In early June, Dani and I had our first opportunity to travel in India together and to take a well-earned holiday. We had been invited to the wedding of one of my colleagues in Ladakh, a region in Jammu and Kashmir, and had also to leave the country in order to apply for new tourist visas. For this reason we made arrangements to spend a week in Kathmandu after leaving Ladakh.
Our journey to the small town of Leh, 10,000 ft up in the Himalayas and where the wedding was being held, involved a stop in Delhi. Having done the train trip from Ahmedabad to Delhi several times we had thought we could relax about it. But on the day we were due to leave, someone shook me out of my smugness at having arranged everything so perfectly by declaring that there was no way we would get through. To my disbelief I had failed to make a connection between our intended journey, which would take us through Rajasthan, with mass disturbances taking place in that state. An Other Backward Caste group (a designation near the bottom of the caste ‘heap’), the Gujjars, were agitating for their caste status to be downgraded. They were demanding to be recognised as Scheduled Caste (otherwise known as Dalits or untouchables) and to receive the reservation of jobs and privileges that go with such recognition. More importantly though, they were sitting on railway tracks in large numbers. Twenty-seven trains through Rajasthan were cancelled. Although I expected the worst, our luck held: our train, the Ashram Express, was running until Jaipur, from where we could hire a car to get us to Delhi.
Having boarded the train in Ahmedabad, we were in for another change of plan. We were fully prepared to get down at Jaipur and catch a taxi, but while we waited with bleary eyes in the darkness early in the morning, the train slowly drawing into the station, we by chance heard that this was not the last stop; that the train would go on to Delhi. There are no announcements on Indian trains but a steward had mentioned this piece of rather important news to someone who spoke English, who then told us. After calling the poor taxi driver to cancel, we crept back onto our bunks and tried to fall back into sleep, pleased at avoiding the extra expense of the car.
Several hours later we woke to views from the train’s tinted windows of Delhi’s crowded and ramshackle suburbs, multi-coloured litter liberally spilling down the railway cut at intervals. We got down at Old Delhi station feeling disheveled and stopped at Comesum restaurant for a quick and over-priced breakfast before taking a pre-paid auto to Pahaganj. This area behind New Delhi station was to be our base for a day, as the flight to Leh was early the next morning.
Pahaganj is, in a word, seedy. But also quintessentially Backpacker India. Its narrow streets teem with hawkers, hotel touts and package tour charmers. Autos and cycle rickshaws squeeze through the lanes, nudging past placid cows and baggy-clothed hippies. Restaurants and hotels vie for the attention of the strolling Europeans, Israelis and Japanese, whose cloth shoulder bags and dreadlocks swing as they move through the crowds, sunglasses firmly in place. The lanes feel close; signs jutting into the space above head-height, electricity wires strung in confused profusion across and between the buildings.
We largely ignored the trinket shops after a doze and shower in our room at Vivek Hotel and instead walked to the nearest Metro stop, R.K Marg. This was my first experience of the Dehli Metro and I was very impressed. The stations are justifiably spacious, allowing for crowds, and the trains are a pleasure to ride in for anyone familiar with the Tube. In only a few minutes we arrived at Rajiv Chowk station beneath Connaught Place. I had stayed briefly in CP on my way home after trekking in the Himalayas in 1999. This time I stared at the white-painted circular arcades, the shadowed shop fronts and Raj-era architecture to try to conjure up clearer memories than I immediately could. But to no avail. I wasn’t able to place where my group of trekkers had stayed or the restaurants we had eaten in. I was disappointed at not being able to find a corner or shop front I recognised and so reach back across the nine years that separated me from my 17-year-old self. Looking around me I had a feeling akin to deja vue: something told me I knew the place, that the surroundings were familiar, but on closer inspection nothing around me was familiar and I might just as well have been there for the first time.
