PS: Delhi Revisited

Dinesh is Our Man in Delhi. His eyes aren’t quite interested in the same thing, behind his pebble-glasses, and he comes up to about Mr Roland’s third rib. Within a heartbeat of his whipping into the front seat of our Tourist Innova, we learn that he has two sons and a daughter, 18, 16 and 11, that he used to be a jeweller, in Bandra, Mumbai, that he speaks Japanese, and that he’s lived in Delhi for twelve years. We’re well out of the diplomatic area, with its spacious embassies and copiously-sprinkled lawns, and into the Mumbai-familiar scurry and scramble of Old Delhi, when Dinesh sees fit to mention his wife, before segueing smoothly back to his tourist patter. It seems the Presidential Palace of Delhi was home to the last Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten, who employed more than four hundred gardeners, to service its grounds, and fifty soldiers, as human scarecrows....

At the Jama Mashid Mosque, we feed single file through the bomb-detecting door-frame, and up the wall of stepped slabs beyond. The threat of terrorism's never far from anyone's mind, here, so it's not surprising, that they're so hot on national security. What is surprising, though, is that the bomb-dectecting door-frame's not wired up to anything other than fresh air. Indian security's so... Indian.

We’re just kicking off our shoes, breathless, before entering the central courtyard, when we’re shooed away by sentries – it’s four o’clock, and the muezzin’s revving up for the evening call to prayer. As we’re littering the doorway, with our mouths hanging open like bumpkins fresh in from the west, a posse of youths clatters up the stone stairs, three at a time. They flick their shoes to the chappal-wallah without breaking their stride, pulling their lacy skull-caps straight: they’re late.

Dinesh, apologetic, offers to bring us back in half an hour, when prayers are said, and the faithful no longer need protecting from the taint of prying observers, but I point to the schedule of house rules, by the entrance archway. “Number Eight: Women are not permitted to enter after the evening prayer.” I am the only female fly in this particular ointment, so I consider offering to wait outside, while they go in and fulfil themselves touristically, but I think better of it, before my kindness gets past my teeth. So, we peek in at the gateway, and that’s as much mosque as we see today.

At the foot of the steps, a whole Muslim community springs up on every side. If you don’t spot the crocheted cap stalls, the butchers are a dead giveaway, their counters curtained with grim carcasses, and laid with strings of dark meat. I turn away quickly, but not quickly enough, I’ve already seen the basket of goat-heads on the floor. Dinesh says, “Very danger area,” and flips the central lock. (Does that remind you of anyone you know? Anyone from Lucknow, for example?) At night, here, our man from Delhi says, only Muslims walk abroad.

We crawl through the maze of packed streets, happy to drink in local colour now we’re locked in - small shops, wooden stalls, or even bits of rag, spread on the bare pavement, then arranged with fragrant piles of garlic or heaps of toasted nuts for sale. There’s a whole unglamorous row specializing in car parts. “We keep the car moving,” says Dinesh, sagely, “We stay still, ten minutes, all car gone.” Just like Liverpool, I think... “Then, we come here, buy car back again, one piece this shop, one piece next shop...”

We drive to the Gandhi Memorial, and our afternoon of untourism is complete. It’s closed. The guard slouches on his plastic chair, his rifle leaning cosily against his khaki knees, but he wakes up for a consultation with Dinesh. Thus we learn that tomorrow’s the anniversary of the assassination of Indira Gandhi – 31 October – so the park’s secured twenty-four hours in advance: you can’t get in to mooch round the mausoleum, in case you’ve got a bomb stuffed down your salwar. Fair enough. “Is just square of black marble,” Dinesh says dismissively, as we do another U-turn, “... and eternal flame.” I wonder, why we were going to see it in the first place, since it’s such a non-starter, but I don’t say...

Plan C’s Birla’s Temple, and – desperate for some sights to see – we agree before Dinesh reaches the question-mark. We screech away from the lights, as soon as they turn green: dust and exhaust-fumes shroud the motley crew of somersaulting beggars, lady-boys, and coconut vendors, plying their various trades. An occupational hazard, if you live at the cross-roads.

