First time in Delhi

People said it would be overwhelming. But words are just a poor representation of sensation. I can’t explain what it’s like to smell that many smells at the same time. I can’t explain that a single smell, like the one from the tree outside our room, smelled like horse manure to me, but like perfume to our hotelier. I can’t explain the visceral sensation of being surrounded by blaring horns in a crowded auto-rickshaw in a crowded intersection in a crowded area of a crowded city. I can’t explain the awe and mystery of seeing so many different people and feelings and sensations at once.

I can tell you about the streets. How I saw people get hit but not hurt. How our rickwhaw driver caught tangled with a man pulling a hand cart through the street, where everyone was moving at a slow walking pace. How the street is shared by pedestrians, auto-rickshaws (basically the tuk-tuks we saw in Thailand, but much cleaner and quieter, required to burn compressed natural gas), bicycle rickshaws, hand rickshaws, cars, trucks, bicycles, scooters, motorcycles and the occasional ox-cart.

In Old-Delhi they protect you from the poop on the narrow street by covering it with a thin veil of newspaper, and you are grateful when your awesome guide Gagan pulls you aside so you miss it. The street is narrower than most sidewalks you have known, and it is shared by school children coming home and motorcycles honking and zipping past. Electrical wires are slung between anything that will hold them overhead, like a mess of spaghetti thrown at a child’s messy room. Or perhaps a yarn fortress woven by jubilant four year olds playing fairy make-believe. It’s a mess, but it works. Everyone has power. There are no electical fires or calamities. And people are calm and kind.

The sidewalks inside and outside Old Delhi are packed with people shopping for Duvali, the festival of lights, which will begin in about a week. The air is full of smoke from the surrounding farms who are burning their stubble to prepare for next season’s planting. And from the cars. And from the fireworks whose sale and purchase has just been banned in Delhi, much to the sadness of dozens of merchants who sit on the recently emptied sidewalks with downturned heads and sorrowful expressions below signs “no cell phones” in hopes perhaps of a contraband sale. The retail stores couldn’t be smaller, and they compensate with bling and flare. One nut shop (among dozens of seemingly identical ones) is little more than a large set of wedge-shaped counters facing the sidewalk. The three workers who are packed like tree monkeys into the wedge wrap trays of nuts in yellow cellophane in preparation for gift sales for Duvali. The shoppers stream past. 

“How do people choose where to shop?” I asked Gagan, as we browse tea and spices in what might be the world’s finest spice shop. “Oh, you know, price, quality…maybe where they have always shopped.” So, the usual. Same as home. But with 16 million people in Delhi, there seems to be infinite choice, and infinite competition. It might explain how the food is some of the best I’d ever tasted, from the buffalo raita at lunch to the sesame candy from the street vendor in old Delhi. And how a single day seems to have filled my mind with a lifetime of senstaions. And how Gagan might feel lonely when he goes to a place that is not bustling with so much activity that it literally pushes you from all sides with all 5 senses.