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Everyday doors, seen up close
Soofi opens with a familiar kind of entrance: metal bars across a doorway, mosquito-proof mesh behind them, and a cloth bag on the handle for a delivery person. The details serve practical purposes, but they are also part of the city’s domestic streetscape.
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The article sets these newer residential doorways beside its description of Old Delhi haveli entrances, with their arches, niches and built-in seating. This is an editorial contrast, not a measured comparison or a claim that every old or new home shares the same features. The invitation is simply to give ordinary doors the same attention as more conspicuously ornate ones.
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Payal’s doorway: a display with a history
Payal’s apartment door stands beside a tower staircase. Tassels, pompoms, cowrie shells and small bells hang from its handle, while signs mark the entrance as a spiritual zone. A carved wooden jharokha adds another layer: Payal bought it about fifteen years before the article appeared, and it had once divided her living room into a temple area and a sitting area.
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The decorations are connected to life inside the home, too. Soofi links the display to Payal’s husband playing the harmonium and her daughter singing. The doorway reads not just as an embellished threshold, but as a glimpse of the household’s devotional and musical life.
Ruchi’s doorway: a welcome and a playful reveal
Facing Payal’s door is Ruchi’s entrance, marked by a “Happy Loving Caring Home” sign and an Om symbol. A rose-decorated bandarwar—also called a toran—is a gift from her friend Aarti, who made it the previous Diwali. In the small corridor, a jhalar of flower-shaped strands and golden beads ends in bells.
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That hanging also has a social role: a visiting friend sometimes hides behind it and then emerges singing a qawwali. The feature’s details show how a doorway decoration can become part of a shared joke as well as a welcome. The account describes one neighbour’s home, not a common practice across Delhi. For a similar decorative motif, the terms Indian toran, bandarwar and doorway jhalar describe the kinds of hangings in Soofi’s example; the article does not review or recommend products.
What the feature asks readers to notice
- Function: bars, locks and mesh answer practical needs such as security and mosquito protection; the article also mentions video doorbells.
- Architecture: its Old Delhi description calls attention to arches, niches and built-in seating.
- Personal expression: Payal and Ruchi’s entrances show how objects, symbols and handmade decorations can make apartment doorways distinctive.
These are reported observations and examples, not a survey of Delhi homes or evidence about how widespread any feature is. Read the full feature in Hindustan Times.
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