delhi love

people talk mad shit about delhi: it's hot, crazy crowded, the nastiest dirtiest place on earth, where your streetside chicken stall is flecked with piss from the urinals next door, where your flipflops are destined to become hopelessly encrusted with human excrement, where street children will dogpile on you in enthusiastic desperation, where countless throngs of touts will clamor every second to suck the blood from your wallet and the goodwill from your heart.  this perspective made a little more sense when i finally checked out pahaganj (below), the tourist ghetto right next to the train station where reside nearly all the lonely planet recommended-guesthouses and, yes, there's lots of dirt and trash, etc. 

but i say delhi rocks.  i felt like my eyes were permanently peeled open, visions sticking to them like hairs on wet cucumber, my jaw permanently a little open, a little gawp! at the seething amazingness everywhere.  so much history.  inexplicable vegetables.  really cool monuments and temples.  stores selling stuff i sort of want, stores selling stuff i don't want.  a lot like the rest of india, really, only more. so yeah, there's dirt.  but dirt is everywhere, right?  and yeah, it's crowded.  chadni chowk, the main shopping street in old delhi, was more packed with folk and their cars and snack shops and plastic watergun shops and rickshaws and etc than most places.  but there's a rhythm to it ... float like a butterfly, step to the side when you want to slip out of the people stream.  even more crowded were the crooked back streets leading (sort of) to the sufi shrine of nizamuddin auliya dargah, crammed with glowing silk fabrics and pools of rose-offerings, the marble foyer around the shrine crammed with misery and hope in equal proportions.  a throng gathered to worship at the evening devotional qawwali music; a throng gathered around the worshippers, an outer circle missing limbs, eyes, futures ... seeking a more practical blessing. 

here, the jama masjiid mosque, just after friday afternoon prayers.  those cloths on the ground are the only thing keeping the soles of my feet from erupting in flames -- we're barefoot, and the flaming ball of fire that i used to simply call "the sun" and think about pretty casually has been blazing for hours hours hours.  tom is wearing shorts under that dhoti.  and me?  the mosque guards barely gave me a glance before insisting that i don the beautiful hot pink cape.  if they had, they would have noticed that i was very modestly dressed, covering shoulders and knees and head, even, despite the 42-degree heat.  seriously, guards, did i look like a hooker before you put that thing on me? 

tourists of both western and indian persuasions flock to the gate of india at twilight.  i think my favorite tourist attractions are the ones that attract same-country tourists too ... it's a comfortable feeling, to stroll around a random sight, licking the same ice cream as everyone else, taking the same pictures, eyeing the same bhel puri stands.

humayun's tomb.  spectacular architecture, no?   

the baha'i lotus temple, pretty far outside of the main city.  the craziest thing about this place -- besides its sydney opera house/alien spaceship architecture -- was the silence.  all the visitors lined up outside the temple (an actual line!  this was crazy enough.  but wait ...) and the docents explained that once they let us in to the inner sanctum there was to be actual silence inside the temple.  and ... there was.  

really, guy?  really?  a door?  on the freeway? 

but honestly, what made delhi for me was the hospitality.  a wonderful friend in san francisco set us up with her family (her cousin's husband and mom), who live a little outside the main delhi area.  i can't even begin to try to start describing how generous, how welcoming, how overwhelmingly gracious sandeep and aunty (and their maid, baby) were to us.  here's tom and sandeep (and sandeep's brother, hiding in the background) enjoying a cricket match and some orange juice.  what you can't see is aunty and baby in the kitchen -- i think they spent the majority of the day in there! -- preparing delicious morsel after morsel: dal makhani (the absolute best i've ever tasted), laddoos, green beans and paneer curry, fresh puris and chapattis (it did take a little getting-used-to to hear aunty yell out from her elegant seat at the table "baby, chapatti!" at regular intervals), sweet sooji halwah, and piping hot chai.  i kept on trying to pay for things, and the family kept on thwarting me and paying for things themselves ... it turned into a little bit of a game, i think, especially when i snuck out with baby and tried to pay for the barbeque she picked up for our last night's meal, and we had a little pantomine scuffle over it (baby = no english; me = no hindi), and the barbeque guy refused to take my money, and baby called sandeep and informed on me.  baby did my nails for me, too, but she wouldn't let me do hers ... i couldn't quite figure out whether it was because she didn't think my skills were up to it or what.  i cried a little when we left (and also at dinner, and at breakfast, but that was because the food was so good).  i have never been so well taken-care-of except by my very own mom.  someday i hope i have the chance to take care of someone so well -- this visit redefined for me what it means to be an honored guest, and what it means to enjoy having an honored guest ... and i look forward to extending my own hospitality!