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The guard fidgets nervously with his gun as he patrols the sanctum sanctorum of India’s monument to the Unknown Soldier. In his early twenties, he keeps a sharp lookout for tourists who might cross the chain link fence. Delhi, in recent years, has been the target of several terrorist attacks and the administration is understandably cautious.
Children pull themselves free of their parents’ grasps and scamp er about darting between the array of camera toting foreigners and trinket sellers. The Cotton-Candy boy approaches me. Three sticks for rupees ten, he implores me to buy some. I have a sweet tooth but forego the temptation. I have never perfected the art of eating it without getting my face and hands sticky.
I look down Rajpath and see the domes of the Rashtrapati Bhavan and the Secretariat bobbing about like buoys in the sea of smog that hangs over Delhi. Kaa points to his beard, newly acquired since we last met. By trapping smog and dust particles when he bikes to work and releasing them when he showers, he explains, it converts air pollution to water pollution. I am impressed by his altruism. We walk down Rajpath towards the Metro station as workers put up tiered seats on the lawns that border the avenue in preparation for the Republic day parade. Smriti stops to photograph the yellow flowers on the sidewalk. This is her favorite part of the city, she says.
Delhiites are proud of their new underground Metro and justifiably so. The service is clean, fast and efficient. I am surprised by the ease and confidence with which commuters negotiate the maze of escalators. Five years ago, you could find them only at airports. Now they are ubiquitous. We walk through metal detectors at the entrance and a security guard checks my backpack. Once on the platform, we are bombarded by a steady stream of admonishments. Do not step on the tracks. Do not litter. Do not befriend strangers. Report suspicious activities. Report “laawaris bacche”. The last, I find particularly poignant. Perhaps the Metro is off limit to the shivering street kids who might wander in seeking respite from the biting cold of the Delhi winter.
 Despite having lived in Delhi for about twenty years, Smriti has never been to Chandni Chowk. She is as wide eyed as me as we wander though the crowded street towards Lal Quila, the Red Fort. Little shop lined alleys lead off from the main street into various parts of the Old city. After a security check, which is now de rigueur in all tourist places, we are allowed to enter the Red Fort. At the souvenir bazaar just inside the Fort, I stop to peer at an exquisite Mughal-style miniature painting. It’s a hunting scene, with a nobleman on elephant back spearing a tiger through the heart. Black bucks and peacocks romp around in the surrounding lush forests. An original, the owner informs me, yours for only three hundred rupees. Kaa smiles and I smile back. Coffee stains carefully arranged don’t quite make up for antiquity. A friend from Allahabad once told me about the local carpet weavers who laid out their newly woven Persian carpets on the Grand Trunk road. A day under the heavy trucks plying this route would add the wear and tear of centuries and the carpets could then be palmed off as originals to rich Arabs.
We wander around the lawns and marble pavilions inside the Fort till our legs ache. We sit in the soft grass and watch as hundreds of pigeons suddenly take flight between the marble domes of the Diwan-e-Khaas. I reach for my camera just in time to catch a few stragglers in the frame. All the walking has made us hungry and we head out looking for the famous Parathewali Galli.
Since several months before my visit, I had been pestering all the Dilliwallas I knew back at Stanford for recommendations about the must see places in the city. Parathewali Galli had invariably been on everyone’s list. The street takes its name from the delicious stuffed flatbreads (parathas) that are served in the restaurants which line the street. Just off Chan dni Chowk we enter a narrow street which turns sharply to the right and are greeted by the smell of hot ghee. The parathas served here are not baked as is the norm but deep fried in pure ghee. Kaa has been here before and leads the charge. We enter the establishment of Pandit Gaya Prasad Shiv Charan which has been in business since 1872. The cook sits near the entrance on the left and the cashier on the right. We squeeze past the two and seat ourselves at bare wooden tables packed so close together that I suck in my breath as I slide into my chair. In the next half hour we diligently eat our way down the menu with heads bowed low over our plates. We finish up with some remarkably frothy lassi served in mud khullars. By this time we are stuffed but Smriti recommends that we make one last stop on our gastronomic tour. We hail a cycle rickshaw and head off in the direction of the Jama Masjid.
The streets around Jama Masjid are lined with eateries which specialize in biryanis and sheek kababs. Islam requires its adherents to use a percentage of their income to feed the poor and as we head down a narrow alley, we see throngs of beggars huddled outside restaurants. A kababwala to our right, catches Smriti’s eye. The man sits inside a little depression in the ground with only his head visible above street level. Skewers of kababs are smoking over a bed of coals in front of him. With deft fingers he scoops up small portions of spiced minced meat and presses them around iron skewers holding the meat in place with wet twine. The smoke from the coals stings my eyes but I dare not shift my position for fear of being swept away in the stream of rickshaws and motor bikes that whiz past. A woman in a pink salwar kameez waiting for her order, turns to speak to us. These are the be st kababs in Delhi she says, better than those in any five star hotel. As we dig into our kababs served over a bed of grated radishes and onion rings, I cannot agree more.
Kaa and Smriti love theater and suggest we catch a play at the India Habitat Center. A ride in the Metro to Central Secratariat followed by an autorickshaw ride should take us there. We walk to the Chawri Chowk Metro station. Above street level, the station shows up as a glass dome in the middle of a busy intersection. Cycle rickshaws, hand drawn carts and motor cycles circle around the dome which doubles up as a traffic island. The juxtaposition of the old and the new is remarkable. Nineteenth century Old Delhi seems to swirl around one last time as it disappears into the wormhole to the twenty first century.
The India Habitat Center is hosting a play by a troupe from Kirori Mal College. Before the play starts, we wander around inside the IHC. In one of the galleries, an artist is exhibiting a series of pencil and charcoal sketches. Middle aged women in elegant sarees and bindis the size of large coins closely scrutinize her work. The artist is being interviewed by a young journalist with a camera around his neck. Another gallery further down, exhibiting oil paintings, is shutting down for the night. We take our seats around an outdoor stage and wait for the play to begin. The play, titled Holi, is about a dispute between students in a residential college and their principal over the suspension of a fellow student. The story takes an ugly turn when one of the students is accused of siding with the authorities and is stripped down to his underwear and mercilessly beaten. I am surprised and somewhat disgusted by this gratuitous display of violence. During a previous performance of the same play, Kaa tells me, the audience had stepped in to stop the violence. No such luck today, the audience is too shocked to interfere. I avert my eyes and look away as the smog rolls in.
The travelogue and photos were contributed by Chinmay
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