Everyone's trying to connect

Jill, 10-30-10
Driving through Delhi at first feels like pure chaos. Lanes are marked, but ignored. Drivers crowd into the oncoming lane, then swerve back into their own at the last minute. Horns blow, not to alert others to danger, but simply to announce, "I'm here--please move over." Pedestrians, dogs, bicycle rickshaws and sometimes cows and sheep blend in and out.

At first I was terrified--it looked like an accident might happen every other moment. Then I began to see the quiet rhythm of the consensual chaos. People moved their vehicles through and among others with ease, and a kind of grace. The hostility of an urban U.S. setting was nonexistent--no one was enraged, or even rattled. Horns weren't expletives and exclamation points, but rather ellipses, parentheses, modifiers and links.

Various levels of poverty, from employed subsistence to abject dearth populated the densest area just north of Connaught Circle where we've been staying. However, unlike in the U.S. where the homeless are swept from place to place with nowhere to really land, I noticed people making homes all over in makeshift shacks, cardboard boxes, on rooftops (including of the hotel where we're staying, and its neighboring buildings), and even a simple cot along the street. I haven't seen anyone attempting to police or dismantle anyone else's home.

The same goes for services--people along the street are offering tailoring, shirt ironing, shoe shining, and even a shave and a haircut, presumably with little or no overhead.

This morning, I saw an ad for an arts festival at the Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts (or something like that), and we took an auto rickshaw (sort of like a motorized golf cart) ride there. So after stumbling upon an embarrassingly fecund food emporium--the dessert windows alone took up about 300 square feet of space--we waddled out to find transportation to the festival.

I wish I could upload the pictures. Firestorms of color, wild patterns, and yes, more food. We bought food tickets, but then cashed them in because even die hard foodies like us sometimes get just plain full. In this case, ogling sufficed. Well, almost. We went batshit crazy over some mango candy and crushed spices this one vendor proffered, but didn't want to load up (did I mention I'm traveling for two weeks in India with just a backpack a little larger than your average day pack, and my purse?), so we took an order card for when we come back through.

Hah--that's just the surface of all that went through my mind today. I haven't talked about handling harrassment, my sheer joy at being outside the U.S., reactions to other white people, or any details about the FOOD! Raj is out for a walk, and I'm so tired I'm about to collapse into the keyboard, so for now...alvida.