It's been another exhausting past 48 hours. Arresting, intriguing, you'll be hardpressed to find a 3-second silence gap living here.
Even past midnight, the hum from the streets below pulsated with late night conversations, trading, or just basic winding down the madness of the day in this life of survival, Delhi style. We woke earlier two days ago to venture out to the infamous Chandni Chowk area. I was still feeling relatively weak from battling my bug, but I wasn't about to allow it to stop me from checking out what locals get on to in that side of town.
The day began in the main street cutting through the bazaar. We took one auto there and it was once again, an assaulting journey of dust, honking, convergence of traffic of all kinds, beggars, men pissing in public, women cladded in a myriad of saree, peddlers, fruits piled high like stupa, and potholes to the count. It probably would have been easier if I had closed my eyes, shut myself out from what was going on around me, but part of me felt that all had to be seen. It wasn't that Delhi wanted to be cruel but this was life in Delhi.
I am talking about the sheer confrontation of what Delhi is to thousands, that I had to face, armed only with my miserable amassing of little experience in this sort of existence. I had my odd moments of fun like watching cricket (unfortunately India lost by 3 runs to Australia) and Bollywood. It was all to forget momentarily what was happening out there. My mind is still struggling to wrap around this everyday fact of life, and I don't know whether leaving Delhi will help me to sort them out better.
We had a lovely breakfast of dosai and walked into an area heavily populated by the Sikh faithfuls. We stood by the temple's exterior and watched three turbaned men handing out water. Yes, water in cups from a tiled fountain spurting that precious liquid. Many queue up to partake in it and suddenly, one of the men beckoned to me to approach. We were being offered some water too. We drank from it. It was unexplainable, here we were, obviously able to purchase our own bottles of water amongst the many who couldn't and we were casteless - everyone got their fill. It's just behind my back where I saw rickshaws powering through by thin hardened cyclists, with their tight muscles ripping underneath a shabby cloth of sarong that had seen better pattern and state, crazy autos and bull carts. At dirty muddy corners of the streets, a man was earning his keep of the day by cleaning your ear for a few Rs. Another one sat on the ground with his weighing machine - again, the dust testifying to it being old enough and exposed enough. Under the thick foundation of grime on the man's little signboard read: Rs1 for a weigh. That was that - anything you want to get weighed off, Rs1. I was thinking about the hype that we built up from the dinner that we wanted to try (some Punjabi roast of leg of lamb at the Maurya Sheraton) - that dinner, if we had gone, would cost us Rs4,000.
That translated to 4,000 weigh-ins for that man at Chandni Chowk. We decided against that dinner. How was this man going to get that number of people to stand on his machine? I felt like an utter jackass.
This was how I had been feeling. An idiot, a fool. I hadn't been feeling very proud of myself since arriving in Delhi. I wasn't about to crucify myself, not that I was feeling like a martyr either. It's just that we came from a background raised by our parents that there was always a solution to any problem, things were accessible, and things were really "not that hard". Suddenly I found myself unable to help one and all. I failed the child standing outside of our auto begging. I failed the mother dragging her begging kids on the road. I failed another child, without any pants standing while playing on top of a pile of broken rubbles from a construction site. I failed the stray dogs, the homeless men. I failed the tired looking chai lady whose daily schedule was to boil, pour and clean.
Perhaps I needed a way to let it all out. I just had this overwhelming sensation of being displaced and invited at the same time. At times I felt included in a sanctuary, such as when we went inside the Sikh temple to witness their worship. The noise from the roads faded, and you were falling into the sweet lull of the hymns, the beats of the tabla and the melodic hypnotisation of the singers. A lone toddler came crawling on the carpet to play with me. I got a smile from his mother. And then we stepped out of the temple, the inner peace went up like a cloud of dust.
Could this be the reason that Delhi is so dusty? They were all the powdery hope of the faithfuls and had-nots. Where prayers were the only salvation? Everyday, the skies held the heavy, intoxicating and oxygen-depriving clouds of dust that of unfulfilled dreams, empty tummies, and sickly beings?
It was useless to pretend they all didn't exist. It was a state of blase even. At a roundabout in Connaught Place, cars were just speeding past insanely, and I saw another toddler playing with pebbles sitting on the street. I saw another woman wringing and beating her laundry by the five-footer while using water from a communal tub. A homeless man slept on the pavement slicing through the middle of the highway. Nearby some cops stood around nonchalantly. You could be dead and didn't count - for a thing here.
