India Rocks...but...Part 1

I've just returned from the mothership, the mainland, the land of the Blue Billion. India is truly a vast and amazing place. It is diverse to a head-splitting extreme from the Leela Palace Hotel resplendent between two shady buildings in Banglore to the Sikh businessmen in a Hugo Boss suit calmly stepping over a weepy, deformed beggar. But these are all cliches you've heard before, from countless writers: novelists, traveller, businessmen and journalists. Most of these distinguished folk are far more gifted pensmen than I am, so I will spare you my Indian metaphors. But I do want to share with you my far more easily expressed observations on the failings of modern India.

Delhi for starters. This City of Djins is probably one of the driest, dustiest cities known to man. The fact that all public transport has been converted to LNG does not hide the fact that the single-minded pursuit of power, money and position has trumped environmental concerns since the city's inceptions. The city looks brown from the air and the expected dustbowl materialises as soon as one steps out of the international joke that is Indira Gandhi International Airport (it is puny, dirty, inefficient and the security would give the most lax Sri Lankan official the runs). The air hangs thick with an exotic cocktail of fine dust, exhaust fumes and all manner of organic smells. I contracted a cough the day I landed and it has not left me yet. Late at night, the environment of Delhi decides that strangulation is not vile enough revenge on its pesky human inhabitants, and the air congeals into the oft-quoted "fog". These three letters scarely begins to describe the solid wall of dangerous looking gas that engulfs pedestrians, slows traffic and grounds planes.

The fog, dust and general atmospheric malaise of Delhi can all be attributed to the city's love affair with automobiles. The roads of Delhi resemble a giant Maruti factory. Even teenagers zip around in these pint-sized miracles of subsidized Indian manufacturing. These "kids" are speed demons in their own mad-cap manner. They change lanes the way normal people change socks and the sound of horns deafens even the blaring Punjabi rap emnating from most of the vehicles. The city's elder citizens crawl through the city's hour-long, sprawling, snaking traffic jams in stately, spotless luxury vehicles, earnest Ambassadors or smoke spewing second-hand-imported-sedans. An irony of Delhi (and India's) destructive car culture is that the names of the children of any family are gaily embalzoned on bumper sticks (Rahul and Rani are apparently very common names in India), while the fuel-stained spewings of the family vehicle destroy those very children's present and future health. Private citizens of Delhi may take offence at my critique of Delhi's car culture and respond that the city's public transport infrastructure is inadequate, unsafe and unhealthy. This is true, but in the words of a journalist I recently met, I am simply describing, not proscribing.

Apparently the water in Delhi is also undrinkable, resulting in the famed "Delhi Belly". The description of this dreaded affliction caused me to live with dry lips over my four day stay in the city. Despite these precautions though, I still contracted The Belly from street food eaten the day before I left to Goa. An entire day in paradise was wasted vomiting and purging, then sleeping off the resulting dehydration and exhaustion. The one useful tidbit of advice I can offer an traveller to Delhi is: Dont be Cheap. The city has excellent restaurants serving every cuisine available, please shell out and save yourself hours of agony. Ofcoure the more adventurous of you will ignore my advice and try street food come what may, for its smell, colour and taste entice you like the most buxom of Bollywood starlets. Then again, there are also idiots who base-jump for the same sort of cheap thrill. To each his own.

For the by-now-engraged Delhi-ite reading my blog, I have come to the end of my discussion of the failings of India's capital city, literally its gateway to the wider world. I really did love the city, for the beauty of its buildings and people, for the exquisiteness of its food, for the vibrancy of its colours, for the vitality of its roads and markets, the value and range of its shopping and the warmth and hospitality of my Delhi-ite friends. But, as in India in general, the greatness of Delhi is simply the iron will of Indians trying to make do with a badly planned, poorly policed and broadly incorrigible city who's form and growth is far, far beyond their control. The citizens of Delhi have to take control over a city they so clearly-dearly love, to ensure that businessmen, tourists and Indians themselves can be welcomed by a truly global Capital.