Old Delhi New Delhi What Delhi

New Delhi, Old Delhi, What Delhi, Delhi?

The experiences of the last three days have been polar opposites. We ate dinner night before last with the meeting participants at the “Safari Jungle” restaurant in the fancy mall next to our hotel with 30 people from John’s meeting. This place was bizarre. You walk into a room with plastic green leaves coating the ceiling and with random plastic animals located around the restaurant. Above me was a plastic snake that periodically opened it’s mouth and hissed. Behind me was a plastic giraffe that wiggled its ears, and at the entrance was an elephant that flared its ears and trumpeted. I thought the movements were all random until I saw one of our “safari guides” waving remote controls at the various animals, and the performance occurring shortly afterwards. We were presented with bites for about 2 hours and thought that this was the dinner-overpriced and marginally good, until suddenly new bowls of even less good food began to appear. It was time to leave this place.
This afternoon John learned that we were going to Bangalore instead of Calcutta, because this working trip has taken so many sudden twists and turns that he has to go where the need for the global health opportunities is the greatest. So, reorient from a 9:30 am flight to a 6:15 am flight. Well ok then. Tonight was much more interesting and bizarre. We ventured downtown again sort of between New and Old Delhi, picked up our Greg one of the young students who will be working in the refugee camps and is taking a semester at J Nehru University. A usually 25 minute drive took over an hour, and though we were lucky to be offered a ride by some colleagues John had meet at the meetings, the ride was a prelude to our evening. The only way to get to our restaurant was to take a rickshaw (three wheeled gas powered vehicle). (same type of vehicle we saw turned over in Kathmandu).

Oh well. We got both breeze and dust all over us, but it was an adventure. We got out at a “gate” and began to snake our way through shop after shop, children running helter skelter, bicycles & motorbikes just missing us or actually whacking our arms, beggars everywhere touching begging. Small boys, girls, mothers. Smells were wonderful and gross. We found our restaurant, Karims,by cutting through an incredibly narrow alleyway and turning one way or another. The food was delicious.



Thus began our evening. Greg snaked us back and around curves and corners…same beggars, same foods good and bad, same near death experiences with vehicles. All this was to find the Sufi Mosque, Hazrat Nizamuddin Darga, and hear the sufi singers.
We found one entrance, had our shoes off and were told to go to the other side. We wandered for about 10 minutes, Greg speaking Hindi to everyone around trying to find the entrance. Finally a small hole, off went our shoes and inside we went. A large quite dirty area filled with cripples, beggars, men and women, babies, children running everywhere surrounded a “holy place” where women were not allowed, and the sufi mystic was inside blessing people and waving green and red fabric, throwing rose petals. This is a tomb (darga) of Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia who became a sufi mystic in the 13th and 14th century. He has amassed still a huge number of followers-especially the poor. Huge baskets of red petals kept coming out of this big room (you could see in through lattice work) Suddenly there was a singer who was joined by others. On another side of this big room people, clearly the most destitute people, lined up to receive small foods handed out by the mosque. It seemed that nearly everyone had some sort of ailment or another. We tried very hard not to think about what our feet were walking on.
Slowly, a crowd began sitting around the entrance to the room and a totally crazy man came around waiving a huge cloth shaped fan. He was vigorous and the fan so nasty that one wave covered your face with grit. Gradually men began to sit with squeezeboxes and do a strange chant. More joined with drums and some just sat and clapped at particular moments as they were singing. A woman suddenly began to swirl and pull away from a man. He threw her around and she pulled him away into another room where you could see a very strange dance occurring. Though it was all fascinating, we knew we would have a long drive to the hotel. We snaked our way out to the street, (thanks to Greg)
Another 40 minutes of waiting and we finally had a cab. As we left this bizarre area of New/Old Delhi, we pondered just how many of the children would reach even the age of 5, and then watched the homeless people crowding every vacant space of concrete sidewalk. And, then we drove through Embassy Row.

When we got back to the hotel at last, we both took long hot scrubbing showers. Aren’t we lucky.
Today, our last in Delhi, the widow Bartlett had her husband back, reincarnated from all the meetings and hundreds of e-mails, for 4 hours to see the city. I had planned the old city of Delhi, but I also wanted him to see Gandhi’s Samriti . Low and behold, we also went to the place that Gandhi was cremated and saw the real eternal flame at the Raj Ghat and National Gandhi Museum.!

(say nothing about the hair)
The weather was brutally hot and we were unloaded into a rickshaw, driven by a man on a bicycle.

We snaked in and out of the alleys of the old city.


Saw the Sikh Temple Sisganj Burdwara, the Svetamber Jain Temple,

the Jama Masjid (the largest mosque in Inda-we couldn’t go inside because it was Friday and was closed for the morning and early afternoon)

and the Charity Birds Hospital. I was desperate to go in, as the tour guides say that tender care is given to birds and rabbits there. They even have an intensive care ward. We could see many birds resting on the rooftop of the hospital. John was unmoved, however, thinking I guess of Avian Flu, poop or other such things that birds & rabbits have a tendency to do.

We did spend extra time in the Red Fort, an enormous expanse of mixed Moghul and British architecture that sort of summed up the history of India before Independence. As we tried to stay as near trees as possible to keep in the shade we could note a plain private mosque just in front of clearly British big buildings, fancy doors of the Moghuls and the military look of the British. I learned that one of the last Moghul kings began each day by having his beads read—so Kate—stick with fortunes and you might be read. Apparently he totally planned his day based on the beads.


(A very cool tea house)
(Mosque and British architecture)


King's room who started his day with bead reading.

We returned to our rickshaw and started back to the markets again, but it was clear that I had gotten more heat than I needed. If you don’t sweat, you suffer differently. The old beet face again, so we returned to the car and were able to go back to the Gandhi Samriti. John agreed that of all the sites he had seen, this one was the best. Gandhi should be the way, and we have lost that. Since I included many pictures of the Gandhi Samriti in the previous blog, I will only include a few in this one.
Read, if you can the Gandhi Talisman. It is inspiring. If only we could live as Gandhi did.
A footpath led to the place of Gandhi's assassination. The location is marked by the simple stone. I walked on a few of the steps before the guard ordered me off. Just wanted to think a minute.

John and I had an argument about the roots of this tree. Someone tell me-are roots really blue?
At the end of the day, what about Delhi did we love: Gandhi Samriti, food (John’s addition, but ok by me) Sufi strangeness. What did we appreciate: friendliness, rich contrasted with (as John says) the poorest of the poor, what colonialism has accomplished in the world, and how tourists are prey. We are used to the prey issue, but the other issues are thought and emotion provoking. Fortunately, John’s meetings and extensive work were about ways to solve some of the health problems, mine were just to keep smiling.
Can we live like Bapu? Probably not.