseini’s shorbas are too greasy, the rotis are often left uncovered, the cooks keep changing, and there is an open drain next to the counter. Besides, a few in the immediate neighbourhood could be caught in a social scandal if spotted here. “That’s too lowly a place for me,” said a laptop-wielding butchery-owner whose establishment is just a few steps away.

Yet, The Delhi Walla has often seen people driving in from different parts of Delhi to get their food packed from Husseini. Once I saw a Jangpura expat buying a sheermal, a kind of Islamic bread so delicious and fulfilling that it could be eaten for its own sake. The one in Husseini is as good as it comes. “We make it with maida, doodh, elaichi, cheeni and ghee,” said Mr Abdul Razzak Khan who bakes the bread daily around 1 pm. This afternoon-make is the one you would get even if you come late in the night. It is thick, chewy, slightly-sweet and remains unspoiled for at least a week.

However, the bestseller in Husseini is bhuna dal – a robust preparation of urad cooked with roasted gosht. Since this being a poor people’s eatery (with tables inside), the gosht, or the meat, is always the inexpensive burra (buffalo meat). No one is complaining. Sufi pilgrims going to Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah flock to Husseini for its payas, niharis and koftas. “One particular peerzada from Ajmer Sharif make a point to eat here whenever he’s in town,” said Mr Muhammad Talib, a young man who sits in the counter in spotless white salwar kameez. His grandfather had come to Nizamuddin Basti from Meerut, a town about an hour ride from Delhi, and set up this ‘hotel’ when British were still the Capital’s ruling elite.

That was some time ago, but eating in today’s Husseini, along with pilgrims and labourers, is like going back in time. The tables are rickety, the walls disfigured and if it is night, the bulb is dim. It is all very charming, of course, but if you are a fine dining type, you could always get the food packed for home. Give it a try.

Essential prices Sheermal (Rs 10) Half-plate bhuna dal (Rs 15) Half-plate kofta (Rs 15) Timing 7am to midnight Ph (You may call up in advance to get the order ready) 987364-1612 Where 58, Ghalib Road, Nizamuddin Basti

Greasy, greasy, tasty, tasty