Delirious Delhi

by Dave Prager

  Aside from buying Indian clothes, Jenny spent our first weeks in Delhi buying household goods for our new flat. Every day I’d solicit co-workers’ opinions as to where to find certain household items, and every day Jenny would run all over the city following their suggestions: Lajpat Nagar for kitchen stuff, Amar Colony for furniture, Sarojini Nagar for carrom boards, and the roadsides near Saket for crockery. Sometimes our requests for assistance baffled my colleagues in their simplicity, like when I asked where I could buy superglue. “Everywhere!” was Dipankar’s immediate, unhelpful, and entirely accurate response.

  He was right: superglue was found in stationery stores, and stationery stores were found everywhere. But because we didn’t have stationery stores where we came from (they’d long since been run out of business by office supply chains), we never thought to look in them.

  Eventually, though we realized that almost everything Jenny searched for during those first few months was available within walking distance. In fact, nearly everything we could have wanted short of Old El Paso canned refried beans was available in Hauz Khas. It took us so long to figure this out, though, because we hadn’t reached the second phase of awareness yet.

  Our first phase of awareness began the moment we stepped out of the Delhi airport: we were immediately overwhelmed by everything that we saw. This first phase consisted of gape-mouthed staring while dodging beggars, skirting black puddles, scowling at those who stared back at us, cursing those who touched us, and being almost wholly unable to extend our attention beyond the honking, the traffic and the muck on the road. Hauz Khas market held more dangers to us in this phase than it did shopping opportunities: autos screeched around blind corners, water tankers barreled down the street with their payloads splashing out in their wake, holes in the sidewalk wanted nothing more than to turn our ankles, and electrical wires dangled at eye level, threatening to muss our hair at best and zap a million volts into it at worst.

  This first phase was one of total sensory overload of wondering if certain grumpy family members hadn’t been right: maybe we would have been better off if we’d stayed back home.

  Eventually though, we began to understand the rhythm of the city, and we moved into our second phase of awareness. In this phase, the distractions no longer assumed cognitive priority. Now we could step around cows without noticing, brush off beggars without feeling guilty, ignore those who stared at us, and accept India’s narrower definition of personal space. We stopped whirling our heads towards every bus barreling towards us. This new-found ability to passively process the foreground let us appreciate the background details that we’d missed the first dozen times: cryptic shrines, frangipani trees, street chai, hidden monuments, and conversations with people we would have previously dismissed as touts. Our feet could now navigate by instinct, and Hauz Khas market’s hazards became a lower priority in our brains. This freed up enough cognitive bandwidth to actually process what we saw in store windows: hey, look, this place sells pillows!

  In this phase of awareness, what had been shockingly foreign became comfortably mundane. That which once exhilarated us became white noise. And this let us see more of what the locals saw and experience more what the locals experienced. In fact, we’d often forget that the first phase of awareness had existed at all until we interacted with those who hadn’t yet transcended it—like when my parents emerged pale from their first autorickshaw ride. Jenny and I looked at their ashen faces and realized that we no longer thought twice about reaching our destination un-splattered on the grill of an oncoming bus.

  It was in this phase that we noticed something behind the India that was waving its arms to capture our attention: another India, a parallel India, that was quietly going about its business with no interest in us at all. Beyond the initial India that had shocked us, and beyond the subsequent India that we now had the context to appreciate, there was a further India still. It was active in the vacant lots, bustling in the alleyways, and occupying any vacuum of formal retail. In fact, anywhere we least expected to find commerce, that’s exactly where this parallel India would be. Like between a fence and the bumpers of the cars parked outside the Café Coffee Day in Hauz Khas market. That’s the last place we’d expect to find a parallel café, but that’s exactly where a chaiwallah was squatting at his burner, dispensing tea at four rupees a cup.

  He was a complement to Café Coffee Day, not a competitive threat. His target market would never spend half their day’s wages on imported Italian espresso. In fact, his whole revenue stream probably came from drivers who were waiting for their bosses enjoying the air conditioning inside. There, in the last place people like us would think to look, that’s exactly where his customers would expect him to be.

