I caught up with Mr Ali Sethi, a young Pakistani novelist, in the lawn of Delhi’s Ambassador Hotel during the last week of July, 2009. He was visiting India for a book tour of his first novel The Wish Maker. Read more

Apart from its dusty lanes, urine stench, potholed roads, blaring horns, there’s another reason for not going to Paharganj’s Main Bazaar, popular as the backpackers’ district. According to Delhi Pollution Committee, it is the most polluted area in the city. Read more

The Delhi Walla discovered this grainy image in the archives of LIFE magazine. Nothing is known about the year when this picture was taken. But the life seen in this frame is proof enough that much has changed in this city down the decades. Read more

Hey, hi. The Delhi Walla is starting a personals section for its readers. This inaugural edition has classifieds sent in by the Capital’s reasonably well-known people on the condition that their identities will not be disclosed. However, if you keep abreast of the society gossip, it won’t be tough to untangle who is who. In most cases, that is. Read more

A person does not belong to a place until he has someone dead under the ground. Does that apply to Delhi Metro, too? On the Sunday morning of July 12th, 2009, a pillar on the partially constructed Metro bridge in the tony GK-I suddenly collapsed killing six. Read more

One dry monsoon evening I met Ms Rakhshanda Jalil, the author of Invisible City: The Hidden Monuments of Delhi, in the first floor restaurant of India International Center (IIC). Over grilled fish and broccoli (she paid the bills), Ms Jalil disclosed that after a lifetime of writing on ruins and monuments, after translating a great amount of Urdu fiction into English, she has finally ended up writing fiction herself. A leading publishing house in the country would publish Ms Jalil’s collection of short stories. Read more

Ranking somewhere between DTC buses and private cars in the social hierarchy of the city’s traffic system, autos are an essential Delhi feature. The Delhi Walla asked Delhiites, both present and past, about their experiences with this Capital Necessity. Read more

On 9.07am, July 7th, 2009, Dr. Gandhi in his sparse-looking clinic, tucked next to a Costa Coffee outlet, in Bengali Market, diagnosed me with chicken pox. Since it’s a highly contagious, air-borne disease, I’ve been grounded for at least ten days in my library in Nizamuddin Basti. At the time of writing this piece, my scalp, forehead, cheeks, nose, neck, chest, stomach, arms, back, palms, fingers, groin, balls, thighs, legs, feet are dotted with blisters. Read more

Being homeless, sleeping on pavements, wearing the same clothes continuously for a month… no one willingly choose to live such a life. But the grey-haired Ms Noor Bano is fine with the deal. “It’s ok,” she said. “I’m used to it.” For more than twenty years, Ms Bano has been sleeping on a divider in Lodhi Road, bang opposite Aap ki Khatir, the popular kebab joint in Nizamuddin Basti. Read more

As the news broke that the Delhi High Court has legalized homosexuality, I tried hard to maintain my outward calm of a reporter. Our tribe is not supposed to get ecstatic or heartbroken no matter what’s the breaking news. So here I was in the HT City newsroom, trying to file a page 1 story as if it was just a story. But when I called gay and lesbian friends who were present in the court, asking them for newspaper quotes, I couldn’t help wishing: “God, I should’ve been at ground zero!” Read more