Simon Cox on Delhi

There’s Old Delhi, New Delhi—and future Delhi, which is likely to overshadow both. Simon Cox captures life as an expat in a fascinating city ...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE Magazine, Summer 2010

I first visited Delhi ten years ago, drawn not by the city but by one of its citizens. I had fallen in love with a Dilliwalli I met at university in America two years before. It was past time I saw her in her “native place”, as Indians put it.

We visited the usual tombs, markets, shrines and gardens, including the domed presidential palace on Raisina Hill that once housed the viceroy. Our trip coincided with a visit by the wives (they were all wives) of the British High Commission. They cooed and fussed, like previous owners checking up on the new landlords. One even looked for dust under the carpet. It was a relief to escape into the palace’s Mughal Gardens, where a tiny Dilliwalla peed on the lawn while his parents smiled helplessly.

Delhi can be grand, but it is rarely solemn. The people can be rude, but never cold. Earlier this year I returned to Raisina Hill to watch India’s military bands beat the retreat, overseen by members of the camel cavalry. After the last bugle was sounded and the last bagpipe squeezed, a switch was flicked, and Delhi’s imposing imperial buildings, strung with bulbs, lit up like a Christmas decoration.

Visitors to Delhi often see a faded glory, like a grand carpet collecting dust. The city is casually littered with history, much of it neglected or buried under the paraphernalia of the present. But Delhi’s past will surely be overshadowed by its future. There are three times as many Indians alive today as there were at Independence in 1947, and Delhi is home to over 16m of them. Over the next three decades India should begin to regain the economic clout it lost over three centuries. To visit Delhi in a mood of nostalgia, then, is to close your eyes to history in the making.

Many people mourn the lost elegance of Old Delhi, the courtly city founded in the 17th century by the Mughal emperor Shahjahan. The decorative flourishes that adorn Old Delhi’s mansions, courtyards and commercial buildings are now obscured by the more formidable geometry of telephone wires, power cords and television cables. But Old Delhi’s decrepitude is deceptive. Those crumbling balustrades and decapitated colonnades conceal a growing prosperity. Stock brokerages sell shares in upcoming IPOs to sari merchants with cash to spare. In the Coronation Building, once Old Delhi’s poshest hotel, the upper rooms now belong to commodity-futures traders, reclining beside their terminals, as they track prices set in Chicago.

Visitors flock to Humayun’s Tomb, a magnificent 16th-century mausoleum second only to the Taj Mahal, and to the haunting Jama Masjid, a mosque built a century later. But Delhi has not stopped building spectacular monuments. In 1994 work began on a 108-foot, bright orange statue of Hanuman, the monkey god, completed 13 years later. Worshippers enter the temple through the screaming mouth of a demon crushed underfoot. At 8.15am, twice a week, Hanuman’s mighty hands rip open his chest, by means of an “automatic electronic mechanism”, to reveal Ram and Sita sitting inside. Its designers lack Shahjahan’s taste. Indeed, they lack any taste at all. But who needs Mughal refinement when you have animatronics?

Delhi’s new prosperity is not a wave sweeping all before it. Instead it courses through the city in rivulets, working around what came before. Indeed, large tracts of the city seem entirely lost to development, trapped in eddies that go nowhere. The city, clogged by more vehicles than Mumbai and Kolkata combined, is full of pastoral enclaves and bucolic interstices, where children play cricket, vagrants slumber, and cows mooch. Walking from my old neighbourhood, Nizamuddin East, to my new one, Jangpura Extension, I once got lost in a socialist arcadia: the staff colony of Hindustan Prefab Limited, one of many sleepy public-sector enterprises left over from a previous era. A monkey clambered on the modest staff homes opposite the CITU (Centre of Indian Trade Unions) building, which proudly boasts a hammer and sickle.

