Mayank Austen Soofi is a Delhi-based Indian writer, blogger and

photojournalist Photojournalism is journalism that uses images to tell a news story. It usually only refers to still images, but can also refer to video used in broadcast journalism. Photojournalism is distinguished from other close branches of photography (suc ...

, who writes columns for ''

Hindustan Times ''Hindustan Times'' is an Indian English language, English-language daily newspaper based in Delhi. It is the flagship publication of HT Media Limited, an entity controlled by the Birla family, and is owned by Shobhana Bhartia, the daughter o ...

'' and '' Mint'' on culture, food and literary landscapes of Delhi. He is best known for his website and blog, ''Delhiwale'', a multifaceted guide of the city, that has been praised as being "the most compelling guide to India's capital" by ''(

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'' and "a one-man encyclopedia of the city" by ''Time Out Delhi''.

Biography

Soofi was born in

Nainital Nainital (Kumaoni language, Kumaoni: ''Naintāl''; ) is a town and headquarters of Nainital district of Kumaon division, Uttarakhand, India. It is the judicial capital of Uttarakhand, the Uttarakhand High Court, High Court of the state being ...

Uttarakhand Uttarakhand (, ), also known as Uttaranchal ( ; List of renamed places in India, the official name until 2007), is a States and union territories of India, state in North India, northern India. The state is bordered by Himachal Pradesh to the n ...

and moved to

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, but spread chiefly to the west, or beyond its Bank (geography ...

around 2004. He uses 'Austen' as his middle name as a tribute to the author

Jane Austen Jane Austen ( ; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for #List of works, her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment on the English landed gentry at the end of the 18th century ...

, about whom he often blogs. His writings were featured in Volume 4 of "Penguin Book of New Writing from India" published by

Penguin Penguins are a group of aquatic flightless birds from the family Spheniscidae () of the order Sphenisciformes (). They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere. Only one species, the Galápagos penguin, is equatorial, with a sm ...

. In 2011, he published four alternative guidebooks to the city of Delhi: ''The Delhi Walla - Portraits, Delhi Food, Delhi Hangouts and Delhi Monuments''. His latest book '' Nobody Can Love You More'', published in 2012 by Penguin Books, deals with the life of a 'kotha', Hindi for brothel, in Delhi's largest red-light district, G. B. Road, which is home to 5,000 sex workers. He also writes columns on Delhi in the city supplement of ''

'' titled "The Delhiwalla", Soofi also writes a column, "Delhi's Belly", for the weekend supplement of the business newspaper Mint. He has initiated many projects, including Mission Delhi, which aims to profile 1% of Delhi's 14 million people, and a blog dedicated to

Arundhati Roy Suzanna Arundhati Roy (; born 24 November 1961) is an Indian author best known for her novel ''The God of Small Things'' (1997), which won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997 and became the best-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. ...

's debut novel, ''The God of Small Things'', and to its readers. He recently started a reading club called The Delhi Proustians, which centers around the French novelist

Marcel Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust ( ; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, literary critic, and essayist who wrote the novel (in French – translated in English as ''Remembrance of Things Past'' and more r ...

and his seven volume novel, ''In Search of Lost Time''.

Works

*''The Delhi Walla: Delhi Monuments'' – HarperCollins, 2011. () *''The Delhi Walla: Delhi Hangouts'' – HarperCollins, 2011. () *''The Delhi Walla: Delhi Food+Drink'' – HarperCollins, 2011. () *''The Delhi Walla: Portraits'' – HarperCollins, 2011. () *'' Nobody Can Love You More'' – Penguin Books, 2012. ()

References

External links

The Delhi Walla, website
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Austen Soofi, Mayank Living people Indian male bloggers Indian male journalists Indian photojournalists People from Nainital Journalists from Delhi Indian columnists Indian food writers Year of birth missing (living people)