I wasn't judging. In no way but I did feel that I, was in some weird state of chance, more visible than the many locals here. They were the invisibles. They cleaned up your plate in a restaurant. They swept the dust and dirt from your path. They don't get thanked for their (literally) back-breaking jobs. Yet they carried their jobs proudly, and in a bittersweet way, desperately.
I could tell you about the cramped streets of Chandni Chowk, where you could purchase anything with the money you had, but I'll leave it to travel channels and glossy magazines tailored for the upclass. They can publish whatever that you want to read with your given expectations of a modelled world. Yet, that was not the world many here lived in. The disparity is real. There is a created world, where the Oberoi and glitzy rooms offered an entire echelon of servants catering to your whims. You are protected here from the incessant blaring of horns and human bellows. Then there is the hard real Delhi. It smelled of roasted nuts, chai, urine, stank mud, incense and glowed with lights, steaming pots of bread, draped with endless lengths of saree.
It's like meshing an ugly joke of heaven and hell together within the confine of small space.
We visited the Red Fort only to find her in a dilapidated state. We traced the steps of the faithfuls to Masjid Jama, only to find our peace shattered by the many beggars squating after the Maghrib prayers at sundown in front of the many naan shops, palms opened for perhaps the only warm food that crossed their lips for the first time that day. My heart warmed to find kids smiling at me a lot, wanting to shake my hand, shyly calling out "hello, nice to meet you" and some ran by me fast enough to just steal a touch on my arm. This is indeed, a town of juxtapositions. You can look either way - happily getting amazed and lost in the many beautifully sown saree and Punjabi suits in any design and form that you could want, or sadly reflecting on that pair of feet that stuck out underneath some pile of rubbish and wood, trying to rest your tired mind from too much begging during the day, and sleeping hungry. I saw some puppies huddled together, one was obviously curious and playful yet where was their mum? Oh, these would grow too, to join the many lanky Saluki greyhound looking strays that deserved so much that scraps of bones soaked in puddles of black water.
At night, there was revelry outside our street. A young man rode a white horse, dressed splendidly to make his way to his bride. His entourage danced gaily to the thudding beats of the drums and the trumpets proclaimed, yes he was the king for a day. And more dancing, fireworks, and then the mayhem gave way back to the steady familiar grind of Pahar Ganj winding down past midnight. An odd honk blared far away, some foot steps paddled cross and someone shouted something in Hindi. I closed my eyes to rest, again thinking about where some slept in the Hyatt tonight, some travellers would pay to sleep in not-so-bad accommodation such as the (funnily copied) "Hyatt" in the slums, and some made their piles in the darkest corners where they were adopting an identity they had been used to since the day they came to the world: the forgottens, the invisibles.
Yet, some still wandered aimlessly unless you procured his help to drop you back home. We took a rickshaw back home late at night. Our minds and logis told us that this man was old enough to be our grandfather. He shouldn't had to work so hard. For Rs70, to take us back from Masjid Jama to Pahar Ganj. It's a long hard road to cycle, notwithstanding the traffic and battling the bullying from other wheeled machines. It's dark, it's hot and dusty. Still, he took us home. Where we would sleep well on a firm mattress, and if not for him, we would still be looking for a ride back. Rs100, he took it gratefully. He was from Rajasthan.
I wondered, that is a long way back home to go to sleep. Why isn't he resting back at his home town?
Too many of these questions come to mind.
We are moving on to Simla, at Himachal Pradesh tonight. Will be spending the night in a carriage. I think I know what to expect but my heart tells me that something will always break that convention.
To me, this is the most astounding aspect of travel and being here in India. You move past the usual humbugs on filmed / edited travel doco, and you put yourself out there to think how it is like in someone else's shoes, if they had them at all. It is that hard staring at your face. Literally and figuratively. You get used to people staring at you within a breath away. People mean no harm, yet there is little compassion to spare around. People beg constantly and aggressively. They don't move, they do anything to break your wall. They break your resistance. They force you to question. They make you ask.
You think. Understand a bit, but I tend to get even more questions.
I never realise that life could be this hard. And I'm told that this was just a teaser trailer. I haven't been to the slums yet. In a way, I felt privileged (despite battling that darn bug) I think that I had seen a glimpse of real India, and I want to complete this by not comparing, but adding onto the bank of experience and sights, sounds and smells of how many people had been living like this. For generations that passed, and for generations to come.
