Walk with Delhi Dallying at the Delhi Walk Festival
Delhi Dallying is leading two walks at the Delhi Walk Festival this February, exploring the hidden facets of Shahjahanabad and Hauz-i-Khas. Tickets are priced at INR 400. Come join us!
Trades & Treasures of Old Delhi
February 23, 4.00pm – 6.00pm
This tour explores the bustling marketplaces of the old city and traces the complex web of commerce and culture that had made the city thrive for years now. You shall start from the familiar main street of Chandni Chowk, but soon slip into by-lanes and gallis, walking through big and small, permanent and temporary bazaars of all shapes and sizes. Once on this ‘other’ side, you’ll start looking at the old city very differently. Buy Tickets.
Hauz Khas Special
February 26, 4.00pm – 6.00pm
Hauz Khas has attracted kings, saints, scholars, artists and musicians to its banks for over eight hundred years. Arguably the seat of contemporary creative practice and subversive culture in Delhi, it has also become one of the most polarizing neighbourhoods in the city. On the Hauz Khas Special walking tour, explore the social, cultural and economic dynamics of the urban village over the years and define why it is so unique. Buy Tickets.
A Week Long Festival of Exploring Delhi on Foot
85 Walks and 30 Walk specialists help you discover multiple layers of the city.
For the last few months Delhi Dallying has been working with the folks over at Delhi, I Love You, putting together the country’s first ever celebration of walking and exploring. Supported by the Delhi Government, the Delhi Walk Festival brings together 30 walk specialists and 85 walks, specially curated by the team. Spread across the last week of February, these super-affordable walks cover a range of themes and neighbourhoods. There are also exciting events and performances planned for our festival hubs in Old Delhi, New Delhi and Qutub Complex. Believe us, there’s something for everyone.
Explore Delhi like never before. Browse available walks on the Delhi Walk Festival website and purchase tickets on BookMyShow.
Shooting Stories : A Photography Walk + Workshop through the Ruins of Jahanpanah
Register Here! https://getfbpay.in/delhidallyingshootingstories/
The City of Jahanpanah is probably the most obscure of Delhi’s seven older cities. What remains of it today is unassumingly nestled in the heart of South Delhi and it’s state of ruin is both charming and heart wrenching. Imagining the stories that inhabited these spaces and capturing them on camera is what we are doing this November. Spread over two days, this Photography Walk + Workshop gives you a chance to explore the ruins of Jahan panah while documenting it through photography and building your own unique narrative around it.
On the first day, we take you on a curated tour through Begumpur village and the Bijay Mandal park and monument complex, accompanied by professional photographer Pavan Mehta of Mahatta & Co. The guided photo-walk will meander through a contemporary city park, a 400 year old village, the 600 year old mosque after which the village is named, and a curious and overgrown 700 year old monument complex. While participants take in some of the fascinating history and development of the village, they will be encouraged to look for their own stories and capture them on camera.
Over the next 29 hours, participants will develop their photo-stories by independently shooting on site, selecting photographs and establishing a narrative, which would be reviewed and critiqued by at the Mahatta & Co. studio in Connaught Place on the second day. This would also be followed by a masterclass in architectural photography and post-processing.
Session 1
Curated walk in and around Bijay Mandal and Begumpur Village with stories from the area, and Photo-Ops and Tips along the way
Saturday 22nd November: 8am to 11am
Session 2
Review and Post-Processing Workshop
Sunday 23rd November: 4pm to 5.30pm
Requirements
DSLR camera and a basic knowledge of how it works.
Charges
INR 2000 per person (includes both sessions)
(Registration charges of INR 500 to be paid online + Balance payment of INR 1500 to be made on the event day)
All participants will receive a handcrafted Delhi Dallying package. We will also be serving water, tea and snacks.
We urge you to register soon as we have limited spots (10 participants). If you have any questions about the walk and the registration process, please email us at hello@delhidallying.com
#Walktober
As the weather becomes favourable for exploring the city, Delhi Dallying shares some of its favourite stories from Old Delhi, every Saturday this October. Join us as we explore the obvious (read food) and beyond – the mohallas, the gallis and the markets – to understand what makes this medieval city tick today.
We’re looking at the extra-ordinary in the everyday Shahjahanabad through two lenses – take your pick!
Walk 3.0 – St.ART Shahpur Jat – Walking and talking while gawking!
Our time in Shahpur Jat with St.ART Delhi has been great. We especially enjoyed taking people on walks around the village, weaving together narratives around the art as well as the history of the village. We did a total of 5 walks, 4 of which were open to the public and 1 which was for guests from the various embassies and institutes affiliated with the festival.
We took a meandering path in and around the village, starting at Bikaner Sweets, near August Kranti Marg and ending with some chai and pakoras at the terrace of the lovely Potbelly restaurant on the northern edge of the village. Each participant was given a lovingly crafted ‘St.ART Delhi Dallying Kit’, which had a lot of goodies including maps of the village, postcards with some of the artwork, information cards about the village and the festival, the very useful Moving Delhi cards and probably the most exciting of all – stencils! At the end of each walk, our participants could leave their mark by painting on Delhi Dallying’s very own graffiti wall!
