As a little child, it was so easy to hitch a ride onto the dreams that came to life from the pages of many a travel writer that explored the exotic lands of the unknown. India, for example, was one of those destinations. Years had gone by and India today, holds as many secrets and mysteries as widely known publicity that came from the new age media. I for one was still curiously excited about joining the many steps that had been taken before me in discovering about myself in India.
We are an extreme lot, my hubby and I. Within 48 hours of returning from our Borneo leg, we had packed up our first home’s possessions, stored our cares and wares with the trusty hands of removal specialists in view of our impending move to Australia next Christmas, and found out that we misread the departure time to India, made it to the airport with barely seconds to spare (hence not getting good seats, oh well!) and even popped a bottle of champagne to celebrate our success! Arriving at the Indira Gandhi International Airport was still surreally pinch-my-face shocking. I still couldn’t believe that I finally made it here. I had been thinking about India, dreaming about it, wondering about it too many times, got exhausted and overwhelmed planning for it (imagine?) and once I got out of the aeroplane, the chesty assault from the New Delhi air (or shall I affectionately call it smoke?) hit you like the full embrace of that dreaded overweight aunt who thought that burrowing within her hot sweaty bosoms was the thing that all nieces craved for endlessly. Anyway, I digressed…
Getting onto the bus that took us to the arrival hall went pretty uneventful. I felt a lot of eyes staring at me. So this was how being a celebrity (albeit infamous if ever that was a valid oxymoron) felt like…
Went through the usual airport arrival procedure, and sparing you the bore, I need to let you know that the most whacky and funny scene was actually coming out of the final gates of inspection, where you see almost akin to the parting of the Red Sea, swarms of bobbing heads jutting out from both sides of the lane, hoisted cards – some written beautifully and announced those snobby ones (oh, so unadventurous!) staying at the Hilton tonight, and some (like ours) spelled out your names quite correctly but – that poor fellow who came to fetch us was squeezed down to half his size amidst his taller companions, all calling out and welcoming the freshly let-out pile of travelers into New Delhi. At this point, I was just simply delighted. Although I was still suffering from “KL Belly” (see all that fuss about Delhi Belly? It’s all that is – a fuss – I got bugged way before even getting on the plane to Delhi) my blood was pumping through my veins out of sheer excitement. I was finally getting to see India!
Our polite driver took us to our “ride”. Coming out onto the fuzzy night air, there was just a huge mass of people everywhere. And then, the confrontation that I had always thought about and not quite sure how to handle it – poverty. I knew that this would be unlike any other that I had seen in my other travels. Don’t get me wrong, poverty is poverty. But being so sheltered by the “beautification” of poverty generally in South East Asia, I wasn’t sure of how to pick my words standing in front of a family, close to midnight, their kids sleeping on dusty grounds. A cocktail of urine and smog smell hung in the air lazily, their empty eyes just stared at you and time almost stood still as other locals passed by like seconds. We got through a long tunnel into the open car park and one thing I got to learn really quickly was that, here – humans were as much good as a pebble on the road, so cross smartly and basically, monkey see, monkey do but don’t be stupid. Getting into our beat-up van (bless!) the engine roared up alive with a gutsy “deng-deng-deng-deng….. DENG-DENG-DEEEEENNNNNGGGGG!!!!!!” and we were off to prowl the highways of New Delhi!
Permission to bellow out?
Now I considered myself to have quite a healthy stomach for crazy traffic stunts found on the streets of Malaysia, Indonesia, (sorry Singapore but your cabbies are the gold medalists in road safety), Thailand and Vietnam, heck even China left little to the imagination. But this very night, I ate humble pie. Our quiet driver became the ghost rider himself. I swore that I could almost see flames of FI desire jutting out of his ears and as I helplessly balanced myself with one arm on the side and the other crushed my hubby’s knee cap, I scanned ahead into the road and I saw chaos. Technically there were two lanes, but in Matrix style, I learned over a moment that car honks here were meant for intimidation like: (a) get the f@ck out of my way, (b) get the f@ck out of my way, and (c) … you get the idea.
Flashing your beam lights, of course, was the cherry on the sundae.
As our rusty can on four wheels whizzed past gigantic Herculean trucks and other mad tailgaters, I thought I could divert myself by tearing my eyes away from what was flashing past me from the front (my life?) and looked out on the scenery. However at the speed of progress that we were making, I felt that we were close to breaking the sound barrier, even temples and old walls faded into oblivion and I took my eyes back onto the dashboard. I saw photographs of Lord Ganesh, other deities and charms. I prayed to every one of them. More twisting, more honking, at one point, three different angles of traffic merged into one lane, our van stopped with just enough an inch to spare.
Kissing the ground upon arrival became a new statement in my head. Anyway, we chose to stay at the neighbourhood of Pahar Ganj, somewhere between the old and new parts of town. This district is poor, I won’t mince it. Our room came with a ceiling fan that probably chalked up revolutions per minute equivalent of a Jumbo Jet propeller and finding out where the switch was to turn it down, was quite a hike in the woods for us. But boy, did the mattress come up firm and nice! It was a winner through and through plus our guy, Mr. Udam, he was the man for everything. You want chai? You got it, like now. You want dinner at 3am? You got it. You want cab? You got it. Luckily we had been pretty self sufficient and after a good wash, and thanking our extremely helpful staff (a small lad who was passionately pointing out at the tiny window in our room to make sure that I was comforted that there was ventilation) explaining about the logistics of our shoe box that we will be calling home for the next 10 days, we took just soaking in the noise from the streets.
