Delhi Diary

 

Delhi Diary

Circa 1976, around 6.45 pm of a winter evening, my meter gauge train from Ahmadabad arrived on the cold and crowded platform of the old Delhi railway station bringing me for the first time to this grand old dame of India.

Apprehensive and nervous, I alighted from the train, looking around as if someone is there to receive me. No one was.

I took a cycle rickshaw to a hotel in the heart of Chandni Chowk booked by someone who did not know that it was next to a popular whorehouse.

Gingerly, I climbed rickety stairs and opened my hole-in-the-wall room in this city established in 1206 by an invader from Kazakhstan.

I kept coming back here and fell in love enough to live here for five fulfilling years.

Unlike other well-formed Indian cities, Delhi is an amorphous city, blended and re-blended, invaded and re-invaded by Afghans, and Uzbeks, Britishers, and Punjabi refugees created by the partition.

As a casual and lonesome visitor to this epitome of history, I lived in taverns, lodges, guest houses in old Delhi built by the Mughals initially and later in the New Delhi built by the British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, who handled much of the architectural design and buildings.

The focal point of my early visits to Delhi was the Janpath and the Connaught Place locally known as CP. CP is a frenetic business and financial hub, centered on a ring of colonnaded Georgian-style buildings with neatly laid out stalls of Janpath market full of trinkets.

Food is a central theme of CP and Janpath, but also of the city itself. As a footloose young lad, I survived on Chole-Bhature of Kake di Hatti and Alu Tikkis of a vendor at the corner of Janpath market.

During my stint as a visitor, I stayed at the wide array of accommodations; in small taverns in Chandni Chowk, in railway retiring rooms of the old Delhi railway stations, a private guest house in Ramnagar owned by a local madam, and in government-owned, palatial Ashoka hotels.

I hired a young Punjabi auto-rickshaw driver as my friend, guide, and philosopher in all my visits. He would come to my hotel room at 8 am with a large earthen pot filled with sweet, milky tea and knock on my door. He would drive me around for my work, will eat with me, and drink out of the same quarter bottle of rum that I would buy in the evening. He insisted I visit a brothel in the red light area, an offer I politely refused. I did not have the courage to accept.

My visits to this city of Djinns occurred during hot, burning summers and cloudy, bone-chilling colds. I witnessed sand storms of late summer and torrents of rains that made the city even greener, lovelier than it is.

I hung around Purana Quila and Jama Masjid, shopped at Janpath and Karol baag markets, and watched movies at Odeon at CP followed by a dinner at the famous Quality restaurant.

A quirk of my fate finally brought us to Delhi to spend five glorious years. People I worked for provided me with a spacious house in South Delhi. I arrived here with an old Ambassador car, a young and lovely wife of and two tiny girls. We loved every moment of our stay.

Unlike other cities, Delhi is not subtle about its impact on you. It hits you in the face; with all her energy, power, beauty, and brash. You either love Delhi or hate, instantly.

Indelible memory of our stay in Delhi is winter that is at once both severe and exhilarating. By the end of November, we bundled up in warm clothes by 3 pm, switched on heaters by 5 pm, and opened whiskey or rum bottles by 6 pm. In January, angithi is lighted in the evening to provide us warmth till midnight.

We planned weekend family picnics to the Lodhi garden or the Suraj Kund. The riot of green, yellow, and pink flowers of numerous Delhi gardens matched colorful sweaters and dupattas of women swirling around the garden.

The aroma of food waffled through the garden, as thermos flasks full of gin and tonic made rounds among men. Tea and biscuits habitually served in summer would get replaced with whiskey and paneer pakoras during afternoon socials.

Ironically, after we left Delhi on yet another station in life, my visits to Delhi stopped. I have not been to Delhi for a long time. My wife and I plan to visit there to revive fragrant memories of that city that gave us so much joy.

Delhi was the crown jewel in our nomadic life moving around this blessed country.