On Mathura Road

Leaving behind him two Delhis—the Old and the New—as he makes his way southward on the Mathura Road, the traveller encounters a third Delhi, one comprised of an infinite line of dioramas which disappear into the rising dust with each lost moment.

Shrouded in the foreboding, spine-like shadow of the Delhi Metro—an elevated-train track under construction in colossal volumes of tan-grey concrete—this Delhi in its patina of everyday life is a living monument to all of the Delhis that have come before it along the banks of the Yamuna River. It is what Delhi has long been and probably long will be, a city that spites the traveller’s fleeting gaze simply by existing; for to exist in Delhi is to change.

Here are motor shops and dry-goods stores, and next might come a toy shop, a bank, a row of tailors, a sandal maker. Passing quickly is the ‘Good Luck Furniture House’ and next to it the ‘Sawag Restaurant’ promising Indian and Chinese cuisine. But the next time you pass by, the order will have changed, so quickly does the city of Delhi evolve and reconstruct.

So much brick and stone slab blurs the traveller’s eyes, while every door is corrugated metal sponsored by Vodafone; every shop sign brought to you by Pepsi. The traveller is easily lost; should he linger too long, perhaps the city will transform itself along with him.

This Delhi that constantly changes may be known to the traveller as kal* Delhi—the Delhi not of today, but both of yesterday and of tomorrow. And it remains along the Mathura Road until the city releases its traveller to Haryana.

From Haryana to the boundary of the next state, Uttar Pradesh, is easily mistaken for a blighted hinterland. Then, at the latter’s crossing, the traveller slows to declare himself to border agents, and while he sits in the heat of the morning sun he is startled to be set upon by a scrawny monkey crudely leashed to a master.

But no amusement deters him, for the traveller is nearing the end of his morning’s journey: Agra, alluring city of marble and red sandstone, city of Shah Jahan and his Taj Mahal.

(To be continued...)

* kal is a Hindi word that, depending on its context, can mean ‘yesterday’ or ‘tomorrow.’ Thus kal should never alone be the answer to a question, nor should the traveller ever pose a question whose answer can only be kal.

The Traveller departs Delhi for Agra

The alacrity with which the traveller first greets Delhi inevitably—in the subsequent phase of his visit—gives way to a kind of malaise, a result of the combination of heat and foul air, dust and dirt, and public places utterly swollen with humanity, much of it, by appearances, destitute.

It must be said that New Delhi is a sprawling city, a very green city, with wide boulevards under canopies of palm, ashoka and peepal trees, with grid-patterned outdoor markets and gated residential neighbourhoods, and with myriad parks visited by enthusiastic Delhiites, often for vigorous morning exercise, afternoon naps or evening strolls. And where green transforms into glass, the heavily air-conditioned shops and cafés of New Delhi bring the traveller respite from the heat as it ticks upward of thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight degrees Celsius.

Old Delhi—Shahjahanabad—presents itself in all the layers of its history, a panoply of innumerable eras and ages—where mosques ride shotgun with temples, where the same two alleyways might intersect a dozen times in a dozen different bazaars, where classical Sanskrit begat modern Hindu-Urdu—as though it contains both its past and present “like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of streets, the gratings of windows, the banisters of steps, the poles of flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.”*

Together, the new and the old coalesce into a teeming, sprawling, relentless metropolis that is beautiful and even serene at certain extreme close-ups, but almost impossible to appreciate through a wide-angle lens. Indeed, viewed from the perch of three increasingly insufferable weeks’ worth of stay, Delhi becomes repugnant, albeit through no fault of its own.

Thus, despite the traveller’s eagerness to discover Delhi, the city itself rejects him and sends him away; punishes him for deigning to curse the city for the hellishness of its air.

And so the traveller will reflect upon Delhi from the nearest point of exile, which for most travellers is the city of Agra—the city of the Taj Mahal.

(To be continued…)

* A passage from Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino; from “Cities and Memory 3,” pp. 10-11.

Day One for a new Delhiwallah

Early reflections of the traveller in Delhi: 

On (quite literally) the inimitable auto-rickshaw...

No matter how one judges the comportment, the swiftness and the unbridled combustion of Delhi traffic, the efficacy of the diminutive auto-rickshaw within all that menacing congestion defies all attempts by logic and reason to prevent me from boarding one.

On the cow...
The only thing--machine or organic--on Delhi roads that is by all perceivable evidence not in a hurry to get somewhere is the indomitable cow; so lazily does it move along as to seem almost graceful. From the vantage point of the auto-rickshaw passenger, the complacent cow on the road can only be revered, which is to say that I revere its already established reverence; for I suppose only after many centuries in the rank of honour has the cow earned its own lane in traffic. (I'm also quite jealous of the cow; it's the only thing out on the road not being honked at.)

On a visit to Old Delhi...
The sheer vitality of Shahjahanabad is astounding. Possibly the only thing thicker than the swaths of energetic humanity pouring through the alleyways of this old Mughal city is the invisible cloud of pepper dust emanating from the spice market. To sneeze here is to engage in a perfectly local and ancient tradition!

On shopping for a kurta...
The kurta is a shirt of cotton, linen or silk, presenting itself with the distinctive rounded 'Chinese' collar, available in various lengths, with sleeves to the wrist and buttons to the sternum. It has the unfortunate tendency to make its wearer appear pear-shaped, when in fact that wearer is I. Blue and orange seem to be the colours of the season.

On a brief excursion to a Jain temple...
For a man--in this case a monk--of such girth to spend so many years sitting perfectly cross-legged is suggestive proof of a divine presence. I am sore just reminiscing about his posture. The temple itself is as exquisite as it is secluded; its various shrines are ornamented daily with saffron and rose petals, while its milky marble floors are somehow soft and gleaming. The overall aura is somewhat subdued, for the visitor, by the overpowering and barely sustainable aroma of sandalwood.

On attempting to learn 'Bollywood Dance' my first night out...
'Walk Like an Egyptian' meets a circa-1985 Jazzercise video. Alas, we all know I'm better suited to eating than dancing.

On the culture of food in India...
As explained to me by a new friend here, "Anything which can be eaten, should be eaten, whether by human or by animal. Food is God."

On eating Indian food at least three times a day...
(Can't type; too busy growing fat on paneer, tandoori roti and butter chicken.)