Thursday, 30 October 2008
Sunday, 19 October 2008
Delhi for the first time (since '99) - Part II
There is surely no better way to get to know a new city than to stay with a friend or a friend of a friend who knows the place well. On my first trip to Delhi since I passed through on the way to the Himalayas in 1999, I stayed with friends of Nishant, one of my colleagues. These two bachelors, who had studied with Nishant at prestigious Delhi University, rented a flat on the top floor of a featureless housing block somewhere South of Central Delhi. The block was reached from the busy road through a series of narrow and overshadowed lanes, lined with parked bikes and cars, and uneven underfoot. Out on the road smoke hung in the air, the morning sun shone down on omelet stalls and chai stands, and a noisy crush of people at an alcohol shop spilled into the street. But in the lanes it was quiet and shaded, and we saw only a few people on the way to the flat. Ascending a steep flight of stairs that spiraled up anti-clockwise we passed three doorways before reaching the top of the building.
Now, whether this flat was indicative of bachelor flats across India, I don’t know. But it was certainly an atypical bachelor’s flat in one regard: extremely low levels of cleanliness. It was seriously grimy. All the light-switches were covered in the black grime of ages of unclean hands, the bathroom walls had a veneer of slick soapy grease and the many books piled tightly into bookshelves were caked in grey dust. It was a nice place though. There was a recluse-like feel to the flat; it was an intellectual’s hide-out in an otherwise unremarkable residential colony. The books gathering dust reflected the opposing politics of the two residents: one was keeping the Marxist credo alive; the other was a fan of free-markets. Both were Biharis like my colleague and all three came from the same small area in Bihar. They had studied History together and remained in close touch still.
We had dinner that evening in the flat with only one of Nishant’s friends. He ordered in dal, subji and rotis, which we ate sitting on the tiled floor of the room that doubled as the bedroom of the other occupant. To accompany these staples was a homemade Bihari pickle. This was very hot and came in an old and not very clean plastic jar. It had been made by someone’s mother and matured for years in that jar. When it was hot, I was told, the jar was placed out in the sun to further preserve the contents. I decided not to overindulge.
On our second day in Delhi my colleague and I were to be part of a field visit to several primary schools in slum areas. We were helping with a recruitment process and part of the two day event involved a ‘live’ group exercise, where information on school needs had to be collected by each team of potential new staff members. We left for the meeting place by auto. During the 30 minute drive we were passed on a busy main road by a newly cleaned Mercedes sporting UN plates. Further down the same road a brand new Toyota saloon also overtook our auto and it too had the distinctive UN plates. This seemed a surprising coincidence until we passed the large offices of the World Health Organisation, into the entrance of which several large cars were turning.
The field visit was extremely interesting: I was seeing Delhi slums for the first time and witnessing young middle class urbanites encountering an environment largely alien to them too. Some were obviously ill at ease, though more with the schoolchildren than the (not actually extreme) poverty evident around them. Others were happier in the school environment and confident interacting with teachers, the headmaster and the often rowdy kids. I had a rather embarrassing episode within the first five minutes of entering the school, when I stepped into one of the classrooms and was mobbed by a mass of blue-clothed children who had dashed forward from their seats to touch my feet. There were too many of them pressed together for me to restrain them, but I felt extremely awkward at this traditional sign of submissive respect and did what I could to at least stop any of them falling over in the crush around my legs. In other classes this scene was thankfully avoided and the kids just stood and saluted when I entered the classroom. My response was to clasp my hands together formally and say ‘namaste’. In one class each child in term left the safety of their desk to come up to me at the front of the class and introduce themselves. They were not very confident in English and said their names so quickly and quietly I struggled to hear them, though I picked up the names I was familiar with and they had fun: most prepared to approach me by nudging their neighbours and giggling.
We spent about two hours on the field visits and then caught autos back to the office we were using as a base. I sat in the front of one, next to the driver, and was pressed up near the glass windshield. The side mirror a few inches to the left of my head was printed with the words ‘objects in the mirror may appear closer than they are’.