  Our eyes were now opened wider, and we began to see this parallel economy everywhere. We saw tailors and barbers in the alleys behind clothing stores and day spas. We saw dhabas just around the corner from five-star restaurants. Clothes-laden wagons were parked only a few hundred meters past Saket Citywalk Mall. On the rear side of the brand-name storefronts at Yusuf Sarai market was a bustling alley with a much different clientele shopping in much cheaper stores. Even across the street from Khan Market was a run-down collection of hardware stores and electronics vendors. Inexperienced tourists would wander over, get confused, glance behind them at the recognizable brands, and hustle back to the appropriate side of the road.

  Once we saw these parallel patterns, we realized why a pushcart vendor laden with fashion and electronics accessories always set up his shop on the road between our flat and the market. “What a poor location for a business!” Jenny and I had said to each other when we first saw him. We’d never shop for socks, belts and mobile phone cases at the location where he stood. He should be in the shade. He should be in the market.

  But because a sun-baked spot on a busy road was the least attractive place for us, that’s exactly where his customers would think to look for him.

  The parallel India extends far beyond clothes, food, sidewalk haircuts, and alley dentistry. Though Westerners are eternally obsessed with finding the “real” India, our holy Lonely Planet offered no hints that there existed an India not aligned to Western tourists. Like Govardhan, for instance: a city near Agra where ten million people converge each year to hike thirteen miles around a hill that Lord Krishna lifted with his little finger to protect his people from the rains.3 There’s nothing about Govardhan in any of the tourist books we owned—which isn’t a dig at Lonely Planet, but rather an illustration of how separately the two Indias run. Govardhan must have a huge tourist infrastructure to feed and house and transport ten million people less than ninety miles from where we lived, but we never noticed any hint of it.

  The more we experienced life in India, the clearer it became how very little we actually understood of it. This was the lesson of our second phase of awareness: greater context actually meant less comprehension.

  And this was a very liberating lesson, because once we knew how much we’d never know, we were able to appreciate India simply for what it was.

  For instance, just before we left India for Singapore, we decided to spend three weeks touring south India. It was three weeks of local buses, five-dollar hotel rooms, and thirty-five-rupee all-you-can-eat bus station thalis to give us our fill of India before we moved on. And it was on the longest of our long bus rides around Tamil Nadu (an eighthour journey from Pondicherry to Karaikkudi) that I had an experience that made me realize just how comfortable I’d grown with India and just how much I’d miss it: the bus’s conductor spent five minutes leaning on me while conversing with another passenger.

  I’ll make this picture clearer. Jenny was sitting in the window seat, I was sitting in the aisle seat, and the conductor—perhaps thirty years old, thin, with a bushy mustache and an even more impressive pompadour rising a few dramatic inches above his forehead—planted his right buttock on my seatback and his left buttock on my shoulder, and he spent five minutes discussing with the guy across from
me the fare, the destination and, I assume, mutual friends, distant relations, the BJP’s prospects for the next election, the Reserve Bank of India’s latest economic forecasts, and the potential impact of Twitter on Indian political discourse.

  I was not uncomfortable. I was not upset. In fact, it was the opposite: for the full five minutes, I was flattered to be treated as one of the guys instead of as a delicate American tourist demanding special consideration lest I decide to sue somebody. Two weeks after leaving the workplace in which I’d spent so many grueling hours, I suddenly felt an intense nostalgia for Murali putting his arm around me as he told a dirty joke, for Soumya squished into my side as we rode to a client meeting, and for Dipankar and his impromptu back rubs. My co-workers were my brothers in those instances, and I was the conductor’s brother in this one. Had I not had those wonderful eighteen months with my co-workers, I doubt I’d have appreciated that stranger’s butt so much.

  The third phase of awareness began only when we left India: we’re now terrifically nostalgic for the stuff that terrified us in phase one.