While the festival is now over, the art remains and the urban village of Shahpur Jat is still as fascinating. We can’t wait to be back with a new walk and new theme! Until then, here are some photographs!
Little package of love – the St.ART Delhi Dallying Kit
Wowed by Yantra’s wall (Image Courtesy: Neha Gupta)
Showing one’s love for street art and Delhi on Delhi Dallying’s very own graffiti wall!
Ending with chai, pakoras and some great conversation at The Potbelly
Notes from St.ART Delhi @Shahpur Jat
street (noun)
a public road in a city or town, typically with houses and buildings on one or both sides.
art (noun)
the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.
street art
an umbrella term defining forms of visual art created in public locations, usually unsanctioned artwork executed outside of the context of traditional art venues
St.ART Delhi is the India’s largest Street Art Festival, that in early 2014 invited over twenty artists from around the world to come and paint the town red, quite literally so. The 6 week long festival’s first stop was at the urban village of Shahpur Jat. The folks at St.ART gave us the opportunity to string together narratives from various facets of the festival into a curated walk, . Excited much, we began by going back to our ‘history of architecture’ lessons from architecture school and simultaneously, began speaking to the artists ‘on site’ to get their perspectives.
The peeps at the festival really meant it when they said they were intervening in Shahpur Jat, in the thick of the urban village. This is not the area that most people who are reading this post have seen; not the Fender Academy, not the Wishing Chair, not the Dada Jungi House lane. This was the much larger yet hidden ‘hinterland’, bustling and complex, strikingly different from the world outside it. The ‘outside’ is merely 200 metres beyond, marked by the August Kranti Marg, of the fairly new Delhi (especially in comparison to this 600 year old settlement). To the closely knit village community, this became a starting point for many a conversation- within itself and with the world outside.
Layers and intervention
While the street art became one more layer among the many layers that made the experience of the place, it also initiated a process that unearthed other buried layers. We began our wanderings and meanderings; understanding the workings and internal relationships between these many layers. The most visible among them are the ruined fortifications of the 14th century city of Siri and, in contrast, the many designer boutiques that have popped up along the outer periphery of the village, not so long ago.
We were equally curious about the ones less apparent, about why most of these houses have the title Panwar written on them, about how a certain specific corner shop selling tea and snacks would have all its signage and music playing in Bangla, about the staggering number of sequins shops on every street and also about just how many prachin shiv mandirs there were in this village. In our two weeks of frequent study-on-ground (after our day jobs, of course), we slowly began to absorb these observations and aberrations and also began to understand that street art was intervening with these layers in ways beyond the obvious.
Landmarks
The traditional landmarks of the village also became navigational anchors for us and the St.ART team to go about town. One such landmark, albeit a forgotten one, is the anonymous Baradari, the epicenter, where the story of this settlement began. Today the baradari doesn’t quite exist. The shadows of this 14th century monument are buried under and surrounded by many generations of ambitious building all around it. The Rainbow Project gives this ‘non-place’ another anonymous anchor that unites it with the hundreds of other such anonymous places across the globe that host the rainbow.
While the village gave the festival some landmarks thanks to its geography and multi-layered history, the festival also reciprocated with a few anchors. German artist Tofu’s piece of the striped lines at the Nayi Chaupal was one of the first pieces of the festival, also one of the most memorable, perhaps because of its central location. It became the torch-bearing reference for any artist who went to seek permission for doing a wall.
The massive cat drawn by Indian artist Anpu Varkey was also part of the first wave of festival interventions, and it quickly grew to be a neighbourhood icon. It also earned Anpu many friends and assistants in the week that she spent drawing the massive piece. The January air was cold and damp, the wall was huge and the scaffolding looked fragile. The neighbourhood aunties and uncles were amazed at this petite-looking girl’s skill, and also somewhere in their hearts, proud – of Anpu as well as the cat!
‘Haan, aapne woh billi toh dekhi hai na? Bas wahin se dayeen taraf janaa hai.’(Yes, you must have seen that cat, right? Just turn right from there.)
Conversation
While Anpu was one of many women artists who participated in the festival and painted walls that were possibly much more challenging to paint than the ones done by their male counterparts, the commentary on feminism was taken to another level altogether by artists like Ranjit Dahiya and Sé Cordeiro. Dahiya’s monumental mural of fearless Nadira (the infamous rebellious seductress from the 1950s) cleverly gets us thinking about how a woman’s smoking and drinking fixation has been automatically branding her as the vamp on the Indian screen and outside it since forever. Se Cordeiro’s beautiful woman warrior from the Gulab Gang is as powerful as she is spunky, armed to pin down all of those men who disrespect her. Adding charm to the quaint village setting are also Alina Vergnano’s graceful murals of women, almost softening the mood of this somewhat aggressive setting.
