Delhi Noontide in November

 

Smog, slog and life on the winter's doorstep, that is Delhi in November. There is enough heat in India; the heat born of the loss of space and individualities; the heat born of many hands prying and praying to collect always deficient opportunities; the heat of summer; the heat of a society torn and pulled in different directions by equally strong forces of tradition and modernity.

 

Away from all this in the cooler climes of United Kingdom, he felt a sashaying sisterly spray on his face. As a Britisher he was always interested in India, and Delhi of all its places. First time in India, he had envisioned India as a former colony and its people carrying poverty-enforced brooding, agitating look. This day in November but gave him a surprise. With Western curiosity he could spot some traces of lilaceous glow on the people's faces even amidst all this cut throat crowd and teeming competition. His rosy white skin did not complain even though he was there under the open tropical sun. The winter has just starting spraying its aura around, he mused, his mind becoming more positive for the people and the surroundings. November was cool even in Delhi! He forgot all talks of global warming, pollution, dirty political snuggeries, traffic jams, disappointment on the cricketing field when his own home team lost to India, etc. The weather in November appeared to put the common man, the man in the arena of trials and tribulations of saving some grace to see through the day with life intact, on a strong wicket. The glow on common man was just like that was hallowed around numerous faces after witnessing yet another century by Sachin recently in a home series against his team on India tour. He had felt intimidated when thousands of cricket crazy fans went madder than the maddest whenever Sachin hit a century and he found himself lost in the stadium, lost like a drop in the ocean.

 

Delhi is chaotic. That was the predominant notion in his mind. Certain notions but were for a change this November day in Delhi. Doing a round of Connaught Place he saw that the colonnaded facades were up for some renovation. His spirit got uplifted and as a student of architecture he even felt obliged to the Indians for this effort. Far away from home, still pinched with niggling thoughts of his recent breakup from his girlfriend, he felt the colonial smirkness and efficacy still pervading in smoky, hazy noon slowly passing into the folds of a welcoming afternoon. Going around with a heart that was left injured and vacant after the separating storm in the café where he had said goodbye to the girl in London, his accommodating spirit now realized why despite so many metropolitan outcrops around, Connaught Place is still the heart of Delhi. He felt proud as a Britisher, for belonging to the people who constructed this beautiful architectural heart in the middle of all this chaos and which still throbbed with so much of life and aesthetics. In the fantastic maze turned up by the white colonnaded blocks time, history and efforts at modernity all stood captured in a mysteriously pervading easiness.

 

Elsewhere in the city, he had found four causes to mutter for a single cause of musing. Metro, yes...a massive collective reason for a bigger musing. Flyovers....again impressed him as he sauntered over in auto rickshaw without being stuck up for hours. However the wound in his heart was still fresh and he had the eyes to spot dirt cheap humanity scattered around below the flyovers. Kids, women, men....black, filthy, sick, torn and tattered dreams wandering in equal measure. The poor human souls left out of the gift of enjoying even the balmy effects of early winter. He had a deep look in the eyes of some young female beggar, and found a big chance for a beautiful life and persona wasted. Whom to blame? Looking at the faceless vault of the sky he asked again and again, ‘Why? If you can give so much to so few, then why not just common minimum for all of them!’ Anyway, disparities have teased us from the times unknown. He had to force this gloomy shadow out of his heart. He was here to cast out the pain in his heart by mixing in the exotic mess India has to offer. But India was giving him flashing moments of agonies and ecstasies. His auto had now fetched him to the Red Fort and he had to start fresh to appreciate its red-stoned architectural glory.