Old Delhi

No pictures yet. I’ll do my best to take you on a tour around Old Delhi then.

“Of course, says Shilpa, my flatmate, if you are in Delhi in the period of Ramdas (Ramadan), you should try to go there in the evening”. So I did.
From the entrance of the Lal Quilat, Delhi’s Red Fort, a true masterpiece in elegance where I had spent some hours…we decided to cross the road.

(…and this, I can assure you, is not an easy (nor safe) thing to undertake. The road has three lanes per direction, at least officially. So, supposedly six in total. I guess there were a minimum of 7, if not 8 or 10, rows of cars, bicycles, auto-rickshaws, cows, busses, trucks, any kind of thing moving on wheels, for each direction. Everybody of course very keen on roaring and horn play. It is even written very colourfully on the back of most vehicles: “Please horn”. As usual the traffic light for pedestrians would never turn into green, you need to guess. But we did it, eventually…)

Maybe because we unexpectedly crossed without any major harm, we felt the burning urge to enter the flashing temple just in front of us, and maybe pray for a little moment. And old guy started explaining to us. It turned out to be a Jain temple. It was a special night for them, the end of a 10-days long fast, so the temple was covered with flashing colour lights, exactly how you would imagine an amusement park in Europe.
Jain’s motto, we were said , is “ life and let live”. Their core belief is the respect of every and any form of life, be it human or vegetal, from the ant to the people. Each of their temples has a “birds charity hospital”, for example, where sick birds are treated and fed. Mainly green parrots, incredible amounts of them you sometimes see covering small domes on the side of the road. They are vegetarians but do not eat potatoes and onions because since you have to take them out of the earth you are supposedly killing them. They have 24 masters, some kind of Saints who renounced to their royal and wealthy status, the guy continued, to live of meditation. The 24 guys look all exactly the same, a white statue of a meditating Buddha–like figure. For Jainism everyone has to look for the divine in oneself, not outside it. Those 24 found it.
Well, what I found out in a week and a half of India is that when an Indian starts to explain you something, s/he will never stop, never, unless you say you “must” urgently leave to go somewhere else and force the conversation to find its (un)natural end. And even then, they will bring you somewhere else to see something else and explain you something more before you are allowed to leave politely. So we did while hunger was driving our wills from those very white and pure divine figures to the very much earthly dream of a meat dinner in Old Delhi.
A very very brave guy insisted to drive us (the three of us, me and two friends) to the heart of Old Delhi, on his cycling-rickshaw for 20 rupees (40 eurocents). The guy was pulling more than 200kg and surely did not weight more than 45 kg himself. Even if it was him who had insisted, I could not help feeling very…heavy.

Kareem is a very famous restaurant in New Delhi, possibly the best. It is nothing about luxury, about nicely dressed waiters or nicely served food. It is just about what you eat. The family who runs the place descends supposedly from those who took care of the kitchens of the Mughal emperors during few hundred years. I do not know if this is true, but it is worth trying, you can hardly be disappointed. Delicious.
Fed and intrigued by the very colourful and crowded atmosphere, we finally started walking in Old Delhi.
You immediately realise it is a Muslim neighbourhood because of the quantity of veiled women and the frequency with which you see men wearing a white cotton embroidered cap on the top of their head. Men and children of course.
This part of the city is all about very narrow streets, packed with things, peoples, smells and lights: people going in both directions, and bikes, motorbikes, cycling rickshaws slipping through. It is an enormous bazaar working day and night. You can buy jewels, clothes, textiles, perfumes’ essences, spices, food of any kind (piles of sweets, coloured pasta, kebabs), every step you see something you’ve never seen ad you don’t know if you’ll ever know what it is. Over your head, hundreds and hundreds of cables hanging in the air from building to building. In the corridor-shaped textile shops you can see three of four black-veiled women, sometimes ten, sitting on a bench on the left of the room and some teams of very busy sellers showing off and praising all different kinds of fabrics from their tables, cupboards and shelves. In front of the restaurants you also see large groups of men, maybe 20 to 30, orderly and quietly crouching in two wings at the entrance. People who go in and out would pass through them. You quickly connect your obese neurons and understand they are waiting for the leftovers of people’s dinners. Your digestions stops for a second, but then you go on, there’s little you can really do, apart from thinking about how long it did take for you to realise what was going on and acknowledge you are becoming a bit more cynical, or maybe just a bit more pragmatic and a bit less pathetic about hungry people.

