In a 2016 interview, writer and photographer Mayank Austen Soofi explained the apparent contradiction in saying, “I don’t love Delhi”: the city had become a habit through living in it. Writing about his surroundings, he said, was also a way to understand himself. His work on The Delhi Walla grew from that close attention to the people and everyday life around him—not from conventional romance with the capital’s monuments.
Why did Soofi say he did not love Delhi?
Soofi made the remark in conversation with Aanchal Malhotra for Scroll.in, in an interview published January 10, 2016. He compared Delhi to a long, comfortable relationship: familiarity had made the city a habit. He was not describing a simple dislike. His explanation was rooted in residence and attention—he wrote about the place where he lived, and believed looking closely at his surroundings helped him know himself better. Read the interview on Scroll.in.
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The distinction matters. Delhi in this account is not an idealized object to praise from a distance. It is the lived environment that Soofi keeps observing, including its inhabitants and the ordinary encounters through which a city becomes familiar.
What does The Delhi Walla document?
The interview presents The Delhi Walla as a broad record of city life. Its subjects include residents and workers, neighbourhoods, food, bookshops, monuments and fashion. Soofi said he was less concerned with beauty, buildings and old things than with people and other inhabitants of the city, including dogs and cats.
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That emphasis makes his work different from a conventional sightseeing account. Monuments and historic places may appear, but the profile’s central interest is the changing life around them: who lives and works in the city, what they do, and how their circumstances shape its character.
How did the project begin?
According to Malhotra’s 2016 profile, Soofi moved to Delhi in 2007. Encounters in the city—including a visit to Nizamuddin basti and its shrine—helped lead him toward documenting the capital and starting The Delhi Walla. The interview describes the blog not as a news outlet but as a record of change: a way to preserve what the city was like at a particular moment.
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That archival impulse also appears in the projects the profile discusses. In 2009, Soofi began Mission Delhi, an ambition to make portraits of one percent of the city’s population. The 2016 interview reported a population figure of 13 million at the time and described a target of 130,000 portraits. Those are figures in the profile, not current population estimates or proof that the target was completed.
Why focus on people rather than landmarks?
Soofi’s approach treats a city as more than its built heritage. The profile describes projects centered on individual lives, including Mission Delhi and self-written obituaries. Together with The Delhi Walla’s portraits of everyday subjects, these projects point toward a form of urban documentation in which residents are not background to the city’s story; they are the story.
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Calling Soofi a flâneur can suggest a writer who wanders and observes, but the interview offers more concrete evidence of what that means in his work: attention to people encountered in neighbourhoods, to workers and residents, and to details that can disappear as the city changes. His stated preference was for writing that came from within, rather than work shaped primarily by external expectations.
Books connected to Soofi’s view of Delhi
Penguin Random House India lists Soofi’s Nobody Can Love You More: Life in Delhi’s Red Light District, a book about the daily lives of residents of Kotha No. 300. The publisher page identifies the paperback with ISBN 9780143422723. See the publisher’s book listing; current formats and availability may vary.
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The publisher’s author biography also describes Soofi as the author of four alternative Delhi guidebooks. Its catalog page is indexed under “Mayank Singh,” while the biography names Mayank Austen Soofi. View the publisher’s author page. Individual guidebook editions and current availability are not established by that description.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the 2016 interview does—and does not—tell us
Malhotra’s profile captures Soofi’s perspective and projects as reported in January 2016. Its quotations, biographical details and project ambitions should be read in that historical context rather than as updates on his present views or the current status of his work. The interview’s most enduring point is the method it describes: chronicling Delhi by paying sustained attention to the lives unfolding in it.
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