Happily for us – and even more happily for Dinesh - Birla’s Temple’s a winner. Mr Birla’s big in construction, second only to Mr Tata, here in India, so the temple’s by him, rather than to him. It’s also known as the Lakshmi Ganesha Temple, but you could guess that from the statuary at the gate. Mr Birla has a statue of his own, but it’s in the back garden, to eliminate any possible misunderstanding.

Indian enterprise is ever alert to a retail opportunity. Before being overwhelmed by spirituality at this place of worship, they slip in a tourist shop by the front entrance. It doesn’t say “Tourist Shop,” obviously, it says, “Foreigners this way!” and by the time you realise it’s actually a shop, they’ve got your shoes. And, in our case, your mobile phones and your camera, too... There are elephants-in-elephants on sale, and pashminas, and sandalwood Buddhas, but there’s no obligation to buy. Not unless you want your phone back, that is. The temple’s dedicated to Ganesh, the God of Business, and to Lakshmi, the Goddess of Money, so how could there not be a shop on the way in?

Dinesh kisses the steps, and makes for Ganesh’s shrine, for a private word. With the ring-finger on his right hand, he presses a red kum-kum bindi, first on his own forehead, then on each of ours. His wife must know where he’s been, I say, when he gets home, of an evening.

The bell above the central arch, on the way into the main temple, is suspended out of reach, so you have to jump, to hit the clapper and make it ring. A French lady asks Owen to pick up her friend, to help him sound the bell, so he does. The Frenchman’s fairly substantial, and I’m just wondering why he needs a lift, when I notice, he’s blind.

On the way out, I buy a lacquered elephant, to redeem our shoes. In my own defence, it’s very small and blue, and therefore inevitable. Or, that’s what I tell Mr Roland.

We’re staying at the Taj Palace Hotel, in Delhi. So are the Australian and Indian cricket teams. We draw up at the grand entrance, and are swept out of the car and into the hotel, by Maharajah doormen in cockaded turbans and curly moustaches. The marble steps are flooded with reporters and random passers-by, brandishing cameras and mobiles, but I don’t twitch my kurta straight, or even pat my mad hair. Dinesh jostles importantly past the liveried flunkies. “So, tomorrow,” he says, avoiding the chief doorman’s eye, “we meet here in the foyer, nine-thirty, right?” I’m almost sure that’s right, because it’s what we agreed in the car, less than fifteen seconds ago. Dinesh needs a passport beyond the plate-glass doors, though, and we’re it. He abandons us instantly, and scuttles off to harass cricketing legends, and to be swatted out of the way by their minders. I’m thinking, it’d be nice to take some photos, too, for our cricketing boy, back in Mumbai, but there’s a small snag. I wouldn’t recognise Sachin Tendulkar if he served me my breakfast egg, unless he was labelled. Mr Roland contrives to catch Australia between floors, though, without getting punched, so our happy conjunction is not lost to posterity, after all.

Last Word to Sanjay - Golden Triangle 10

Sanjay springs into our lives, as new as the morning milk, with gleaming teeth and a spotless white jacket, buttoned up to the neck. Before we’ve got our seatbelts fastened, he’s told us he’s got two children, his wife speaks five languages (“She very clever. I no very clever.”), his rent’s two thousand rupees a month, and if we want him tomorrow, we need to ask at Reception, his driver number’s 23. It’s good, to get this sorted out so soon. We roll out of the Taj driveway, waving at saluting Maharajahs. By the time the back axle’s across the threshold, Sanjay’s peeling off his white cotton gloves, to stash in a little hidey-hole near the gearbox. “Gloves, is hotel requirement. No good for drive. You want all-Delhi tour? I take.”

In a burst of enthusiasm, he comes round the Qutb Minar with us, explaining in bullet-point English, or sometimes in just point, forget the English. He wrests the camera from Lady Snowdon, and bullies us into a group photo. “Many jobs,” I say in the Monu-speak which I favour of late, “Driver, guide, photographer – can you cook?” “No cook, wife cook.” So much for five languages, then.