Not to get lost, we decided to head back to the main road, and immediately started bargaining with the auto-rickshaw drivers to get home. I’m getting better at it, even if usually, even once they accepted to switch the “meter” on, they will tell you at the end they have no change and you’ll have to quarrel in two different languages, just not to feel too stupid.
More soon, and on.

night wandering

here you are few more photos...you'll have to wait a bit for the next lot since my camera had an unlucky crash. the law of gravity, which, despite all the attempts of "centrifugal" Indians, still works here with all of its most unfair consequences, hit it.
By the way, today something quite extraordinary and unexpected happened while I was leaving the Embassy of Wonderland where I work, walking through the fresh gardens of the compound: I could hear the crickets' sounds. How this can be in the middle of 14 million shouting people and as much roaring means of transport, I do not know. I guess it is a diplomatic secret.

I was walking back home after an auto-rickshaw driver with his grey uniform had cheated as usual on the price of the run, spicing it up to the double. Bits of light a bit everywhere, bulbs of any size, any different white and yellow and intensity, cables as well hanging all over, stones, big scary holes maybe reaching the utmost depths (and probably only the place you really do not want to fall into), goods, food (raw and cooked, and cooking), people most of all. I was also looking for a mobile phone place, I thought I had recognised that narrow street on the right near my place (hilarious illusion!). Then, whilst my eyes were wandering and my memory not helping much at it, I got all of a sudden back to my body: I felt something strong and powerful punshing with force on my stomach. Oh yes indeed, holy force. The holy caw was there, absolutely non-caring of her round horn hitting my empty stomach and stubbornly pointing at a stall of juicy fruits. Did I put my hands up as to say “long live to the holy cow”? Maybe not, at lest not in my intentions, but still I moved just enough to make everyone around smile to me - everyone apart from the stall owner who run shouting his worries and praises to the unmovable animal and save his apples.


A friend of a friend of a friend.

This Indian guy I had just met asked me caringly what vaccines I had done before travelling here. He was relieved to hear that I had not done the hepatitis C one. He looked serious, full of wisdom and concern. Then he explained me that what I need for hepatitis C were three moths of...Indian spices: “then, he said, you get immune for lifetime. Spices change your DNA you know”. Well, I did not know. What I neither knew, not at least at that point, was that he is a fashion designer.
We were (me and few other interns form the embassy) in a rather anonymous restaurant this guy had brought us to, yet very famous among wealthy and gourmet people in Delhi: here in Khan Market you can eat Italian cuisine, English blueberries cheesecake and some mysterious and I guess overabundant “banofeee cake” with three “e”s. The last two “e” were added on the label behind the desert’s counter in a different colour, as to correct the great unforgivable one-“e” mistake. Inside it was like an american ranch, and the walls covered with images of european movies.
Back home my flatmate form Bangalore assured me that, against all of my impressions, that place was exciting. I should have tried the Belgian chocolate milkshake, an absolute must.
Here many people seem to believe going to McDonalds is a pleasurable and socially praised habit, so with anything European and American. Maybe I’ll get sick of Indian food by the end of the month, but for now I still crave to feel my mouth in flames and having nothing to do but to sweat and wait to go over it.

On my second day I saw a Delhi which is easy, posh, expensive, shining and perfumed. Mirrors and big buildings for shopping centres, polished marble and hotdogs. Deadly boring to me, thirsty of things I don't know, nor imagine. The same is true for the diplomatic circles, little paradises in the middle of a reality which I believe doesn't find anything interersting in dimplomacy, at all. Different world. It is for me an incredible luxury to work here. I deepen my intellectual interests, well dressed and tidy, but I feel a bit out of place.
More photos to come...

first day

Sincerely, I do not know how to describe it. Neither what I see nor how I feel. Not really even what I want. It is a lot of reality at once and any role I might be playing is not easy at all. It is not easy to feel good on my first day, and I’m not. But this is all so real, so brutally solid and exciting: utter beauty and brutality mingle, unbelievable wealth and misery. Aberration is nothing abnormal, be it physical, urban, of smells and of life. what I post here are maybe the things closest to my imagination and to the reach of my words, for the rest, I might get better with time in telling them, or go over the overwhelming, disturbing and oppressing load of things of the first day. yet I am ready for my second day.



