Delhi Expat Club

Sculpting Light

Category: ART
Author: Janice Pariat

Buildings tell stories. Even before they’re constructed, their sites carry a history – of old roads, homes, and cemeteries. Walls absorb the touch of construction workers, their sweat, the words of their conversations. Soon they fill with people, passing through doors, gazing out windows. Some buildings are works of art and stand as a testimony to their architect’s vision, an accumulation of the wealth of his or her experiences and influences. Some buildings echo with a grander narrative, their corridors alive with the hopes and dreams of a newly-created nation. The exhibition, Delhi Modern: The Architectural Photographs of Madan Mahatta, offers 67 monochromatic slices of history, each resounding with minimalist clarity and shiny optimism.

Delhi: The Lament of the Hungry Expat (my essay from The Book Review India)

Click for bigger version This essay was originally published in The Book Review India.  If you’ve read Delirious Delhi, then this essay is essentially an epilogue: a postscript about the expat’s post-India life, and what it’s like to have lived … Continue reading →

City Monument – Unknown Tomb, Mathura Road Graveyard

The god of small things. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] In a city of formidable-looking monuments raised by megalomaniac despots, it is still possible to find beauty in small, obscure relics. The unknown tomb lies in a graveyard near Mathura Road in Central Delhi. The dead are no longer buried in this Mughal-era cemetery. Situated at a distance from other ruined graves, the crumbling tomb is bathed in solitude. Cracked lines have made boundary-less maps across its aspect. The partially damaged block of stone evokes more feeling than the adjacent tomb of Mughal emperor Humayun, which has fountains, gardens, tourists, and a grand dome. A sanctuary to the area’s insects, its stone surface nurture plants. An earthen pot placed at one corner of the grave is regularly replenished with water. Bees land to quench the thirst. Somebody daily scatters rice grains on the grave. Although ringed by an unused mosque and a rugged garden where boys play cricket, the grave seems to be absorbed solely in preserving its connection to the person buried underneath. The illusion fades as a bird descends to feed on the rice. Then this shrine to death becomes an abode of life. Where Near [...]