Del(h)ightful Del(h)irium

The very idea of dedicating a post to traffic here is ambitious, to say the least.

Traffic rules Delhi, it sets the pace of your life in the city, it’s an uncontrollable force that never leaves you alone.

Because traffic is noisy. None who has never traveled on Indian street has any right to talk about acoustic pollution. I come from a place where at the entrance of every urban center there’s a sign saying you can’t use your horn. And I live in a place where behind trucks, buses, sometimes even cars, you read the hand-painted magic words “Please horn”. And, you bet, they do what they are asked to do. They horn. Always. And they do it because as our traffic is regulated by sight (lights on, mirrors), their is regulated by acoustic. You don’t see a car coming, you hear it. So people here would horn even if there’s none on the street, just as we would not turn our car’s lights off. A further sign of the reduced importance of the combination seeing+driving can be easily found in all those cars with side mirrors flipped in: you don’t want to ruin them, do you?

At least this to me is THE prove that yes, western society is built on seeing as knowing, and no, it doesn’t work like that everywhere.

Traffic never leaves you alone because it’s noisy, and because it’s enormous: a multitude of trucks, buses, cars, auto-rickshaws, cycle-rickshaws, motorcycles, bikes, carts pulled by bikes, pedestrian, cows, elephants, camels occupies the street every hour of the day (and, believe me, of the night), a moving being transporting millions of people and tons of things around the city. Lanes? What? Those slow down traffic. So much I could be said about the anarchy of Indian roads, but I will leave you the pleasure of giving it a look by yourself, watching any of the YouTube video that come out searching Indian traffic.

In this madness, what you would never expect are traffic lights with a count-down chronometer on top of it, telling you how many seconds you have to cross the road, or wait at a red light. But since this is India and India never cease to surprise you yes, there actually are quite a few of those. They are probably more common than pedestrian crossing, or proper side walks. But since this is India and India never cease to surprise, their count down can be quite long. Long like 300, 299, 298.

A five minute long red light seems much longer if you actually keep stearing at the count-down monitor. Try.

The ways of trash are infinite. Here, for instance, they include aerial trajectories from windows and balconies to streets or sidewalks. Or long residencies outside people’s front door, on the landing, until someone (someone else) comes to take it away. Trash occupies the sides of the roads, and it serves as food and bedding for strays and holy cows.

There is recycling, because there are people whose work is to take out from the dumps whatever could be sold: metal, glass, wood. But trash bins are an authentic rarity in Delhi, and most people don’t think there’s anything wrong in throwing any kind of waste on the streets. As there is nothing wrong in peeing on the sidewalks, or spitting, why not?

Anyways despite the garbage-ness of this city, I found at least three evidences that, traditionally, Indian culture would be quite eco-friendly.

Evidence #1: chai cups.
The cups in which chai - Indian most popular beverage, tea with milk and lot of sugar - is served are made of terra cotta. The invasion of plastic cups has begun, but terracotta seem to be winning the battle, at least in Old Delhi.

Evidence #2: take away dishes.
There is a lot of plastic happening in this sector too, but when people get street food, it’s served in small dishes made of some kind of leaves (I think its banana): exotic and non polluting. Totally in.

Evidence #3: shopping bags.
If here you go shopping, particularly for cheap stuff, your stuff is put inside a recycled paper bag. Which is not a bag made of recycled paper, but it is a bag made out of another paper bag that has been used to wrap something else. You buy a shirt in a cheap shop, and the bag they’ll give carry it might have been a bread bag in its past life (and still show it, although folded into a new size). I know very well which pleasure can give walking around with a nice shopping bag, and the local ones are maybe not so fashionable, yet it feels just right.

Now smashing the chai cup on the ground after finishing drinking the tea is not exactly the most environmentally conscious of habits, nor is spreading the banana-leave made plates or paper bags on the streets, but at least terra cotta becomes dust in a blink and banana leaves decompose quite quickly.
There’s a lot of potential there. Especially considering that someone hand-makes the cups, the dishes, the bags. Someone, simply makes a living out of those.
Not too bad, eh?

As everywhere in the world, most of items in India come in different prizes and quality, or to say it local, qwality.
With the exception that there is no “low qwality” here. There is not even “normal qwality”. Qwality, in local small shops, comes only in three types: “best qwality”, “very best qwality”, and “special qwality”.

Try and complain because you think something is expensive:
“Madam this is best qwality”.