In the morning on young little lady with a beautiful sari rang the bell and came in the house. With her, her 14 years old daughter, incredibly beautiful as well to my eyes, she’s getting married soon, an arranged marriage as normal. they both sile a lot. I am told they come every day, prepare tea, sweep and clean the floor, cook, they bring our clothes home to clean and iron them. They are very nice and only speak hindi, or, rather, I only speak enlgish. The chai was excellent, spicy but gentle.
Then I got changed, ready to start my day, and they stared at me and then stated laughing so hard they had to sit on the floor. I had put odd socks, one pea-green and the other sky-blue. I knew. They could not believe it. I could not believe either I was exotic enough to be hilarious. Well, I guess yes. Now we have some sort of conversation on colours of socks when we meet.

“Serf meter se”: if you want to get a rickshaw without paying the tourist price, well try to move your head like someone has been there for a while, little waiving from right to left with the top of your head still while speaking, to say yes. And insist: “only with the taximeter”. A 35 minutes ride costs 80 pens. The atmosphere is loaded with heat humidity and noise, I can feel my lungs full of pollution as well.

In the city centre you get these huge spaces, lawns and trees and ponds and imposing buildings, the spaces needed for the national government of a nation of over one billion people. In Connaught place, the hart of the city centre, there is this architecture of the thirties, elegant and very very very lively all around.
I saw a tiny baby sleeping naked on the pavement, not the kind of thing my delicate white conscience can pacifically bear. I had to skip him/her walking and literally felt like shit. In one day I came across such moments so many times I wonder what I need is maybe not an habit to it but being pragmatically cynical. Hard to say, not much easier to do!

This Saturday is Ganesh’s birthday, the elephant God is at the centre of celebrations all around India (particularly in Mumbay). I got into one temple I came cross by chance. Incredibly crowded. I had to take my shoes off and stood in a queue in the middle of a little room where everybody was full with deep urge. From the queue I got to a place where altars, statues (murti) placed within an incredible set of adornments and images where all over, covered with crown of flower constantly added by priests from the hands of people. Plates with burning flames were going around and people would quickly put their hand in the fire. In the meanwhile formules where said out loud, bells played and people would respond to the invocation of the priest by saying something like “jai”, i.e. “hail” I guess. Outside, in an irregular courtyard, more flames and more murtis, black little statues of Ganesh around which groups of people gathered, on which people constantly poured oil, embellished with crowns of orange flowers and spread powders. I did not understand much of what was going on, but it was a continuous flow of sounds, voices, people moving around, some glancing at me and my camera I had badly dissimulated in my hand. At the exit, the row of sick and harmed people I had skipped at the entrance was waiting for my confused sight, asking for food and money. All around sweets and food were boiling in big pans of oil and people eating around the stalls. The traffic absolutely incredible in the night. I understood little of what was going on and looked for an auto rickshaw to head home.

My Indian flatmate told me: “You have seen a lot in one day”. I think so too...

London, last hours

Only few hours stand between me and my first landing in India, Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi. After so much reading, listening and even some (purely pretentious) writing, it is definitely time to see.
I admit: I've listened to so many words from so many people, the most unbelievable and exciting from the dearest friends of this year in London, that I do not know what to expect, not any more at least. In this short night, tension gradually goes building up in my london room. Expectation wanders. I look from time to time at the tourist map of India (with a very much united Kashmir) on the unhinged door of my closet. My thought between being stuck and struck. For sure, I'm ready for daze, I'm ready for anything actually.

Welcome to this impovised page, and thanks to all the people who gave me the most surprising and beautiful amulets, whished good luck and even announced "see you there".

I'd better go and finish packing.

More soon, and on.