India’s government is good at making time stand still, and for all its commercial hurly-burly, Delhi is still a government town. A bureaucratic mindset extends beyond official corridors into other walks of life, filling a resident’s days with sluggish transactions and self-important people. It takes for ever to settle the bill in many shops and restaurants, presumably because only one or two designated personages are permitted to handle the till. These well-known irritations make me all the more appreciative of Delhi’s many unheralded examples of economy and efficiency. Five minutes from our new flat, an Afghan bakery serves warm, doughy rounds of bread, fished out of a tandoor oven with long prongs. You pay upfront and your rupees, placed on a plank of wood, mark your spot in the queue like coins on the rail of a pool table.

Another example is the kabariwallas, who recycle the old newspapers and magazines I use to line my nest. They pedal around Delhi’s neighbourhoods, announcing their passage with a low cry, as resonant in its own way as the Qawwali singers of Nizamuddin. If I answer his call, the kabariwalla will climb the stairs to my flat, open his jute sack, and relieve me of my Economist and Tehelka back catalogue. At the end of this process a few rupees change hands. I was surprised to discover that he paid me, rather than the other way round. Indeed, as Kaveri Gill explains in her book “Of Poverty and Plastic”, the defining feature of kabari is that the collector pays for it. The term refers only to the “dry”, clean waste handled by castes who steer clear of the “wet” organic and inorganic garbage that others scavenge from municipal dumps browsed by cows, crows and pigs.

The refuse collectors are not the only Dilliwallas rubbing shoulders with a surprising profusion of wildlife. Renowned for its gardens, Delhi sometimes comes closer to a jungle. I remember at the zoo watching an uncaged monkey taunting its captive brethren. Birds of prey, including dark-winged kites and hawks, perch on floodlights and swoop on unsuspecting pedestrians. I once took a boat trip on the slick, black waters of the Yamuna river, and the boat was immediately enveloped by a cloud of Hitchcockian gulls.

Back on dry land, Delhi’s 260,000 feral dogs bark and brawl. Last year, one of them sank its teeth into my wife’s leg. Like many of Delhi’s villains, the mutt enjoyed total immunity, shielded by zealous animal-welfare rules sponsored by Maneka Gandhi, one of Indira Gandhi’s daughters-in-law. In her compassion for strays she surpasses even the Mahatma, who wrote that “perfect, erring mortals as we are, there is no course open to us but the destruction of rabid dogs”.

Ten miles to the south, Delhi’s greenery gives way to rocky scrubland, punctuated by quarries and several lonely lakes. The area is home to the world’s most bashful peacocks, the occasional mongoose, verminous monkeys and amorous Haryana motorbikers, who scratch declarations of love into the bark of a solitary banyan tree. It can be refreshing to find some solitude above and beyond the city, but I long ago concluded that Delhi’s best sights are its people. Lodhi Gardens, for all the beauty of their trees and tombs, work best as a backdrop to the bright bouquets of children, nannies and parents, enjoying picnics or badminton. Even traffic jams are enlivened by young couples holding each other tight as they zip past on their motorbikes.

Every day in Delhi is a pageant of colour, clamour, charm and cruelty. There is no shortage of comings and goings to observe. My only regret is that as a white foreigner there are precious few inconspicuous nooks for you to observe from: you cannot make yourself invisible. People watch me watching. And I always blink first. Over the years, I have found a few spots that allow unobtrusive views of Delhi’s street theatre. I used to escape from Nizamuddin East through a gap in the railings that seal it off from the outside world. I would emerge behind a public toilet opposite the railway station, which bustles with rickshaws, taxis and red-jacketed porters, their copper registration badges tied around their arms. The road past the station leads to a pair of bridges crossing the ganda nallah, or dirty stream. One bridge affords sneaky views of the streetmarket on the other, where I can happily watch people haggling over the price of ginger or a cut of chicken. I can also see one of Delhi’s better-appointed slumlets, where women fetch water, wash their children’s hair, or dry chilies beside the train tracks, as their husbands play cards outside. I can cross the bridge several times before having my fill of this tableau.