We left Delhi the next day, catching a different train back to Ahmedabad from Nizamuddin Station. Nishant helpfully accompanied me to the station in the cycle rickshaw he flagged down near his friend’s flat. It was a sunny day and the rickshaw wallah worked up a sweat leaning down onto the pedals to keep the tricycle going. It was a slow journey but we had plenty of time and rolled up to the station entrance eventually. I had thoroughly enjoyed my second experience of Delhi, a city I much preferred now I had visited it again.
Now, whether this flat was indicative of bachelor flats across India, I don’t know. But it was certainly an atypical bachelor’s flat in one regard: extremely low levels of cleanliness. It was seriously grimy. All the light-switches were covered in the black grime of ages of unclean hands, the bathroom walls had a veneer of slick soapy grease and the many books piled tightly into bookshelves were caked in grey dust. It was a nice place though. There was a recluse-like feel to the flat; it was an intellectual’s hide-out in an otherwise unremarkable residential colony. The books gathering dust reflected the opposing politics of the two residents: one was keeping the Marxist credo alive; the other was a fan of free-markets. Both were Biharis like my colleague and all three came from the same small area in Bihar. They had studied History together and remained in close touch still.
We had dinner that evening in the flat with only one of Nishant’s friends. He ordered in dal, subji and rotis, which we ate sitting on the tiled floor of the room that doubled as the bedroom of the other occupant. To accompany these staples was a homemade Bihari pickle. This was very hot and came in an old and not very clean plastic jar. It had been made by someone’s mother and matured for years in that jar. When it was hot, I was told, the jar was placed out in the sun to further preserve the contents. I decided not to overindulge.
On our second day in Delhi my colleague and I were to be part of a field visit to several primary schools in slum areas. We were helping with a recruitment process and part of the two day event involved a ‘live’ group exercise, where information on school needs had to be collected by each team of potential new staff members. We left for the meeting place by auto. During the 30 minute drive we were passed on a busy main road by a newly cleaned Mercedes sporting UN plates. Further down the same road a brand new Toyota saloon also overtook our auto and it too had the distinctive UN plates. This seemed a surprising coincidence until we passed the large offices of the World Health Organisation, into the entrance of which several large cars were turning.
The field visit was extremely interesting: I was seeing Delhi slums for the first time and witnessing young middle class urbanites encountering an environment largely alien to them too. Some were obviously ill at ease, though more with the schoolchildren than the (not actually extreme) poverty evident around them. Others were happier in the school environment and confident interacting with teachers, the headmaster and the often rowdy kids. I had a rather embarrassing episode within the first five minutes of entering the school, when I stepped into one of the classrooms and was mobbed by a mass of blue-clothed children who had dashed forward from their seats to touch my feet. There were too many of them pressed together for me to restrain them, but I felt extremely awkward at this traditional sign of submissive respect and did what I could to at least stop any of them falling over in the crush around my legs. In other classes this scene was thankfully avoided and the kids just stood and saluted when I entered the classroom. My response was to clasp my hands together formally and say ‘namaste’. In one class each child in term left the safety of their desk to come up to me at the front of the class and introduce themselves. They were not very confident in English and said their names so quickly and quietly I struggled to hear them, though I picked up the names I was familiar with and they had fun: most prepared to approach me by nudging their neighbours and giggling.
We spent about two hours on the field visits and then caught autos back to the office we were using as a base. I sat in the front of one, next to the driver, and was pressed up near the glass windshield. The side mirror a few inches to the left of my head was printed with the words ‘objects in the mirror may appear closer than they are’.
We left Delhi the next day, catching a different train back to Ahmedabad from Nizamuddin Station. Nishant helpfully accompanied me to the station in the cycle rickshaw he flagged down near his friend’s flat. It was a sunny day and the rickshaw wallah worked up a sweat leaning down onto the pedals to keep the tricycle going. It was a slow journey but we had plenty of time and rolled up to the station entrance eventually. I had thoroughly enjoyed my second experience of Delhi, a city I much preferred now I had visited it again.
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