The festival generated quite a stir in the neighbourhood. People were intrigued about the organization that was just going around painting on walls without even taking money for it.
“Achha, aap bhi company ke hi saath aaye ho? Yeh ho kya raha hai?” (Are you also with these people the company? Just what is happening here?) “Yeh log sab jageh drawing kar rahe hain, par phir yeh festival kahaan ho raha hai?” (These people are just painting everywhere, but where is this festival happening then?)
This is exactly what even many visitors wondered walking right through this village, not realizing that, in fact, ‘they’ were the festival! The fact they were there, looking and talking and moving around seeing this place, made the festival. This real experience was only complimented by the sea of people who saw all of these pieces online, not in relation to each other but in relation to the worldwide scene. Delhi, India had just popped up on the street art map, and so had Shahpur Jat village as this neighbourhood bursting with art!
On ground, the festival was thriving, really, on conversation between the artists and local people, often only through gestures and body language and bits of broken English (and in the case of a few curious characters among the village folk, some surprisingly eloquent exchanges in English). While traditionally, street art would be relinquished as vandalism, in this case, all of it was legitimate and carried out in broad daylight (and sometimes, in the night too, ofcourse), with police permissions et al in place. With no economic transaction at play, it was just about finding the right wall and seeking permission from the owners and soon enough, being flooded with requests for commissioned art pieces too. Well, these conversations have only just begun. And we are sure we’ll be listening intently!
AFTERNOTES:
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We learnt about various styles of street art, from Graffiti to paste ups and murals.
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We began to appreciate the immense amount of skill required to draw on walls (that turn very cold in the winters) and how different it is from drawing on paper in terms of scale.
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We realized we really do like taking people out and showing them around places : )
- We met Daku. (It was kickass!) No, we’re not telling you who s/he is.
And the countdown begins!
Tomorrow’s the day!
There’s plenty to smile about on the St.ART Delhi walk this Sunday!
More happy (and air borne) things to be found!
There’s plenty to see on the St.ART Delhi walk by Delhi Dallying!
Believe us, now *that’s* a curious canvas. Join Delhi Dallying on the St.ART Delhi walk to see the big picture!
Just who *are* those tiny monsters? Find out next Sunday!
Can you guess which actress Ranjit Dahiya of the Bollywood Art Project is painting?
St.Art Shahpur Jat Walk
Delhi Dallying is very, very excited to be collaborating with the incredible St.ART Delhi Festival 2014. We will lead a curated walk through Shahpur Jat next Sunday, where we expect to initiate conversation about the many historical and social layers of Shahpur Jat and its ongoing encounter with international street art, weaving a contemporary narrative of this urban village in Delhi today.
Join us!
Find the facebook event page right here.
Walk 1
September 8th, 2012
It’s a fairly pleasant Saturday morning. All of us gather at exit number 2 of the Chandni Chowk Metro Station. Rohan is late (as usual) and we can’t start the walk until he comes because he’s got the route maps printed for everyone. Friends from college, their friends from outside college, and some new friends who read about us online, join us on our very first walk of the Delhi Dallying Walk Series. 30 people, brimming nervous energy. And we begin with Walk 1.
Walk 1 is interesting because it takes you through the residential pockets around Chandni Chowk, sharing with you a slice of the vernacular life in Old Delhi. It consciously misses the touristy spots, to introduce you to the more everyday things of Shahjahanabad. While moving from the eastern end of Chandni Chowk towards the west, through the galis, it loosely weaves together a chronologically sound narrative, with bits of lip-smackingly good food thrown in.
Summarizing, from the treasurers’ haveli in Gali Khazanchi to the beautiful Jain mohalla of Naughara, we explored the 17th century grandeur of Shahjahan’s reign (along with some 21st century jalebis and samosas). While moving through Maliwara towards Nai Sadak, the remnants of the Maratha siege and the mutiny of 1857 became apparent. Ballimaran and Mirza Ghalib’s Haveli are a testament to the days after the revolt, and also home to the famous Hakims of the Sharifkhani clan, which made for some very interesting haveli hopping.
Coming back onto Chandni chowk, after a small breakfast of kachouri-aloo and the elusive Nagori Halwa, we explored a part of Lala Chunamal’s stunning haveli (a little hushed as we did not seek permission from the current tenants!), who happened to be one of the most influential characters during the revolt. Entering the bustle of Khari Baoli, we went up to the hidden flower market of Fatehpuri, explored the fascinating view from the eerily enchanting Garodia spice market, and concluded at the recently completed, austerely modern Polyclinic for the Destitute at Lahori Gate, leaving everyone to ponder about what modernity really means for the contemporary old city.
Walk 1 is a great way to start a conversation with Shahjahanabad, which is a city within a city – one which we tend to be oblivious to, but one which enchants and entices.
Delhi Dallying 