Driving along later, with a brace of monuments already under our belts, Mr Roland and Mrs Andrew feel the need to photograph something presidential. “No is parking,” says Sanjay, flatly. We slow down to tickover, so Mr Roland and Mrs Andrew can hop out to be digitally creative. Mr Andrew and I stay put, cruising up and down Government Row at three miles an hour, in front of seventeen boy-soldiers, sprawled on steps leading nowhere in particular. Their heads swivel up and down, following our not-progress, like a Wimbledon crowd in slo-mo. Nepalese, Sanjay informs us, racily hitting second gear. As we kerb-crawl, I ask Sanjay, if his children want to be drivers, too. “My hopes is doctor, or civil engineering, or work in government job,” he says. Why not a driver, I wonder. “No driver,” he says, sadly, “Being driver, no life.” It’s all I can do, not to send him home and slide behind the wheel myself, but I have more chance of flying Apollo 15, than I have of tackling the highways and by-ways of Delhi, bumpers and limbs intact.

Sanjay’s parents didn’t have much, scratching a bare living from poor soil, in the country. He’s their success story. Standing on their shoulders, he’s holding down a steady job, in the big city. In his turn, he makes his children’s education his first priority, working hard, so they can hope to be more than drivers. His daughter doesn’t have medical ambitions, though. She wants to be a pilot. Good for her, already kicking over the traces, and she’s only five years old.
This whole country’s steered into thinking of the future. A proud father beams down from a billboard we pass, advertising insurance. In front of him, his daughter, in cap and gown, brandishes a degree scroll, grinning. “Whatever she needs, you’ll be ready.” Another bill-board, on contraception: “Girl or boy, small family is joy!” It makes you think, all this aspirational propagandist campaigning, and literacy levels are below 50% in some parts of the country.

We see mosques, we see temples, we see churches. Sanjay says, “All religion, same. Blood is blood,” he draws a nail across his wrist, “God is God, same. All God same. Christian sign is plus,” he takes his hands off the wheel to make a cross with his forefingers, “Hindu sign is swastik. Is same. One God.” I take my hat off to Sanjay the philosopher, with a vocabulary of ten words.
If I were Hindu, I would be really fed up with Hitler, for purloining the holiest of symbols, and having the whole of the world associate it with death and inhumanity, for the rest of forever. I see Gandhi’s letter to Hitler, from 1938. “Dear Friend,” it starts, “Are you sure you want to do this? Sorry for interfering. All the best, Gandhi.” I paraphrase, slightly. I also digress....

By the time we’re on our third or fourth bottle of water from Sanjay’s cafe, he’s stopped all pretence of harvesting the rubbish for discreet disposal later. He takes the empties out of our hands, and throws them on the floor. “I pay twenty rupees, man in car park, he clean. He job.” We try lobbing our own bottles on the floor, to save Sanjay the trouble of being the middle man, and it’s almost more than we can bear. Try it. See what I mean? Now, go and pick it up.

En Route - Golden Triangle 3

We top and tail the second day with a Red Fort, first in Delhi, then in Agra. In Northern India, Red Fort’s a bit like High Street back home, there’s one in every town. By now, we’d be disappointed if it weren’t a million rupees, for us to get in, and fourpence, for residents. Acceptance is key. Karma, if you like.
You know, when you scatter crumbs on a pond, there’s a mad flurry of ducks, splashing and arguing, trying to grab a beakful? It’s like that, with the hawkers, when we put our noses round the gate. We are the bread on the water.
I say, as I always say, “Later...” and the boy, with an armful of postcards, says, “Promise? Look at my face.” He gestures. “See this face? Remember me. Ali. What’s my name?” “Ali,” I say, obediently. “Be careful in Fort, Madame. Pickpockets.” So we spend the next hour, more concerned with the other sightseers, than the sights to see. Have you ever noticed, once you have decided to be suspicious, how suspicious everyone is? Even so, with the one eye we can spare for tourism, it’s seriously impressive.
On the way out, Ali steps in my path. I have absent-mindedly bought forty-eight postcards, in the Fort itself. I give him two rupees, for tipping me the wink, and his mates rib him, for earning without sales.
The journey to Agra proves even more fascinating than the World Heritage Sites. We stop to take pictures of camel-carts, to the amusement of an entire busload of local factory-workers, with nothing better to do than spectate. An hour further down the road, we get camel-casual, until we see one beast pulling his cart along, clip-clop, with the driver firmly asleep in the cart. Who wouldn’t want his job?

