dilli days dilli daze

my days have been floating by, wandering around ancient ruins, breezing round the curves of new delhi streets in autos, brief forays into the alleyways up by chandni chowk looking for the remains of shahjahanabad amidst the warehouses and small-time businesses, milling around malls and other shopping strips in front of restaurants like t.g.i.f. bennigan’s ruby tuesdays etc shops like levi’s united colors of benetton reebok marks and spencer’s etc in a cloud of confusion at all this familiar foreign-ness all at once, sitting around in cafes with wireless in a disturbing state of excitement drinking away pots of tea as i rediscover the lures of internet addiction, spending over my budget on the all-too-numerous all-too-tempting fancy schmancy restaurants that seem to call to me from every corner...

napping away scorching afternoons in my cave (aka sad little room in a working woman’s hostel)... going mad from another meal of dal and potatos same’s they served the day before and every day before that... nervous under the gaze of our ever-watching warden pascal-ma’am who i thinked liked me until i appeared outside in something sleeveless, .... checking the corners for giant cockroaches like the waddling one i saw in that other room they tried to move me into last week...

only a few days left here before i run off up into the hills for a month of study for real, hindi/urdu up in landour. two weeks in delhi, n i still can’t figure out what to make of it. all the open space in south delhi, and the alienation of this elitist weird bubble, all the cram and crunch of north, all these far reaching enclaves and colonies, all this (exciting) ancient and (usually not so much exciting except sometimes hmm in a i-have-not-been-home-in-a-year-and-really-need-it kind of way) new, it all feels funny somehow. it is leaving me curious to know more, but yeah, hmm. i have a feeling that in the end i would not be comfortable or happy with all the segregation of rich and poor, all the posh-ness and hip-ness and gated-ness of the world populated by the privileged on one side and then the rest on the other, and neither place feeling really like it has a place for me...

but then, two weeks is nothing. to know a city? i will have to come back i think, if only to get to know it good n proper. you listening, schmabil?