Try and ask for something cheaper:
“Madam I have only best qwality”.

Try and tell the guy that the “best qwality” stuff doesn’t look that “best”:
“Okke madam I give you very best qwality. One minute.”

They will ask you to seat, they will offer chai, they will say it will just take a minute -it never does- someone will run out and come back after way too long with something that is not what you are looking for and then try and tell them the “very best” doesn’t even look “best”.
“Okke okke madam, just come”.

That is when you will have to follow one of the guys that hangs out apparently aimlessly in the shop. He will bring you to some other small shop, talk to someone there, then you will be shown something that is obviously not at all what you had in mind, and it is actually so far from it that it’s even funn. Now try and tell this other guy this really doesn’t look so “special”.

He will definitely show some incredible aspects of the product you would have never thought of, and he would sometimes even convince you that, in the end, that is not too far from what you need, really, that if it doesn’t look good it’ll at least do the work - for a very short time, you know that, because hardly any of these qwality items lasts for a decent time -.

He will almost convince you, but try and be tough and tell him that no, you are sorry, that’s not what you want.
“Okke madam I make you good price”.
“No, really, I don’ need it”.
“How much you pay?”.
“Nothing, really, I don’t want it.”
“Come one, hundred rupees”.
“What?!? No thank you”.
“Madam I am giving special qwality. This very costly”.
“Fifty”.
“Fifty? No…”
“Ok, nevermind, bye”
“Sixty, sixty”
“No no”
“Ok, fifty, take it” (Laughing, because they find it most amusing when a white person tries the bargaining game)

And this is how you end up full of special qwality things. After all one comes to India looking for experiences, right?

I am not a party person, but Indian parties are something else. They are not big, they are huge; they are not frequent, they are constant. People here know how to party since they come to life, they enjoy doing it, and they are better than anyone else anywhere else at it.

I have been at small get-togethers with DJ, I have danced until morning under the disco lights of a let’s-just-have-a-party party, I have brought small flowers bouquets to birthday parties that were much, much bigger than most weddings where I come from.

And in case you are wondering if I have been to one of those famous Indian wedding the answer is no: despite that being my second highest goal, right after being a bit player in a Bollywood movie, it still remains unattended (as does the first goal, for that matter).

But back to the party. About a month ago I went to a birthday party, and around me there were the usual one-hundred/one-hundred-fifty Indians. And there, while I was dancing Om-Shanti-Om soundtrack, in the south end of Delhi, I meet this big guy from Naples, who dances like a crazy.

We talk for a bit, both happy to be able to speak our language, he asks me why am I here, and I return the question. To which he gives the most amazing answer: “You knows,I just was curious to see how was it, the overseas”. He said it like that (in Italian, but it sounds the same), as if The Overseas were just one big foreigner thing spread outside Italy, or maybe simply outside Naples.

“Definitely”, I remarked, “this is quite an overseas”.

We went back dancing, but later, while sipping a precious imported wine, I went back to the topic, amazed by his idea of the outside to explore. “So do you like it, I asked, this overseas?”. The fat guy from Naples smailed: “Of course! Look at this party!”. He put down his empty glass and walked towards the dance floor.

“Of course”, I thought, going back dancing myself, “such parties in the Overseas”.

India is the land of writing. Indians love the writing. Partially because they love papers, and they love love love bureaucracy, they will always ask you to fill forms, write commentaries and suggestions, leave a note the guest book. But it goes much beyond that: a urge of communication affects any kind of people, from rickshaw wallahs to bus drivers, from small shops owners to employees.

And, to my personal immense delight, that communication need expresses itself through words. Whoever can write, writes. In Hindi, Bengali, Arabic, in all the amazing-looking dozens of languages this country hosts.

Plus one, why not?, English.

Now let’s calculate properly: the love for the writing equals words and sentences everywhere, spread over the walls, the back of the trucks, the sides of the cars, the least probable spots; the urge of communicating equals expression of pure Indian feelings, smart thoughts, mind-blowing ideas - at least for those who have them -; and English, well English in most cases equals the final twist, aka misspelling.

Sum it all up together, you will get one of the most entertaining and amusing features of this bizarre place. India talks to you though the writing, and it says amusing things. Restaurants will promise “very decent food”, shops will sell “best qwality only”, a fast taxi will say, on the side “it bowls you off”, the metro signs will warn you “please do not befriend any unknown person”.

