In Delhi, the sights of life and history tend to invade me. This need to describe is not verbose. It’s merely this incredible urge to articulate. The words then tumble. As I look back at times I've spent in this city, I am aware that even with all the words I know and might learn, to describe Delhi is still to be tongue tied.
I know of people who insist that they just don't like Delhi, or look sideways and tell you that Delhi is as rustic as village when it comes to comparing to some commercial city like Bombay. But any city that has existed for as long as this city has harbours villages within itself. Not everyone moves in the same pace or the same direction. The city is lawless, but even in that chaos, the order of parochialism and patriarchy bend for those who understand it. This is not a city that manufactures. It trades. Not the sort of trading that perhaps Bombay does - but it trades in power, dreams and history. Delhi was never really about money, it was always about power and ownership. And now with people from almost every part of the world in here, we actually have to put brains to work to find out who owns which part of this city and which element of its history should be celebrated.
People tell me that Delhi cannot compare to Mumbai. I won’t argue. I find something to love about every city. In Delhi though, I never had to find it. It found me. It appeals to the most nomadic in me. Remembering the old Delhi streets I visited long back, when we saw some grown men play cricket in one quiet corner, and women with their hair open, laughing in the sun. Pigeons and dogs in corners of the ruins. The city streets - they are bustling with life.
There are some cities that never sleep in the world. But there are others that sleep, sleep well actually and wake up yawning and stretchy the next day....and Delhi had me babbling in my sleep. Delhi you see, sleeps, but doesn’t snore all that much.
In Delhi, it strikes you sometimes, the random kindness of strangers. These random acts, by themselves insignificant except for a certain moment. Like when you are climbing the steps of a narrow tower, and you find yourself face to face with someone going down. With no space. You negotiate, suck in air. Make yourself smaller than you are. Step sideways. Allow.
In this city, the randomness is even more erratic. And yet certain flashes of it exist. Like some guy at the toll booth telling you not to worry, he’ll get you change. You’re like his sister, after all.
You see, the people of this city are never polite. There is a rudeness in everything. In their incessant honking, in their gestures, in their walk. Their elbows forever ready to nudge you, even if painfully. But they are kind, sometimes. Even their kindness is sort of rude. An abrupt gesture that you are meant to forget. To acknowledge it implies that you have seem them vulnerable.
For a city that has been attacked so many times, it needs to build walls around itself. For a city full of sarais, it is strangers who must become family. And with family, you can be rude and thankless. Even if you secretly admire them. Because at some point you find yourselves sitting next to them, and when they fan themselves in the heat, a little cool air grazes you. They look at you rudely. But continue fanning themselves, a bit more than really required. And for that accidental kindness, you are grateful.
And How Delhi loves the winters… The sun was out today, burning holes into the smog. The glass panes on the buses, which were otherwise intact, were sure to break in the winters, and the killing cold would come and fill your lungs with ice. Everywhere, the smell of roasting peanuts. Under the flyover nearby, a man makes expert Omelettes and places them in Buns.
You don’t drink tea by cups in Delhi, you drink them by the conversations. One doesn’t say ‘I have four cups’, instead - the line reads ‘We had tea over two hours of gup-shup (Conversation)’. In the terraces of the buildings built in haste during the Partition, people in colourful shawls and muffs balance hot samosas in their hands.
Far away from here - Winter sprawls in Delhi.
It’s rather easy to forget how glorious Delhi can be in the winters. I almost began to believe that the remembered wonderfulness was mostly a kink of imagination. I am aware that when I talk of Delhi, I must yap constantly. These million stories. When will there be enough time to tell them all.
In Hauz Khas one day, I felt the years laugh in the background. All those years in the vicinity of such history, such magnificence. It took me years to realize that not every city had 800 year old structures serving as jogging tracks. The cities and villages within Delhi - they’re not for everyone. You have to love history to love Delhi I think. If history means nothing to you, perhaps then Delhi holds less secrets. Everything however seems congruous under the winter sun. In this sunny stupor, you can forgive the city almost anything.
And thn the autorickshaw rides in Delhi are not without their peculiar annoyances and romances. In the dark, you cannot really wave them down. You call out “Auto!” in the general direction of everything and hope that the auto you find will take you where you want to go without asking for twenty times the price. You haggle, you bargain. Everytime you travel it’s a bit like buying tomatoes at the vegetable market.
But the rides I remember the most are the ones taken early in the winter mornings in and around South Campus. The wind biting you and driving your teeth numb. To the point when they longer chatter. Your hands huddled inside your bag or shawl. Eyes wide open, but the cold squeezing out drops of water from them, that streak across to your ears.
Or when it rains, and you sit in the middle of the auto, collapsing yourself into a smaller version, escaping the puddle that forms on either side. The auto is a strange vehicle. With some vehicles you are completely at the mercy of the elements. Like when you ride a two wheeler, and everyday you negotiate with wind, rain and heat. When you’re in a car, you’re relatively immune. But in an auto, half of rain, half of wind and half of heat hits you.
With the auto driver staring into the rear view mirror at the amorous ones, they have half-privacy. They then try to twist their fingers into the other’s palms. I had that sort of half-day myself someday. Fridays anyway are.
Musing over so many things reminds me of the river that like a vein exists in the heart here. The Yamuna runs like a fateline across the palm that is Delhi. There’s no need to wash the city’s dirty linen. There is no linen. It feels like there’s only dirt. However, Delhi, on certain magical evenings yawns and rolls over the plains, tickled only by the hints of Aravali. Blue and Orange are special colors in Delhi. Gifted by monsoon, and offset by gray. For all its dirt, rain smells like the purest lump of henna as it finds itself meandering on the very same palm.
When I talk of Delhi, I reveal so much of myself. My sensibilities and my lullabies. All of them are hidden in the ruins just like the soul of this city does.
Signed Off,
Deepika (when it feels nostalgic!!!)