I slept soundly that night. I woke up to a Pahar Ganj that sprung to life from a dead slumber in the night. In the daytime, the city (we chose to stay away from the usual Ang Mo backpackers areas, instead trying out at the “backpackers” haunt where we saw no foreigners and just heaps of local Indians from interstate) lulled you with the cute honks of ceaseless oncoming bikes and auto that ranged between a baritone bellow to a duck’s quack, and enticed your belly with smells of the South Indian Thali set meal for breakfast. We got into a small joint packed with absolutely all hungry locals, we ordered and tuck in. My tea had never been better savoured than today. Even with my still weak belly, it was quite blissful. I braved drinking the local water here… just a tad salty.
We made our way onwards to the Main Bazaar Road and bought little trinkets here and there. A second hand book for Rs150, a bangle for a Rs20 and some bindhi there for Rs10. I even got myself amused with a flute for Rs50. We went up to see and spoke with a local bohemian, who showed us various kinds of instruments, and of course his pride – the sitar. There was no compulsion to buy but always an invite to come back and visit. But the streets were different. I came to a point where I had to avoid too much eye contact. Just a glint and they fished onto you. It’s an extreme aggressive fight to survive. Everyone to a certain extent, sold the same thing. There was the odd lone peddler trying to slash his price for a sewing kit that he wanted me to buy, a few English speaking “friendly” touts that wanted to show you the rest of India, but a lot of mothers with their children walking past and really, seriously following you.
What broke my heart was that these very adults, who were supposed to protect these very young toddlers, forced them to follow us, and I am not talking about a few steps but streets, to beg. We could part with some of them by giving out bottles of juices but the children were just innocently “trained” to beg and knew how to use their charm. They were very beautiful children, caught in the trap of poverty and dirt, your mind started to play funny psychological evaluation on where you came from and their state. It went on like this throughout the walk. Street sellers will shoo these beggars way to make room for themselves to you. The other shop keepers still fluffed at the dust collecting in front of their stores. Meanwhile ahead of me, a pack of stray dogs looked on hungrily at a rubbish cart being emptied by a man. Streets were bumpy, wet, with the odd paste of smeared cow dung. There were cows, horses, even men being beast of burden hauling a cart full of iron purlins into another lane. Ladies walking past in their saree evoking a scene of a sanctuary of peacocks in the choices of colours that burst through the sun that cut through the clouds.
The air was still smoggy but life was seeping into the streets of Pahar Ganj. We stopped for some tea before heading back into a different lane and purposely got lost. It was liberating to just be in a town where you were being surrounded by sights, sounds and smells, and you don’t have the comfort of your own presumptions and knowledge to fall back on – your brains come to full attention. You made your way through and you took everything in – I saw a lot of old buildings with intricate designs, doors that closed to centuries and families of stories, men just hanging about waiting for a thing to run for, and the ongoing honking and dodging of humans, autos, bicycles and shouts, laughs and cries. A rickshaw narrowly missed me as its passengers looked on me, a bunch of big-sized ladies in their bright cheerful Punjabi suits, with their shawl gracefully sitting on top of big breasts nervously jiggling from the bumpy ride around town. Here, the have’s and have-not’s were very stark. I tried to blend in but failed miserably. With my most bare clothes and low-key walking about, I still stood out. I could feel from the many sets of eyes just watching me. I felt like a specimen this time and part of a bigger project of study between cultures and commerce.
We got back to our street and relaxed with a “do nothing” afternoon – pretty essential so far for what the mind and body had absorbed for the ongoing crawl towards 24 hours in New Delhi. We mapped out some rough plans to cover the Chandni Chowk, spend a day in the Lal Qila as well as Humayun’s Tomb, then I drifted off to daydream about the bygone years of the Mughal Empire and mutton dishes.
In a way, I am slowly feeling that this “Old Capital” darling wouldn’t quite compare to the glitzy Madame Mumbai when we discuss this with our friends, some residents in India. Of course, these were previous thoughts and assumptions, but I am trying to not get too fast ahead of myself. Reminding myself, I had yet to see the rest of New Delhi, and Mumbai is but another few more long weeks away. I need to stop thinking about Nepal, Simla, Dharamsala, Rajasthan and the Southern states.
That’s what India does to you. Your mind doesn’t sleep, doesn’t stop. India fires you up in the most ridiculous ways and fuels you to ask questions, see beyond the dirt and chaos, and peel off your experiences like the layers of an onion. Then, my friend, I think and happily suspect, that one will begin to cut through the more intimate parts of her core of inspirations, even if at a fraction.
This journey had begun for centuries by many before us, from as vast and far as Persia and Mongolia, to the more recent employments of the British Raj, and now modern capitalism. You have people who came decades ago and never leave. And here I find myself, completely blown away with my first ever introduction to a marvelous place, indeed.
It’s probably futile to assume what will happen tomorrow. But again, that’s part of that charm.
But one question though and it has interestingly been happening for a long time – why is Chinese food that popular here? Heck, I even get to order “Chicken Manchorian” from the take-away menu!