  1. http://tourism.gov.in/TourismDivision/AboutDivision.aspx?Name=Market%20Research%20and%20Statistics

  2. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/13201155.cms

  3. http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/uncategorized/annual-fair-at-goverdhan-ends_100215091.html

  12

  The Change We Wish to See

  Our second-to-last day living in India was spent selling our excess possessions. Our exercise bike went to a guy from the Austrian embassy, who drove off with it jammed precariously in his trunk and cantilevered a few unsteady feet over the road; I’m sure it fell out on his way home. Our potted plants went to a Gurgaon housewife who sent her driver to pick them up despite our warnings that she should probably see them first. (“Our bamboo tree is either recovering or dying,” we told her. “We’re not sure which.”) Our stereo went to Scott and Sally’s yoga instructor, who casually negotiated my asking price down to half of what I’d wanted and still somehow made me feel guilty about charging so much.

  Everything we hadn’t been able to sell went to Ganga: our bathroom scale, our unwanted paperbacks, our floor pillows, our plastic stools, our broken iPod speakers, a few black trash bags worth of bedding, and all our leftover canned goods and spices. We helped Ganga and her husband carry it all downstairs and watched as they strapped as much as they could to her husband’s scooter. She stuffed the rest into an autorickshaw that precariously bounced Ganga out of our lives. As we waved sadly, we thought about the solitary container of palak paneer in our refrigerator: our final taste of Heaven, already half consumed.

  With all our belongings either sold off, packed up, or trundling south towards Ganga’s place, all that was left was to begin throwing stuff out. We’d tried to live with a small footprint in Delhi—not only because Ganga and Shilpa trained us to temper our consumption, but also because we knew that anything we wanted to keep would have to fit in our suitcases when we moved out. Still, we ended up dragging a surprising amount of trash out to the terrace. (The detritus of a modern expat’s Delhi existence include dozens of photocopies of our passport, corrupted DVDs from Palika Bazaar, and handmade village crafts bought on trips around the country that didn’t survive the flight back to Delhi.) And though none of it seemed ostentatiously wasteful, it was still no surprise when Shilpa rang our doorbell. We figured something would slip into one of the garbage bags to rouse her ire.

  I opened the door for her just as I had on so many mornings, my head already nodding in false understanding of whatever it was she was going to shout at me. But on this morning, she showed none of her usual aggressiveness. She pulled her headscarf down gently, humbly, and asked a shy question. “Kya aap ja rahain hai?”

  I smiled sadly at her, hoping my face returned her dignified goodbye with the respect it deserved. “Yup, we’re leaving.”

  And then I broke into a grin—I’d actually understood her. For the first time in the eighteen months this woman had been shouting words I didn’t understand about deeds I hadn’t known I’d done wrong, we were actually communicating!

  And then, as quickly as my elation came on, uncertainty replaced it. Was this really the time to be leaving Delhi? Now, in the midst of a global recession? Now, when we didn’t have proper jobs or housing anywhere else in the world? Now, when I’d somehow learned Hindi by osmosis and finally connected with this dear, sweet woman about to bare her soul before me?

  I gazed at Shilpa with sudden love, realizing that she had a heart of gold under her gruff exterior and knowing that we were about to achieve a deep, meaningful connection that would last long after I’d left India. “Hamlog Singapore jata hoon,” I babbled happily. “Hamlog Singapore meh naukri deko.”

  Shilpa cocked her head and evaluated me for a second. Suddenly the softness in her eyes disappeared. “Kya?” she snorted. Then, sputtering with laughter, she launched into a stream of Hindi, her shoulders shaking as she turned and walked towards the terrace. When she reached the door she turned back to me and raised her hand, placing her thumb to her ear and her pinky to her mouth. “Something something something!” she giggled. Then she walked out to the terrace, either to take away our garbage bags or to start looking through them for things to yell at us about.

  As I closed the door, I puzzled over her gesture. Of all the head bobbles and hand motions I’d grown familiar with in Delhi, this gesture was new. Unless it had the same meaning as it did in America: was she really asking me to call her sometime?