And the back of the rickshaw that’s overtaking yours will state romantic, right when you needed to smile, that “love is sweet poisson“.

I am not a Nature person. I get bored outside cities, I wouldn’t go on a desert island no matter how nice the sea is, I intensely dislike trekking. Nature normally doesn’t impress me.

It does, though, here.

Not as much in the big things (the Himalaya, the desert, the forest), but in the small. Nature here is something you really have to deal with in your daily life, something that takes you to compromises. Under the shape of monsoon rains or of ridiculous heat, it shapes your daily activities: the heat is hotter here, the rain is just more wet. Nature is in the dust you fight in your living room and the giant ants (and by giant, believe me, I mean giant) that are invading your floor. Nature is in the hundreds street dogs barking at nights, in the cows giving milk to her little calf in the middle of the traffic, in the bores (yes, bores) that sometimes hang on certain siewalks of Delhi.

And nature is in the fun exotic quality of so many things. I buy fruit and vegetables that I have never seen before and I have to search on wikipedia to know how to eat them (see okra and custard-apple). I see parrots flying over my head and peacocks, even, in the city. Monkeys are everywhere. Sometimes I meet elephant on main roads and camels. I am surrounded by absolutely unknown plants and trees. Here, palms grow even on high hills. I saw them.

And sure, this has interest for me because it’s new, unusual, funny. But beyond that, it’s just more intense: nature tries harder here to win its battle against civilization. Despite the pollution, the traffic, the development: nature still has a voice here, as loud as the cowing crows that draw circles in the sky over the capital city.

… My mother’s eternal words, reminding me America was already discovered and that day-dreaming was a long way from life’s truths. But what’s the point of breathing if somebody already tells you the difference between an apple and a bicycle? If I bite a bicycle and ride an apple, then I’ll know the difference. [Emir Kusturica, Arizona Dream]

Columbus, if you think about it, was just a guy that lost his way. He wanted to go to India, he ended up in the New World.

And I am the same, but the other way around.

I wanted to live under the shadow of the Statue with the Dictionary, and somehow, on the way there, I bumped into a New World: India.

And as I discover, misunderstand and surrender to the Capital City, I write about the Delightful Delirium of my Daily life in Delhi.

(The actual blog is not here but on www.lascrittoria.com/delhirium)

Delhi Metro does not simply move in space, it moves in time.

You leave the semi-contemporary locations of New Delhi, and get underground. Everything is made of steel and glass, there are escalators and displays that announce when the next train will arrive. And they are on time.
Very few things remind you of where you are: the instructions along the escalator to teach how not to get stuck in it (not that obvious if you have never seen and escalator before and you are wearing a saari), the advertising for a younger and healthier Delhi that advises to use the stairs, the ladies-only sits in the train cars.

In the Metro station you can also get a little brochure that explains to you how they built the train, how you should use it, and which rules you should respect. On the last page, it lists penalties for breaking those rules. For instance:
▪ Traveling on the roof: Imprisonment upto (spelt like this) 1 month or fine upto Rs. 50;
▪ Traveling without ticket: Fine of Rs. 50 plus the single fare of the distance or imprisonment upto 1 month;
▪ Misuse of alarm: Improsonment upto 1year or fine upto Rs. 1000;
▪ Walking on the Metro track: Imprisonment upto 6 months or fine upto Rs. 500.
It goes on like this, including serious crimes (sabotage: Life imprisonment or rigorous imprisonment for 10 years or death sentence), giving almost a conversion chart between money and lives: one month of your life, here, is worth between Rs. 50 and Rs. 170.

The metro in Delhi is clean, goes fast and you have good cellphone reception underground.
Welcome to the future.

So if you want to experience traveling in time, what you have to do is head North; and if you want to experience the ultimate time trip, what you have to do is get off at Chawri Bazaar, and exit the station by escalator.

Slowly, while you emerge, the past enshrouds you: your head, shoulder, legs and when it gets to our feet you are walking somewhere in the past, it could be fifty, it could be a hundred years ago. Cycle-rickshaws, crowd, cows, goats (yes, goats), smell of food, of pee, of animals, of human sweat, of chai, of spices, noises, voices, horns, bells, muezzins singing.

It’s India at the nth degree, India as it was, and as - so it seems - it always will be, hidden in the alleys of the Old Capital City. The Metro station, in the middle of it, just looks paradoxical: it is the only stain of a never-coming future.