Ten years after first visiting Delhi, I am now gearing up to leave. Hong Kong, I am sure, will give me all the anonymity I miss in Delhi. My new office, on the 60th floor, has panoramic views that are hard to find here. I’ll be far less conspicuous, far less visible. But I doubt that Hong Kong will be as watchable.

GOING NATIVE:

WHERE TO STAY

For opulence, obtrusive security and over-attentive staff, stay at any of Delhi’s five-star hotels. The Imperial and the Aman New Delhi are the classiest.

The Ambassador Hotel is a less expensive alternative, with a jolly café, enviably located close to the Lodhi Gardens. +91 (0)11 24632600

The Manor is a boutique hotel in a residential neighbourhood. The pedestrianised market nearby is a good place to eat street food. +91 (0)9871117968


WHERE TO EAT

To enjoy kebabs as Allah intended, make the pilgrimage to Karim’s. The original branch is close to the Jama Masjid in Old Delhi. A better-appointed one is in Nizamuddin East, near a Sufi shrine that attracts some of the most plaintive beggars. You can assuage your conscience by buying ten indigent people a meal for 100 rupees at one of the eateries set up for this purpose.

The canteen at Andhra Bhavan, a guest-house for officials from Andhra Pradesh, serves ladlefuls of delicious food on metal trays, with no frills, fuss or choice. This is how socialism would work, if it worked.

Indian Accent at the Manor hotel produces striking variations on familiar Indian themes which look even better than they taste.


STREETWISE

Delhi is deeply hostile to pedestrians, who walk only because they have no choice. In Old Delhi, it is better to be in a cycle rickshaw, however medieval it feels, than to be run over by one. The old city is now connected to the new by the sleek Delhi Metro, which has landed like an alien civilisation. Green-and-yellow auto-rickshaws, or black-and-yellow taxis, can take you everywhere, but only after a tiresome round of haggling. Hiring a driver for a day is affordable and means only one negotiation. For scheduled trips—such as airport runs—Meru Cabs (+91 (0)1144224422) have meters, sober drivers and even seatbelts.


WHAT TO SEE

Travel by Metro to the Chandni Chowk stop, then get lost in the alleys and dead-ends of Old Delhi, navigating by the minarets of the Jama Masjid. At the mosque, leave your shoes and feel the warm sandstone under your feet. Climbing the minaret will give views of the urban thicket you’ve hacked through. Stretch your legs in the wonderful Lodhi Gardens, home to bashful couples giggling, retired officials and families playing catch. Humayun’s Tomb is one of the few monuments in Delhi that receives the care and attention it deserves. At Hauz Khas village, play hide-and-seek among the tombs, wander around the pond (“Hauz Khas” means royal tank, though it’s now a little stagnant).


SHOPPING

Connaught Place is infested with touts and chancers, as well as an infamous character who squirts shit onto people’s shoes. But it also has Wenger’s pastry shop, which offers delicious éclairs to reward anyone deciphering the ordering system (get a ticket, then a receipt, then your cake). Crafts, carpets and trinkets from around India are on sale in relaxed surroundings at Dilli Haat, which charges a small entrance fee. Swankier items are sold at the Santushti Complex, set in a leafy air-force compound by an enterprising group of officers’ wives.

Diwali, fog and consumption

Outlook's Saba Naqvi writes about the pall of smog that envelopes Delhi during Diwali.



Diwali In Kalyug
The religious dimension has gone missing. We seem to have reduced it to commerce, chaos, and the fog that envelopes the city. Most Indians, living on the margins, are excluded from this bonfire of consumption.

I love lighting my house on Diwali, the daughter tried her hand at rangoli, the maid was delighted with her gifts, mithai boxes were distributed, I prepared and lit traditional oil diyas at a friend’s house, lost a modest sum of money at cards, and developed a respiratory allergy by the time the evening ended.

It was Diwali as usual.

