Notes on Delhi

Let me begin at the beginning. Today, since my internet server was down, I spent more time reading than I usually do per day. The book, 'City of Djinns', a gift from one of my oldest friends, is a beautifully phrased and sanguine chronicle on Delhi. It mentioned a phrase by Mir Taqi Mir, a once celebrated poet who's phrases would spring at any given opportunity from every pre-partition Delhi-walla's lips. The phrase is given here in English ( I am yet to find the original) :

"What matters it, O breeze,
if now has come the spring
When I have lost them both,
The Garden and my Nest?"


As often happens, one thought led to another, and I sat wondering how I, someone who once had a word document full of Ghalib's ghazals with the full intention of learning them, with the excitement of learning about more Urdu poets and possibly Urdu some day (an indescribably beautiful language), never really got down to doing 1/10th of what I had planned. How is it, that in the world we live in today, poetry, knowledge and the other simple virtues of a well spent life abate into oblivion so easily, only to be revived years down the line by a simple spark of curiosity and to eventually follow the same dank circle again? How is it that in the era of the World Wide Web, with its plethora of information and knowledge, I had wound up putting more effort in finding ways to pass time than to fill it? I used to feel proud of all the information I lapped up in my learning years, tidbits of history and culture wound up into a fascinating impression of the world. Its strange how easily and wholly I had adapted to the idea of society at large.

There comes a stage in every person's life, when they feel the need to adapt to fellow human beings and being able to state random facts couldn't stand as my ticket to that adaptation. Once you have been coerced into that stage, your knowledge is subverted by your go-luckyness, your humor by asininity, your sophistication by vulgarity, your love by how many you've conquered. Recutio ad absurdum. For some, its the path of pretentious ingenuity. These are, of course, just the trends; not everyone is beset by this fungal disposition. But somewhere, somehow, I did the same, and the most I can do about it now is to pen it. Sometimes I wish things had played out more in accord with how I imagined they would when I was 17.

The same can be said for my hometown, when Delhi still lay largely undiscovered and entirely enchanting to me. Delhi : the enthralling muse of poets and authors alike. From the books I'd read, I could't wait to get to Chandni Chowk - the Moonlit Bazaar, to the surreal streets of Old Delhi and the silent forts of Tughlaqabad. I did, when I grew older and was allowed to go out on my own. What I found instead was the lingering mist of former glory, haunted and daunted by the decay of time. Chandni Chowk, beautiful in the way the corpse of a once captivating woman is, lay like a carcass teeming with flies. The urchins and the sweetmeat sellers were there as they have always been, but their tugging and nudging for a half kilometer into the market didn't help revive my sinking heart. Long, winding streets lay lined with shops selling everything imaginable, but devoid of the enthusiasm of the past and shrugging under the burden of the present. I saw numerous havelis, crumbling and decadent, flailing to grab a hold on the silken threads that once adorned them, and being unable to.

Chandni chowk is still wildly beautiful, a place that was once so fascinating can never completely lose its spirit, but it is only so to the keen observer. Delhi's constitution received a near fatal blow with the diaspora of 1947. It is fast becoming a place where the most culture you can absorb is if you have an unlimited credit card, a bungalow in South Delhi and a clique of 'artsy' friends. Simple pleasures dwell here no longer.

Despite all its failings, Delhi has its charm, even though it's frequency may have hiked a couple of thousand hertz in the past few years. Still, on winter nights, beneath all the pollution and the parties, creeps in the sheepish smell of night Jasmine as you roll down the window and drive past Rashtrapti Bhawan, the cold air assaulting your senses. It is a vast and vivid city, and aside from the few who tarnish its name, its people are boisterous and ever-ready to help. The Punjabis, the Biharis, the Jats, the Baniyas, all come together in an ascending arpeggio of unity in diversity.

Oh Delhi, look how you unravel me!