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New Delhi, India – Welcome to India! A million different stories in one day. I can’t possibly track the deluge of experiences, emotions, and encounters that weave within and without me in one day in New Delhi. And I am just one person. Multiply that by over 10 million people, each having their own million stories, every day in the city. I can’t do the math. In its compressed diversity, its long long history, India is a microcosm of the whole joyous and terrible human drama. And I’ve just arrived in its capitol city- New Delhi.
From the states, I had booked a room and a driver to meet me at the airport. The driver never showed, so I took a cab for the 17km drive to the heart of Delhi in the main bazaar. It was late, and we tore out into the thick and suffocating smog, honking and charging into impossibly tight spaces, missing by centimeters countless taxis, trucks, motorcycles, auto rickshaws, bicycles, carts, pedestrians. No one seemed to pay attention to the traffic signals. Smaller bikes and scooters drove on the wrong side, pushing against the oncoming flow. Everyone honked and squeezed and blasted forward in the smoky dark. I was wide-eyed and immediately disoriented by this harrowing dance, this different way of moving, the fractal logic of the swarm.
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There is the swarm, and there is the hustle. Everyone from small boy, to college student, to old man, tradesman, beggar, clean, dirty, seems to be in on the game. There is no hiding that you are newly arrived. You are clean and doe-eyed. As a foreigner arriving in Delhi for the first time, there is no moment of peace. The swarm saddles along beside you as you walk down the Main Bazaar, smiling broadly and making conversation: “What is your good name, sir? First time in India? WELCOME TO INDIA!” Touts, beggars, voices, come flying at you from all sides, hands held out, goods thrust in your face. Everyone wants money. It’s impossible to give to them all, or even acknowledge them all. You have to arm yourself with a new and unsettling mind-skill, pushing all those demands for your attention into the background, until they are just more details amongst trillions of details on the street in Delhi. You have to make a kind of cocoon, and the game for all the beggars, hustlers, sellers, and drug dealers is to break that cocoon, steal your attention, and set the hook. (more…)
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