How to describe Delhi. Delhi is an explosion of sight, sound, scent, taste, and touch. It is chaos.
Like Hong Kong, Sydney, London, Chicago, and I assume every mega city, Delhi has mega beauty. Every tiny bit of public land is landscaped. Nearly fluorescent magenta, orange, and yellow flowers along with soft yellow, pink and white, compete for pride of place against the artificially watered green spaces. Old temples and monuments compete with modern sculptures. On the skirts of the city, which expand daily, big cranes and sky-craping apartment buildings testify to the continuous burst of population. There are also families living under bridges and shady trees. High end fashion stores and street venders and everything in between. That’s what Dehli is.
It is too much. Too loud. Too hot. Too bright. Too spicy, beautiful, strange and familiar. Delhi is not what I came to India to see, but it is the gate. One has to go through the gate to get to the meadow, I reckon. When it was time to come home, there was Indira Gandhi International Airport just waiting to swallow me up again in her shimmering neon, spice-dripping jaws.
My friends took me in as far as they could, which wasn’t far. The guard at the first line told me to go to line 3. The officer at line 3 told me to go to line 8. Line 8 turned out to be customer service. There were a couple of problems. I was very happy that I’d gotten to the airport three hours early. The entire trip home was a bit confusing. I’d received the first half of a message - never could open the rest of it - saying my flight had been changed to Friday from Thursday. Even though I’d gotten international calling on my phone, I had one bugger of a time trying to get through to my airline. As it turned out, my flight hadn’t been changed, but I didn’t find that out in time.
(You see, traveling around in India isn’t quite as straight forward as it is in the US. Yes, we had a car and a driver, but in order to make that a paying prospect, one must also have roads - and, I might add, rules of the road would be a great start.)
Anyway, I’d changed my ticket by phone, but had no print out and the guards at the door wanted something in WRITING. So the nice people in customer service were ready to issue me a paper ticket when the nice people found that my last name was misspelled on the ticket in the marvelous interweb. Missing a P, so it didn’t match my passport.
My friends hung in there with me and quite frankly looked much more worried than I felt. I think I was too tired to worry. Actually, one doesn’t just take off for India alone if she hasn’t already turned everything over to someone much greater than herself. I sort of figured that God had this one, I had major people watching to do.
I made it through those hoops and stood in line. A very, very long line. In fact, this line, so crowded with people trying to color inside the lines, following the cue ropes like sheep too confused and tired to cause much trouble, claimed a casualty while I was shuffling along in it. One man who appeared to be Chinese just couldn’t take it any more. Being in the middle of a sea of shoulder to shoulder people can get to a person - especially someone who is too short to see the shore. He took off, under the ropes, through the legs of people. Poor dude.
“While in line I med a Sikh from Punjab. His name, of course, was Singh. He had on shoes with curled up toes and a voice like bells that ring” I actually did meet this young man, who struck up a conversation with me over my camera. Quite possibly it’s the fact that I was singing “Put On a Happy Face” that made me so approachable. After that, however, I was singing song with lyrics about Singh the Sikh from Punjab made up on the spot. I commented on his cool shoes and said I wished I had some like it to take to my grandson. He offered to give me a pair from his bag. Seriously. How nice is that? He looked to me to be in his twenties, was heading on his first ever flight to Malaysia. We talked about people and God and travel. His English was better than mine. He invited me to return to India soon, and this time to visit “Us, in Punjab.” It was a priceless interaction. And that’s what travel is all about.
Where is the wisdom in not talking to strangers? Wouldn’t we all be strange if we all followed that rule. Nearly everyone I talked to during my Indian adventure was a stranger to begin with. In fact, I had conversations with people without a common language. That can be uncomfortable or fun, depending on how hurried I allow myself to feel. I’ve found that for everyone except airport security people, a smile and manners go a very long way.
I'm so grateful.
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