But watching the fire-crackers light up the sky, the wanton manner in which noise and air pollution continued in Delhi (all in the spirit of the festival of course) I have come to the conclusion that if we were industrially as advanced as western countries we would be one of the worst polluters in the world.

We are getting all indignant and self righteous about the climate- change debate and the idea of putting a cap on Indian industry. Good luck to our negotiators who must protect what they see as the national interest, but I do believe that we are not at the forefront of polluting the world only because we can’t do it. We just don’t have the power capacity and are not a developed society. But hey, we are trying our very best!

Our sloth and general lack of civic values would make us terrible polluters if we were a truly industrialized nation. And we would do so without taxing our conscience and not carry any burden of guilt. The entire climate- change debate is based on saving the globe for future generations. We are people who do not bat an eyelid before dumping our garbage in front of the neighbours home. We do not look beyond our own front porch, let alone the world or the future of the globe.

As for Diwali, besides the fact that it mucks up the environment, I also believe that we have devised an entire festival that is based on wanton consumption and destruction. Don’t get me wrong, I mostly enjoy festival season and the great sense of community that comes with it. But let’s look at the manner in which the so called celebrations have evolved. At one level, isn’t Diwali a wonderful cover to give and accept bribes, small and large, in the form of gifts?

The economy is supposed to be down, we are all bearing the brunt of the slow-down, yet there were traffic jams across the city in the week preceding Diwali as people shopped and zig zagged the city delivering gifts. With my own resources depleted and prices hitting the roof, I must confess to thinking resentfully: Who are the people who have so much money to shop?

In Delhi, the huge hike in government salaries would certainly have dramatically improved the purchasing power of the large community of bureaucrats and government employees. But the main reason for the crowded markets, I suspect, is black money. There is still so much of it going a round that it has kept the economy afloat. In a country where a parallel economy thrives and no deal is signed without a kick-back, is it not in the natural progression of things that we have evolved a festival that legitimises bribe-giving and taking?

I know there is a religious dimension to the entire celebration. But, ultimately, shouldn’t all religion be about compassion? Most Indians still live on the margins and are excluded from this bonfire of consumption. Doesn’t true faith and devotion only come from simple living and high thinking? Surely not from a wild shopping spree followed by a reckless bursting of crackers?

I love shopping, getting gifts and celebrating with friends and family. But see no higher purpose to the entire tamasha. There is only commerce, chaos, and the fog that envelopes the city.

Delhi

Salman Khurshid reviews Mala's new book.

Even if it was difficult, the shifting of the capital of British India from Calcutta to Delhi was perhaps inevitable. The unexpected proclamation by King George V at the end of his grand coronation durbar was a decision that had a far-reaching effect. Many historical and fictional accounts of the period between 1911 and 1931 capture the atmosphere of the times but this meticulously researched photographic record of the transformation of Raisina Hill into the seat of the imperial government is rewarding for both Delhi-wallahs and others.

The choice of Mala Singh is appropriate, given her close relationship with the family that built New Delhi. But she is also in a sense the Victoria Ocampo of New Delhi, at whose dining table one can meet some of the best minds of our times. The anecdotes one hears there range from informative to downright hilarious. If someone knows Delhi, it is Mala—ably supported by her deeply insightful spouse, Tejbir Singh or Jugnu, great grandson of Sujan Singh.


With much of the pristine beauty of Lutyens’ Delhi tarnished, this book shows how easy it is to destroy our heritage.


The best observer of contemporary Delhi finds a worthy companion in historian Rudrangshu Mukherjee. He provides an excellent account of the actual decision to reunite Bengal and shift the capital to Delhi. Rudrangshu’s vast knowledge of Indian history from 1857 to Independence is apparent from the account of how and why the decision was taken: “There existed sound arguments for shifting the capital from Calcutta. But the choice of Delhi fell on the British after the experience of the revolt of 1857. It had demonstrated very vividly the emotional hold that Delhi had over large sections of the Indian populace.”