Here, everybody and thing carries more than you think it should. Bullocks, camels, donkeys, all bear loads the size of garden sheds. Men – either loose or on bikes – carry more than their own body-weight, on their backs, in their arms, or balanced on their heads. Buses and cars drip passengers. We count eighteen passengers, in one three-passengers-maximum tuk-tuk. In the hotel lift, with our not-inconsiderable luggage, we stop, a floor early. I assume the person will look in, and wave us on. But no, she beckons to her mates, and all seven of them get in, too. It’s cosy. Every man, beast and machine earns its keep, here.
Sanjay stops to pay road tax, as we cross the border into Uttar Pradesh. The sideshow immediately turns up, a man leading two monkeys on bits of string, who do somersaults and back-flips to command. On the other side of the car, a beggar, with shrivelled legs, knuckles his way across the dusty road. All we can see of him are his fingers, strumming the window. We’re glad when Sanjay, the litter-lout, climbs back into the car.
We step out of the gritty heat, and into the Taj View Hotel, Agra. In the foyer, the resident barberella, Mr Agrawal, reads palms and stars for guests. If you don’t want your fortune told, you can have a curling green dragon painted up your forearm. Or, you can listen to the sitar-player, with his percussive side-kick on the tabla, in the bar, with a beer in front of you. Guess which we choose. A coconut with a straw, for the first three correct answers....

All-Delhi Tour - Golden Triangle 2

First stop, on Sanjay’s All Delhi Tour, is Qutb Minar, the tallest brick minaret in the world. Lady Snowdon goes into clicking frenzy. “She very like the photos,” says Sanjay, informatively. He points to the inscription round an archway. It looks uniform, but it’s larger at the top than the bottom, to give the illusion of uniformity, when viewed from below. Very clever. I ask him what it says. Sanjay looks at it, points, sucks in a breath to speak, nods, then points again. He closes his mouth. “I don’t know,” he says, finally. “This Persian language.”
Mr Roland’s very taken with the Iron Pillar in the Qutb complex, but to be honest, it’s just a pole made of iron, even if it is sixteen centuries old. Metallurgy doesn’t do it, for me. I’m more interested in the flock of parrots swooping up and under the ruined arches, or the laughing boys playing tag, in and out of the reach of the lawn-sprinklers, shouting, “Hello! How are you?” as we teeter along the wet path.
In the car-park, there are rest-rooms (polite Indian euphemism for toilets, although there’s nothing polite about their usage), and, if you still feel your personal valeting to be inadequate, there’s the Ear-Cleaner. He sits cross-legged on his stool, a magnifying glass strapped to his forehead, bearing down on his client with a small pointed stick, all for a fistful of rupees. It’s hard not to stare, but too intimate to watch. Not to be outdone in Customer Care, Sanjay issues face-wipes and cold drinks from the back of his car, and carefully stashes all the packets and empties in a little well between the front seats. Refreshed, within and without, we head off for our second World Heritage Site of the afternoon, the inspiration of the Taj Mahal, Humayun’s Tomb.

This is a mausoleum, but, since the Emperor Humayun has been dead for four and a half centuries, it’s not a sad place to be. Peacocks drift about on the lawn (Lady Snowdon - “Make it come this way...” What’s peacock for “Here, boy!”?) and the water courses are in action again in the gardens, thanks to a backhander from the Aga Khan, a couple of years ago. A long crocodile of Muslim schoolboys, in white pyjamas and skull-caps, heads for the gate. We want to take a photo, but their teacher looks like someone you wouldn’t want to cross, so we have to content ourselves with looking, and they, equally curious, are watching us, watching them.
In the car-park, Sanjay’s bristling with more bottled water and baby-wipes. We see the debris from our last refreshment, chucked under the car, though Sanjay’s meticulous in collecting this lot. Where’s Tidyman, when you want him?

When we have said enough nice things about the presidential palace (“You like this building?”), we drive on to India Gate, as night falls. It’s like the Arc de Triomphe, only the street vendors aren’t touting anything lewd, so you know it’s not Paris. What they are touting, though, is little flick-off-a-stick fluorescent helicopters, which snags Mr Roland’s attention for a minute. Once he’s fathomed the technology, he loses interest. The boy salesman leaps in front of charging tuk-tuks to retrieve the demonstration model, but no sale.
No sale, either, at the mini-market, Sanjay’s last diversion before home. We say, no, but he takes us anyway. “Just five minute.... Ten minute.” He’s patently on commission for luring in gormless tourists, with more rupees than street-wisdom, but, more than a sari, or a kelim, or a sitar, or even an elephant-in-an-elephant, we want our dinner. There’s something about spending all afternoon traipsing around tombstones that stirs the appetite. I think we’ll have Indian, tonight.

