Pandemic helped me get intimate with strangers: Mayank Austen Soofi

During the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, amid anxiety, confusion and isolation, writer Mayank Austen Soofi’s blogsite and Instagram, “The Delhi Walla”, became the window that gave us a glimpse into life beyond our four walls. “My oxygen in life is to meet people, to go to places, to walk in the streets. So, when the pandemic started and lockdown began, I was terrified — what will happen to my work? I will not be able to go outside. I will not be able to take photographs. But you know, one adjusts to the situation,” said Soofi.

Soofi started connecting with people through WhatsApp video calls. However, the first challenge with a video call was that one could only talk to acquaintances and with people of a certain social background. “But gradually, I started connecting with somebody’s driver, or gardener or security guard. Then, every day I would be talking with people across Ghaziabad, Gurugram and Delhi, knowing about their lives and the challenges they are facing, in the lockdown. I would write about them and I would use their photos. Sometimes, they would send me their photos themselves, but I would insist that I want to take their photo through the WhatsApp screen because I wanted to give the reader a sense of how we are connecting with people during these days.”

Connecting through video calls brought in a sense of informality. The stressful times had people reaching out to each other. “Pandemic helped me get intimate with strangers. So much so that I was entering their bedrooms through WhatsApp videos. I could be in their kitchen or meet their granny. It was amazing in that way. When I would walk the street and meet people, I could not go inside everybody’s houses. I am still a stranger, and why would they trust me?” he said.

With WhatsApp video calls giving him his life back during the lockdown, Soofi began numerous series that brought together people from around the world. During the first wave and lockdown, he started the ‘Window Gazers’ series, in which people would show their house through their window. The series was extremely popular, with The Delhi Walla receiving hundreds of entries from across the world. However, it was the series that was started during the second wave that revealed the traumas of those who suffered. It involved people writing diaries for The Delhi Walla’s Instagram handle. “I used to get dozens of entries, but there was this entry by a very young girl, hardly 16 or 17, from Rampur that I still remember. She wrote about her dad getting Covid and how she used to be so angry with him because he was still going out to work in the hospital. He died after two days. I exchanged messages with her and it was so moving,” said Soofi. “Then, there was a woman from Delhi living in the Middle East. She sent me photos of her parents’ grave. She could not visit them, and they died. Another young woman from Delhi wrote about her experience of sitting in the ambulance with her father when his oxygen level was going down. It was all so raw and traumatic.”

Many of these writings have also been featured in Soofi’s column in Hindustan Times — Daily dispatch on life in Delhi/City.

For more than a decade, Soofi has been documenting every aspect of Delhi-NCR. The popularity of his blog and an Instagram page burgeoning with organic followers has made him a famous face of Delhi. So much so that the attic in Hauz Khas that was once inhabited by Mayank Austen Soofi has been advertised on ‘airbnb’ as: “This apartment has been home to world renowned writer Mayank Austen Soofi aka TheDelhiWalla for the last decade.”

“That was my room for such a long time. The most magnificent view of Hauz Khas. I was living there during the second lockdown. It feels so great. I was once discussing that here, nobody cares for writers and authors. In London, there are signboards placed outside homes of famous authors, that they lived here. However, the room where I used to live is now Mayank Austen Soofi’s attic! There I wrote my four The Delhi Walla books and the Delhi’s Red Light district book. It holds so much importance to me.”

Soofi’s journey to becoming a writer, blogger and an authority on Delhi, started at Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah. His love and reverence for the shrine is well known. He has even added Soofi to his name. “I used to be a waiter in a 5 star hotel. I was very unhappy with my life. It was all about wiping dishes or peeling onions, non-stop for 12 hours, everyday. One day, I somehow reached Nizamuddin Basti. I did not know that there is a Sufi shrine or Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah or it’s fashionable,” he said. For Soofi, the first glimpse of the Basti was a Delhi, that he didn’t know. “It was completely unfamiliar to me. I saw those little shops, crowded alleys and people. And suddenly realised that there is another world that is possible for me. My job is not the only world for me. It was like a fairytale.” It was an experience that made him rethink his life and gave him hope . “I did not immediately fall in love with the Dargah. I entered its courtyard for the first time and it was surreal. Maybe because nobody asked me to like it, that I loved it. It was also my initiation into the complicated world of Delhi. Unlike a New York or a Paris, Delhi, unfortunately is a city of disparities. Everyday when I would travel from Khan Market to Dargah, or Uttam Nagar to Noida or Gurugram, it was like going from one continent to another. Living in one city , you enter through so many times zones, which is so amazing about Delhi,” he said. “That was also the first time that I started my blog on Delhi and the title of my blog is – How I Got Drunk and Lost My Virginity in Nizamuddin Dargah.”

Author tweets @Namyasinha