C and I traveled to Delhi by car from Jaipur a few days ago,
our first such trip by road since we first arrived in India. Travel by car
allows us to see aspects of this country that we don’t see traveling by plane.
The outskirts of Jaipur seem to go on endlessly with unnumbered people and
shanties. The roads crowded with all manner of modes of transportation, from
foot traffic to camels to motorbikes, cars, and large trucks. The trucks,
decorated in wildly garish colors and always in need of bodywork, inevitably have
a message to “please honk” written on the back, as if the national pastime of
horn-honking needed encouragement. The countryside itself is almost perfectly flat,
except of the spine of rocky hills that rim Jaipur. The earth is a pale brown
that seems little more than dust, although somehow crops issue forth from it at
the appropriate times. Here and there we see “colleges”, which, given their
distance from the urban centers, must act almost as monasteries to keep their
students far from the paths of temptation found in the cities. How they obtain
water, sewer, and the like, I don’t know. We pass a number of “flyovers” designed
to by-pass the villages between Jaipur and Delhi, and not a one completed,
although a few were marked by some activity. Sometimes public projects in India
seem all activity and no accomplishment.
After going through the small towns surrounding Delhi with their
crowded roads lined with trucks, small vendors, animals, and people, one begins
to see the high-rise glass towers that mark the growth of affluent Delhi. While
in Jaipur we never see steel-frame construction, the height and design of these
building suggests the use of steel and therefore provide a mark of affluence.
One learns, however, that no matter the sparkle of the tower, at street level
one is likely to encounter the shortcomings of Indian infrastructure and services,
thus providing one more set of contradictions that mark contemporary India.
As we enter into Delhi proper, we note the wide, tree-lined
boulevards with orderly traffic. The orderliness and greenery contrast with the
cities of Rajasthan and help provide Delhi with a welcoming feel. (Although a
later walk educates us that the trees often serve as conduits for low-hanging electrical
wires that force one to pay more attention to what is above than what is below
as we walk). As with most phenomena in India, one needn’t travel far to find an
antithesis to such greenery and order, but in this part of the city, it’s a
plus.
We’re lodging in the Hans, a concrete tower not far from
other concrete towers and just a short way from the British-constructed
shopping area of Connaught Place. Connaught Place seems like a perpetual
construction project, and the shops, many of which are brand name and upscale,
seem worn by it all. Dogs sleep in the heat of the day in the shadows of the
archways as affluent, mostly younger Indians, peruse the shops, the dingy
exteriors not deterring their desire to buy and mingle. Going out to find a
place for lunch, I find the heat in Delhi stifling. Although the thermometer
doesn't spike as high as it does in Jaipur, one feels a greater humidity and haze compared
to the pure, bright blue sky of mid-day Jaipur (where haze appears at the
beginning and end of the day but doesn’t linger).
As evening settles in, I look out the window of our 17th
floor room and view the haze and adjoining gray, concrete buildings. The gray
of the concrete has an added patina of dust, soot, and bird droppings that washes
all sense of color from the scene. A couple of the nearby buildings don’t have
lights, as they appear to have been abandoned after arising 15 or more stories
into the air. Mostly low building and a few skyscrapers and high smokestacks,
as far as the haze permits us to see, mark the remainder of the city view.
A walk the following day, in the late afternoon, exposed C
and I to what we thought might be an incoming rainstorm. The wind picked up, visibility
decreased, and the shadows disappeared; however, instead of rain and relief
from the heat, we found the wind blew in dust and grit, filling our eyes and
mouths (until we wised up) with a fine grit. No rain ever appeared, while the
city, back in our room, nearly disappeared while the terrestrial junk blew
through.
Tomorrow we leave for Shilong in the eastern part of the
country, up in the Himalayan foothills. As a local friend noted, most want to
escape Delhi in June, and now I understand why.
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