Another Delhi food story again soon…

The direct link is here.

UK - London - Eels in a barrel in the yard at Cooke's Eel and Pie shop in Hoxton

I saw the piece (and my accompanying text – a link that I will post soon) almost as a bit of visual archeology. Like the long closed Jewish Soup Kitchen that I photographed at the start of my career (see here) these places are disappearing year after year. As I’ve said before, the corporate, identikit British high street is a poorer place for the passing of traditional cafes and all manner of independent shops.

Whatever you’re preconceptions of this food – and I guarantee that they are likely wrong – I urge you to try it even if it’s just an excuse to rediscover something of the past that for now, is still with us.

UK - London - A customer eats a plate of eels, pie and mash in Cookes' Eel, Pie and mash shop in Hoxton

UK - London - A plate of stewed eels and mash at Manze's Pie and Mash shop in Tower Bridge Road

UK - London - An antique flower pot (with a typically 1930's aspidistra...), a broom and an umbrella by a door at Manze's Pie and mash shop in Walthamstow market. The interior is Grade 2 listed

UK - London - UK - London - Original tile details at Manze's Eel, Pie and Mash shop in Walthamstow

UK - London - The interior of Manze's Pie and Mash shop in Walthamstow market showing the rare pressed tin tile ceiling

UK - London - A pre-decimal cash register at Manze's Eel, Pie and Mash shop in Walthamstow

UK - London - Original tiles and a boxing poster from the 1970's in Cookes' Eel, Pie and Mash shop in London Fields

UK - London - UK - London - The interior of Cookes' Eel, Pie and Mash shop in London Fields

UK - London - A man eats a plate of eels, pie and mash at Manze's Eel, Pie and Mash on Tower Bridge Road, the oldest in London dating from 1902

Here’s one they unfortunately missed…

Pakistan - Lahore - Imran Khan the former Pakistan International Cricket player at prayer in a mosque in Lahore, Pakistan

Of course, as Kanika Singh, Convener of Delhi Heritage Walks told Tehelka magazine, not everyone shares that view, “Only last year, we evicted all street hawkers while preparing for the Commonwealth Games—and now we are celebrating their contributed (sic.) to our ‘heritage’. I don’t feel like celebrating this occasion. Whose Delhi are we celebrating?”.

The point is surely that cities only belong to their inhabitants when they feel they have some stake in them. I agree that most of Delhi is too busy trying to earn a crust to survive to be bothered about the anniversary but surely (and, if you’ve read this blog before you will know that I am the very last person to romanticise or excuse the Raj) the city is the sum of it’s parts: Hindu, Muslim and the British all have legacies that has made Delhi what it is and decrying any of those for some neo-nationalist point is surely counter-productive. Delhi is what it is and pretending that the city – or indeed much of India for that matter, doesn’t have some English blood is as pointless and saying it isn’t a melting pot of past empires. Selective cultural memory is a very dangerous thing for all societies (remember Ayodya?) and only by melding the various strains in a city (certainly one as large and anarchic as Delhi) can you hope to create a genuinely inclusive society…

Anyway, lecture over. Here’s one I made earlier…

India - Gurgaon - Bricklayers constructing a house in the shadow of an exclusive new development

India - Jaipur - A man walks through the streets of the Old City at dusk

I have just finished a lovely four day travel assignment in one of India’s most tourist-heavy cities, Jaipur. Ironically I was tasked to write and photograph about the quiet spots, the quirky and the unusual and I’m pleased to say that there were many. I stayed an extra day and a half in order to edit and write the piece and on the last afternoon, took myself out to shoot on the streets. I always used to do this kind of work on Leica’s and tranny. That process was very freeing but I find it incredibly difficult these days to shoot this kind of work on DSLR’s. Perhaps it’s just me but one looks so much like a photographer that the process becomes a cliche: two big heavy cameras with two big heavy prime lenses. A long way from the classic rangefinder. It is more than that however – purely in terms of seeing, those little cameras allowed you to examine spatial relationships through the viewfinder. You could pre-focus and just walk into the picture. I feel very removed when I try to do these kind of things with my current kit. There’s a sort of rhythm that works on the street and it’s really difficult to do with such a big, noisy machine pressed to your face. I have, over the years in India gone back to my M6 rangefinders as it’s still relatively cheap and easy to process film here.  However, then you have the laborious task of scanning – a process which, after spending the best part of two years feeding my archive (in the form of little plastic squares) through various machines, I’d rather die than attempt again. The irony is of course that I used to be sponsored by Leica (and Kodak for that matter) but who, apart from dentists (meaning rich hobbyists) as Simon Norfolk said a few years ago can afford a couple of M9′s? Or perhaps I’m just not working hard enough…