Being in The Real India

The trip from New York to Delhi took about 27 hours, door-to-door, and since Sunday passed our plane in the night (that's what happens when the sun is going westward and you're flying the other way) we left on Saturday but arrived on Monday. An extremely motherly country coordinator was there to greet us and get settled into a hostel for our first two days.

And it was after that, after a few foggy days of jet lag and orientation, that we stepped out from the metro into the wonder-world that is Old Delhi. Transported back at least a hundred years from the exceptionally clean, exceptionally silent Japanese-designed subway system, a full-fledged bazaar of the East came to greet every one of our senses. Merchants selling wares; streets too small for the oxen that strode through them; men gathering to stare at the strange group of 32 young people clearly out of place. Authenticity. Finally, we had arrived.

Okay, so that last paragraph may have sounded a little...odd. "Problematic," "exoticized," "essentialized," and "irresponsibly simplistic and/or Orientalist" might be some fancier academic synonyms for "odd." And that was sort of the point. Because, you see, despite what years of rigorous study, critical self-reflection, and a whole lot of time spent getting used to political correctness might have done to me - and to the rest of this interesting and interested group of students on IHP - a lot of us still found that this was the immediate, exhilarating, beautifully romantic way that we first saw this part of town.

"Old" Delhi is actually the second-youngest of at least half a dozen major cities that have occupied this plot of land over the last 5,000 years - and on top of that, it's said that this "city of cities" actually comprises seven different cities, all of which have been absorbed into its geographical mass as the urban population expanded from a less than 1 million in 1947, to about 16 million today.

And so I've already had the chance to see many other sides of Delhi: the bachelor's pad that is my home-stay. The hilarious but fascinating academic panel on a feminist book written by an Indian author (Seeing Like A Feminist - sounds fantastic so check it out!) that I accidentally wandered into while looking for a poetry reading. The stock exchange building across the street from the old-school market near the train station that carries extremely packed cars along the world's greatest rail system that runs a few kilometers away from the tourist-y craft spot where I bought a fun shirt to wear to the wedding where I am pretty sure a sixteen-year-old boy was hitting on me. There's a lot here - but let me indulge in a little well-deserved romanticizing of Old Delhi anyway.

You walk along narrow boulevards lined with shops and food and an incredible number of human beings. Above you, the monkeys who have infiltrated the city climb along the masses of cables that carry electricity, Internet, phones, and who knows what else into buildings over a hundred and fifty years old. The smells change second-by-second as you stroll past highly specialized shops: That's the bread frying that you smell there. Now it's the scent off the thousands of bars of soap from the soap store. And the slightly more chemical smell of hair products from the barber cutting hair in between the street and the sidewalk. Here's more frying bread - mixed in with chai tea brewing across the way.

You think your tour guide has gone missing but then you realize that he's just disappeared into a long, thin, pitch-black corridor that runs the length of the shops, emerges into a courtyard that houses two ATMS for the National Punjab Bank - and a little guy with a big grin who apparently runs a legendary sandwich shop out of the cart you just passed.

Look up, and a mass of metal rods and things that look like speakers are really the cell phone tower that the homeowner has rented out to the cell phone company. Look to your right, and you'll see one of the dozens of wedding card shops that are famous the world over - whether you want invitations made of carved wood filled with chocolates, or just some nice paper instead, this is the place Indians come to whether they live in Delhi, in Rajasthan, or even in the USA.

This place is romantic not because it feeds into all of our Western, pre-conceived notions of what India is and should be. Well, okay, that aspect is certainly at play - but it feels romantic also because it feels more honest. I say "honest" (as opposed to "authentic" or "real") because, after a few hours of strolling and a few more just sitting and watching it, I think that even though no place can be objectively "real," at least this one feels honest.

Old Delhi bears its past in plain view, whether it means to or not - you can see this in the massive and diverse commerce taking place, in the pre-colonial architectural styles on the first story of a structure that suddenly morph into British-style building on the second. You see an incredibly long, complicated historical context of a place displayed on every surface. It's not any more "real" than the rest of India - it's just got more context than that Dior billboard over there, or the Greco-Roman "India Gate."

Other adventures, this one in space...

...and my one-dollar haircut!