Kudos must also go to the tireless effort that Pramod Kapoor, the self-proclaimed ‘sepia junkie’, must have put into collecting the photographs, copies of telegrams, maps, plans, drawings, letters and even scraps of paper. But for him, we might never have had a virtual ringside view of the birth of Delhi’s eighth reincarnation. Just as it was two brilliant British architects who helped put up what was to be the seat of power in India’s democracy, it was the archival treasure of the British Library, the Institute of Asian Studies and the University of Cambridge that made the book possible.

The book is the story of India’s march from acquiescence to imperial power to the celebratory burst of Independence. The stones remained but the spirit it symbolised changed dramatically. Later, there were a few modifications, such as the removal of King George V’s statue from under the cupola next to India Gate. The book is also about the relationship of Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker and how the two quarrelled over the design of the Capital on the Hill. Whilst the latter succeeded in his intent to put the Government House (now Rashtrapati Bhavan) on a gradient so that only the dome was visible till one reached the top of Raisina Hill, Lutyens “studied Indian traditions earnestly, looked for motifs and symbols, created a directory of local materials, gathered elements of art and craft both secular and temporal, tweaked much of it and put it all together in an attempt to create a hybrid style”. The abiding passion for gardens found its willing subject in the Mughal style with water bodies, channels, the char-bagh squares, low-level fountains, pergolas, paved walkways, vegetation and flowers deftly woven.

The British might have built for themselves, but did leave behind a valuable seat of government for democratic India. But Malvika Singh also talks of what we will leave behind. Speaking of independent India’s efforts at building cities, she contrasts the work of Lutyens with that of Le Corbusier: “Chandigarh was implanted on the land without an energetic, indigenous, cultural influence. It rose from the ground like a sterile, inorganic reality”. This is a lesson and a warning for Delhi as well. With much of the pristine beauty of Lutyens’ Delhi having been ravaged before Lutyens’ Bungalow Zone regulations were introduced, this book is a timely reminder of how easy it is to destroy our heritage. Perhaps Pramod Kapoor might wish to return to the dusty shelves and discover the hidden past of the other Delhi, Shahjahanabad, over whose crushed dreams Raisina rose to dominate the horizon.


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(The reviewer is Union minister for minorities)

the commercialization/consumption of poverty

Amardeep
has an interesting post on slum tourism in India. A Korean doctor came to visit India about five years ago, and was keen to see two things, the poor at New Delhi Railway Station and the Taj Mahal. I do not understand the obsession at looking at poverty, but if it benefits both the viewer and the viewed, let it continue. Growing up in India, and seeing the poor in your face, one tends to try and block them out. Even when there is a mother and a starving child on her breast, or a disabled man slumping towards your car, or a five year old selling magazines, with golden malnourished hair.

Dharavi stretched before us like a vast junkyard, a hodgepodge of brick and concrete tenements roofed with corrugated metal sheets that gleamed dully in the sunshine. Poojari gave us a moment to take it all in. “We’ll show you the positive side of a slum,” he declared.

In the face of such squalor, his words seemed jarring. But Dharavi’s industriousness is well documented. Its businesses manufacture a variety of products—plastics, pottery, bluejeans, leather goods—and generate an estimated $665 million in annual revenue. In other words, Dharavi is not just a slum, it is also a node on the global economy.

Dharavi’s industries are arranged geographically, like medieval guilds, and the first alley we visited belonged to recyclers. In one small “godown” (as warehouses are known on the subcontinent), men were disassembling old computer keyboards. In another, men smeared from head to toe in blue ink stripped the casings from used ballpoint pens so they could be melted down and recycled. A few doors down, workers used heavy chains to knock the residue from steel drums that had once contained polyester resin. Poojari told us that some of Dharavi’s empty plastic bottles come from as far away as the United Kingdom. “People from a rich family, when they drink from a plastic bottle, they don’t know what happens to it afterwards,” he said. “Here, you see.”