An ode to Dilli

Aarti decided to take the Rajdhani to Delhi after years instead of flying down. She looked out of the window and recognized stations whizzing past whose names she once knew by heart – Ghaziabad, Shahdara. When the train crossed Minto Bridge, she knew they were going to arrive at New Delhi junction within a few minutes confirmed by the excited cries of “Dilli aa gaya [We have arrived in Delhi]’ from co-passengers. Strains of a familiar language, glimpses of familiar people told her she had come home. But the rates the porter demanded from her told her that she did not blend in. She shouted at the porter in the local register to drive home the point that she was no tourist he could take for a ride. Instead of waiting in the long-prepaid queue, she hopped into a waiting cab confidently instructing the driver in Punjabized Hindi, “CP jaana hai [I have to go to CP]”. The elderly cabdriver had already begun a conversation about the traffic conditions in Delhi as he turned left. Half listening to him, she looked left and noticed the iconic dhabas (highway restaurants), Kake di hatti and Bhape di hatti before turning her gaze to the right to look for the glass enclosure of her favourite fast-food haunt, Narula’s. She could see the board boldly emblazoned Narula’s but both the burger and ice cream parlours were gone! Narula was one of the few old landmarks of CP, as Connaught Place was called by locals, along with Wenger’s. The cab turned right to CP’s outer circle and went around the circle before taking another turn after the Regal theatre to enter Baba Kharak Singh Road. She counted all the state-run emporia on the long road until they reached the last one and turned right to Bangla Sahib. Her hosts ushered her in their palatial bungalow that they had converted into a bnb. This was the Delhi of the old bania[trader]] elite was concealed behind its Punjabi colonies and government quarters that Aarti had not entered ever.

After a quick shower, Aarti decided to take a walk. The bnb was right behind the emporia concealed by the flower lane. After walking down a few yards to the Main Road, she turned left and found that she was walking on the familiar paved path outside the state-owned Emporia that brought the arts, crafts and fabrics of each state to the national capital. The absence of shoppers on the busy path made it look uncomfortably familiar. She noticed an odd tourist walking down from the opposite side and entering one of the emporia. But where were Delhi’s chattering classes, as a journalist had named the city’s intellectual and creative elite, who would compete with tourists to sample the latest collections. The shop girls, who had picked up functional English, to be able to conduct transactions with the tourists were visible behind the glass doors but only a handful of customers. The uniformed security guards stared at the unaccompanied woman walking with a misty look in her eyes. Aarti walked the entire length of the road before taking an about turn. She searched for her mother who she would drag along on her shopping expeditions. It would be more apt to call them window shopping expeditions since Aarti couldn’t afford to buy much from the small stipend she received and wouldn’t accept her mother’s offer to pay. She had to make a ritual entry into every state emporium, check out their new collection before walking out saying that she didn’t find what she was looking for. Her mother complained that Aarti would make her walk two kms without buying anything. Aarti was about her mother’s age now and realized how tired she must have been to walk that length after completing all her domestic chores. On an impulse, Aarti entered Gurjari, her favourite emporium, where she would find exactly what she was looking for. She recalled her last visit when her mother’s friend tagged along so that she could buy Aarti a gift she chose. Aarti still had the tie and dye woolen shawl she had settled on after inspecting many items.

She realized that the Sikh temple Bangla Sahib was a few yards away from her bnb. She set out for the gurdwara to be able to join in the morning prayers. She had hazy memories of being taken there by her cousin en route to being dropped back in her college hostel and being handed a handkerchief to cover her head. She couldn’t forget the taste of the tandoori roti and maa ki dal served at the langar. Today she made sure to wear a salwar kameez with a chunni that covered her head the way Sikh women did.  She bent before the raised platform on which the holy book was placed and touched the floor with her forehead. After perambulating the large prayer hall, she cupped her palm to receive the kada prasad from the priest.  Instead of returning to the bnb, Aarti took the short cut to Baba Kharak Singh Marg through the flower lane, crossed the wide road to find herself outside the Khadi Bhavan. Where was “Malik Sweets”, the famous sweetshop that one had to skirt to get to the Regal theatre? She was relieved to find that the other landmark in Regal Building, the Standard Restaurant had still not closed. She looked up wistfully and imagined the group of cousins who had walked after a wedding to find that they collectively did not have enough to order its famed pastries with the coffee. She stared at the posters in Regal Theatre and scenes from the movies she had watched there fast forwarded before her eyes. For old times sake, she walked in the lobby and bought herself a cone of the softy ice cream that still cost a few rupees unlike the ice cream in the newly opened global chains.

She crossed the road once again and walked towards Janpath, the tourist’s paradise. She could see tourists of all colours walking up and down the Tibetan and Kashmiri curio shop picking up brass figurines, paper machete boxes and pashmina shawls and bagru wraparound skirts. College students like her preferred the wooden kiosks selling trinkets and the pavement flea market for export reject westerns. One was bound to run into one’s friends bargaining for export surpluses and Gujarati mirrorwork. CP was the city’s hub where well-heeled shoppers looking for branded goods rubbed shoulders with tourists on its covered circular corridors before grabbing a cup of coffee while the staff working in the numerous state offices merely window shopped and tourist gazed on the way to the bus stops from where they could return home. The tourists were nowhere in sight despite it being the peak tourist season.

The corridors circling the Palika Bazaar were filled with poorly paid government babus scurrying to the buildings that housed their offices. Aarti hailed an auto rickshaw to the Shastri Bhawan where her meeting was being held. As she walked up the steps to the meeting room, a familiar smell entered her nostrils. It was the smell of old files stacked in wooden cupboards that she recalled from the day she had visited her father’s office in the same building. After the meeting, she walked down to search for the street food carts. He could visualize her father strolling down the boat club lawns with his friends after his fruit dessert. She could see the Parliament House on the right and India Gate in front. But the walkers looked shabby and run down. Where were the cars from which chiffon clad ladies stepped out with their children to eat ice creams at India Gate? They were parked in the basement of the malls dotting the city.

Aarti wanted to travel back to the city she knew and live there forever. But she would have to catch the bus to reach the congested two-roomed flat allotted to her father or an apartment of the same he could afford to buy despite being a senior bureaucrat after paying for his children’s education. She would hate bussing it to high profile parties when all others drove in their new Marutis. She would hate eating chat on the street after their shopping jaunt and look enviously at her friends laden with bags from upmarket stores walking into the ice cream parlour. She couldn’t get her hair styled in the state-of-the-art parlour where the tip exceeded the haircut charge in her neighbourhood saloon. She would have to pretend that her artisan produced clothes would pass as designer outfits if the street-corner tailor succeeded in making an exact copy. She would have to ignore her light-skinned neighbours’ comments on her brown skin. She would have loved to live in Delhi but in the mansions that lined the wide roads that led to their tiny apartment. Aarti headed back to her bnb and packed her bags to return home to the city that had adopted her as its foreign-born child.