Evening Tennis with the India Habitat Centre architecture

Air Force Bal Bharati School is in a small institutional pocket of central Delhi where embassies, colleges and cultural centres sit close together. In the evenings its courts often fill with the sound of tennis balls from outside coaching groups, especially Team Tennis India on Lodhi Road, which runs organised sessions here for different ages and levels.

Right next door is the India Habitat Centre, the main cultural hub of the area, easy to spot with its red‑brick buildings. It was planned in the late 1980s and finished in the early 1990s as a modern complex designed to stay cooler, with shaded walkways, courtyards and terraces that still offer some relief in Delhi’s heat. Some parts now look a bit shabby and worn, but that also shows how much people actually use the place: posters on the boards, busy cafés, and regulars who seem to treat it almost like a second home.