Dilli wali life

Moving to a new city has it's share of perks and pitfalls.This time around I have decided to brave the heart of the North Indian hinterland, rajdhaani Dilli. Comparisons to other places where I have spent most of my life are ready to spring to the forefront of my mind, especially since I'm moving from Bombay (I refuse to call it Mumbai)which has been part of an eternal megacity (Delhi vs Bombay) debate.

Delhi feels like a big city. The metro is a-mazing. I can't imagine what life would have been like, living in this sprawling metropolis, where distances are so much greater than Bombay, before the metro era. Announcements inside the metro include a plea to refrain from sitting on the floor of the train. My mind goes back to the plea in Bombay, to not travel on the roof of the train, as it may result in an unpleasant and untimely demise of the commuter. What a change.

The women's compartment here is marked by a very distinct sign board of pink with white flowers as a background for a flowy sort of font that says "women only". It's an eyesore. In a city with remarkably well designed signage, clean, crisp and very well maintained; this is just out of place. Wouldn't a woman symbol have sufficed, I wonder? More troublesome is the thought that most women might not feel this twinge of indignation at this kind of visual stereotyping. Or maybe i'm just crazy.
Feminist musings aside, I hope this signage changes soon. Just remove the flowers maybe...and change the font. I can make my peace with pink. 
(Another completely disconnected thought : The women here are remarkably well dressed.Ah the travails of trying to fit in..Sigh.)

Photo credit: http://anuradhagoyal.blogspot.com/

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I spent the first weekend here house hunting in Noida. But I was determined to get some time off from the mundane task to get the new city feel. So off to Connaught Place we went. A lunch and some window shopping later, we headed towards Indira Gandhi National centre for the arts. What a place. It has a sprawling campus( I'm not accustomed to this display of space and magnitude after the time spent in the tiny bylanes of Bandra). The North-Eastern art festival was on and folksy soft rock sounds floated towards us as we traversed to the CV Mess, where we wanted to see an exhibit of Indian audio visual archives. The magnitude of material to browse through in the interactive kiosks was staggering. Old recordings, video, photos of celebrated Indian musicians, artists, poets and dancers. In the hour I spent there, even as the realisation of my extremely limited knowledge of Indian art/music/dance/literature slowly dawned upon me, I saw how empty the place was. As we signed out of the exhibit, we saw the number of people who had visited this awesome wealth and repository of culture. It didn't reach 3 figures. 

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Momos! Finally a street food that I love, that I craved for in Bombay and is so readily available to me here.Also the aloo ki tikki, which is best had in north india. I could never wrap my head around the ragda chat and golgappas filled with warm matar while I was there.This is the food I know and I grew up on. Ratatouille moment happened. 
The weather is pleasing(for now). I'll keep a bottle of brandy in my closet for the coming months. The Delhi winter is coming. Bring it on.

If stones could speak, what would they say?

Ahmedabad is a strangely attractive city. I say strange because its attractions (a lot of them) aren’t what one would call beautiful in the conventional sense of the word. So, yes, I visited the darwazas of the old city and the jama masjid today. Architecturally, these sites are a delight. But more than appreciating the motifs and carvings on the walls or pillars, more than marvelling about the structural strength and the workmanship of these sites; I loved the fact that they were a part of a long and colourful history, and the contrasts that were so enthralling to observe.

The roads were teeming with people, bursting at its seams with the variety of shops, goods that ranged from handkerchiefs to antique bells, from Christmas decorations to rat traps. 

Teen darwaza and the surrounding market and its gullis are a delight for any kind of shopper, the compulsive as well as the practical one. The air is filled with smoke and intermittent honking of the horn from a consistent stream of traffic that plies through these lanes. At short, sharp intervals though, one can hear a particularly loud Gujrati lady haggling with a seller or smell soap, or ittar or maybe even fresh biscuits being baked at a corner bakery place.

The darwazas stand like proud royal guards of an era gone by, watching over a city that had slowly and steadily changed its appearance and priorities over the decades. The spirit though, seems something that has undergone very minimal change at all. The people don’t seem to run, they still seem to have time to talk to each other, or maybe even smile at an unknown stranger. The darwazas- Dilli, Prem, Daryapur, Lal and Kalupar; are places of bustling activity. 

If one was to say that a sanctuary of peace and quiet existed right in the middle of Teen darwaza, I wouldn’t really believe them.But jama masjid manages to surprise me immensely. I feel gratitude for the fact that despite being a woman, I am still allowed inside the sacred premises of this wonderful mosque. The huge empty space inside, the countless pillars, the water construct in the center, the flapping of the pigeons’ wings, the atmosphere of reverence and tranquillity, the intricate and beautifully done carvings; all contribute to making jama masjid a place that is not just a building with great architecture, but an experience that needs to be sensed.

Picture: Front facade, Dilli darwaza