Delhiwale: A man, two roosters and a goat in the machine room

Shamim us Din has a passion for machines and he chooses to live in a tiny dark room surrounded with a litter of odd automated parts.

Old Delhi’s Shamim ud Din loves machinery. So much so that he decided, years ago, that he needed a tiny dark room near the family residence to store it in.

Shamim ud Din at his room in Old Delhi. (Mayank Austen Soofi / HT Photo)

“Yes, I know it’s cluttered,” he says, feasting on chhole poori while we chat. “The trouble is, I now have to live here!” His legs hurt so much he can no longer climb the stairs to the family apartment, where his wife and children live. That house is further ahead on the street.

Surveying the scene, we spot an old Kelvinator fridge… a wall clock wrapped in plastic… a couple of strange looking machines we can’t quite decipher… and under the bed, a mysterious rusting trunk that may have its own story to tell. There is also a caged bird and two roosters.

He specialises in repairing keema machines used by butchers for mincing meat. But there’s no mincing of words when we ask whether he’s lonely, all by himself in this windowless room on Walled City’s Gali Mochan?

He seems to brush off our query. “Not only do I have the chidiyas (birds) and murge (roosters), I have a goat too. She’s gone out for fresh air.”