  We resigned our jobs and said our goodbyes anyway, of course. But because we had no jobs to move on to, there was no reason not to take some time for ourselves. So we embarked upon a week in Nepal and then three weeks in south India that together gave us a month of ear infections, heat rash, cold showers, and some of the most captivating sights we’d ever seen. And when the month was over, we flew back to Delhi to pay our taxes, close our bank account, and visit our favorite restaurants one last time.

  Seeking a sort of poetic reprise—I like stories that end where they begin—I returned on my last day in Delhi to the GK-II main market to retrace some of the steps I’d taken on my very first day. I went to Nathu’s Sweets for one last south Indian thali, where the waiter’s head bobble of acknowledgement didn’t confuse me in the slightest. I went into one of the salons, where five dollars got my hair cut, my hippie travel beard shaved off, and my head massaged into blissful jelly. And because the weather was springtime perfect—as if the city knew we’d be writing a book about it and wanted us to remember it at its best—I took a coffee from Café Coffee Day into the market’s central park to sit in the shade, watch the boys play cricket, and organize my thoughts on Delhi, this city of hallucinatory optimism and irrational pessimism, this city that is at once delighted by and hysterical about the present because of the dueling visions of the future it promises.

  A shout from the boys at some athletic feat brought back memories of cricket matches on the office television. Murali’s sudden howls of joy would bring every male in the office dashing to the television to see what national triumph they’d just missed. They’d cheer and clap each other’s backs as the replay showed someone doing something cricket-wise in a manner significant to everyone in the room but me; I’d jump up and down with them anyway, waiting for the din to die so I could ask Anurag what was so exciting. This memory in turn reminded me that I wanted to call Murali because, in the four brief weeks since I’d left the company, he’d suddenly resigned, and I wanted to get the gossip.

  This is how fast New Delhi changes. In less than a month, Murali was on his way out. Paul had already entered his transition period before I’d left; he, too, would soon be gone. And in just a few more months, so many of my co-workers would have resigned or been laid off that the company would be nearly unrecognizable to me had I walked back through its doors.

  And as my company, so too the city. The airport terminal was renovated and sparkling. Work had abruptly commenced on t
hat Outer Ring Road flyover that had sat idle for so much of my commute. The disconnected overhead vectors of the Metro had fused like synapses above M.G. Road. And the government had stepped up its ‘beautification’ campaign: street vendors were being bustled off the streets, street-side encampments were disappearing, and slums were being walled off from the sensitive eyes of polite society. The city in which I was currently chatting with Murali was no longer the city we’d known. Nor will it be the same city when we return. Delhi exists uniquely in each moment of time. Its constant renewal means continuity lies only in the memory of what was there last time we looked.

  What’s more, our flight back from Trivandrum had made it clear just how little we’d known of this city in the first place. I had a pen and paper in hand as we began our descent, ready to list the landmarks I recognized from the airplane window in preparation to write this very paragraph. It was going to be a terrifically clever literary technique that would introduce our concluding thoughts on the city. But I didn’t recognize anything. I didn’t spot Ansal Plaza, Deer Park, Safdarjung Airport, or any of the other sights I usually used on the flights home to triangulate our house from above. Instead, I gaped at an impenetrable colony of dense houses and narrow lanes that was dotted with a few striking blue ponds that could only be old quarries. Houses were pressed up against those quarries on all sides, which meant that the only people who knew that those quarries existed were those whose back windows looked out upon them. Then I saw a sprawling neighborhood of glorious mansions with tennis courts, swimming pools and impossibly green lawns, all of which were surrounded by thick trees that hid their luxuries from the street. I saw faint columns of smoke coming from the center of a forested area: someone cooking? Someone working? And I even saw a giant statue of Hanuman—but not the giant statue of Hanuman near Karol Bagh, because I looked for the Metro tracks in a vain attempt to figure out where it was. Imagine a city that has two towering statues of the monkey god and I’d only seen one of them?