Delhi - Golden Triangle 1

We fly to Delhi. Happily, so does our luggage. This is where organisation ends, though, since the promised car – the paid-for car – fails to materialise, and we have to cram ourselves into a taxi. First, we melt into the tarmac of the taxi-rank, for ten sweating minutes, while raggle-taggle drivers argue about whether our cases will fit into the trunk of the designated taxi, which would accommodate rather less than my fridge, by the look of it. In a language you don’t understand, people sound like they’re arguing, when they’re not, I’ve noticed. No actual physical blows are exchanged, but a sprinkling of policemen get involved, and our luggage is finally stashed cosily round a bottle of LPG in the more capacious boot of the next taxi. “It’s ok, Andrew,” I say, “it’s empty.” He looks at me, horror-struck. Empty’s worse. We lurch off, gears crunching, horn beeping, missing Monu. This driver has patently been a paan-lover since he was about 12 – either that, or he moonlights as a punchbag. His smile is mesmeric.
The car doesn’t have seat-belts, let alone aircon, so we’re beyond discomfort and well into hysteria, by the time we pull up outside the Taj Palace Hotel. The doorman, in feathered turban and snowy puttees, sweeps open the barely-attached door of our shabby taxi, and we fall out, grubby and red-faced. If he notices, behind his immaculate moustache, it doesn’t show. They take meeting and greeting very seriously, in India. We limp up the marble stairs, out of the used air of Delhi, into the scented foyer. I’m too tired to carry a tune, let alone a suitcase. It’s possibly the swankiest hotel I have ever been in. I see, from our multiple reflections in the mirrored lift, that we’re all going for le Look, Oxfam Shop today. But we’re English, and abroad, it’ll be what they expect.
Sanjay, our new driver, enjoys the benefit of perfect teeth, spotless white Nehru jacket with matching cotton gloves, and the Delhi Knowledge. He’s bemused at first – we have the wonders of a whole new city to explore, yet we want to photograph tuk-tuks. Well, in Delhi, they’re green and yellow, not black. We exclaim and point, as if admiring the carved tracery of some eleventh century temple. In Mumbai, we can’t take a photo of anything – bullock-cart, mosque, street-barber – without a tuk-tuk nipping into frame at the last nanosecond. Now we’re pointing the lens at them good and proper, they’re hard to catch.
Delhi’s physically a bigger city than Mumbai, its location allows room for growth. This kind of expansion isn’t possible, with the island-chain geography of Mumbai, and yet two or three million more people call it home. Small wonder, then, that Mumbai’s poorest citizens live under bridges, or beneath flaps of tarpaulin at the roadside. There are beggars and homeless people in Delhi, just not whole slumsful of them. As far as we can tell, at any rate.
Delhi’s a city of two halves, ancient and modern. Old Delhi’s much like Mumbai, teeming streets, rows of tiny shops, gutters full of yesterday’s flowers, and piles of forgotten rubble. People here squat on kerbs, too, chatting, drinking chai, passing time. New Delhi could not be more different. Most of the people we see here are tourists, or soldiers, policing the government blocks or the presidential palace. The new part abuts the old, you couldn’t get the click of a camera lens between them. The streets are broad, the buildings imposing, the gardens manicured. The overall impression is of space, and light. It looks as if someone’s taken a blank canvas and a pile of green Monopoly houses and red Monopoly hotels, and designed a whole new town at a single sitting – which is exactly how it was, at the beginning of the twentieth century. Much of New Delhi was designed by Sir Edward Lutyens, using the same pencil throughout, by all appearances. In his defence, he worked hard to accommodate the many relics of antiquity in this area, so the new fits round the very old, rather than overlaying it. How high-handed is the whole concept, though - during the Raj, the British decided it would be easier to run India from a capital in the North, rather than from Calcutta in the East, so they made the change, and built the city. I’m surprised we don’t get pelted with dry chickpeas, every time we show our pasty faces on the un-Indian, tree-lined boulevards. Before construction was complete, however, the Raj was over, and New Delhi belonged to India again. Quite right, too.