There are a handful of weeks in Delhi that feel almost conspiratorial in their beauty. The skies turn a decisive cerulean, as though washed clean overnight. The breeze carries a quiet chill that lingers in the shade. Days stretch lazily towards warmth, but the evenings still belong to shawls, to long conversations, to stepping out without calculation. It is, without exaggeration, the city at its most persuasive.
And with this generosity of weather arrives the season of festivals.
At Dilli Haat and Dastkar, basant melas bloom in bursts of marigold and handloom. In the heart of the city, the gracious old Travancore Palace hosts evenings where music unfurls against heritage walls. At Sunder Nursery, domes and gardens frame performances beneath an open sky that seems almost theatrical in its perfection. Delhiites, so often weather-weary, become flâneurs. We linger. We browse. We listen. We eat. We make the most of it all before the sun reclaims its tyranny and the city retreats indoors.
What I have found especially stirring this year is not simply the scale of these festivals, but the thoughtfulness with which food has been woven into their cultural narrative. Not as an afterthought. Not as a row of QSR logos. But as a memory. As inheritance.
At the recently held 'Kahaani Dilli Ki' at Travancore Palace, four home chefs presented cuisines of communities that shaped the capital long before it became the sprawl we know today. Mughalia. Kayasth. Baniya. Punjabi. Each stall felt less like a vendor and more like a storyteller.
I remember, quite vividly, tasting amrud ki subzi with methi ki poori at the Baniya stall. A gravy made of ripe and raw guavas, tart yet gently sweet, perfumed with spice. It was entirely unfamiliar to me and yet instinctively comforting. A reminder of the ingenuity and finesse of vegetarian kitchens that have quietly sustained generations. At the Kayasth counter, there was gatte ki subzi intriguingly named takke paise, earthy and robust. From the Punjabi kitchen came tandoori roti and Amritsari bun tikki, unapologetically hearty. And from the Mughalia specialist, delicate shaami kebabs that dissolved almost before one could fully register their depth.
What moved me was not merely the taste, but the context. This was Delhi as it once was. Not a homogenised, Instagram-ready plate, but a layered city of communities, each bringing its own grammar of flavour.
This coming weekend, the Sufi Heritage Festival at Sunder Nursery promises a similar confluence. An evocative musical line-up — Sona Mohapatra, Daler Mehndi and Satpal Wadali — will fill the gardens with verse and longing. But just as compelling is the Sufi Food Pop-up, where devotion finds its expression not only in song, but in sustenance.
Osama Jalali brings Majlis, his homage to Mughalia traditions where etiquette, poetry and slow-cooked gravies once shared equal space. Shachi Anand’s Baghar-e-Magadh turns the spotlight gently toward Bihar’s nuanced culinary memory — subtle, restrained, and too often absent from the mainstream table. These are not merely menus; they are meditations.
As Yasmin Kidwai, co-founder of Culture Plus, reflects: “Sufism is about love, equality, and bringing people together, and that’s exactly how we approached the curation. We focused on food that feels honest, comforting, and rooted in Delhi’s lived traditions. The idea was to create a space where people from different backgrounds could come together, share a meal, exchange stories, and experience the spirit of Delhi’s Sufi culture through warmth, simplicity, and community.”
And that is perhaps the quiet triumph of it. In a city that so often equates progress with speed, these gatherings slow us down. They remind us that culture is not spectacle alone — it is the act of breaking bread. It is hospitality as philosophy. It is history simmered gently until it softens into something shared.