A Rickshaw Ride Through Old Delhi

Jama Masjid, India's largest mosque embedded within the streets of Old Delhi.
india 137, originally uploaded by Benjamin Long.

My grandpa developed a fascination with peacocks and instead of just dreaming about the exotic birds, he decided to populate the farm with blue-shoulder roosters and hens. Nature took its course and soon there were dozens of peacocks roaming and nesting in the barns, sorting pens and even the front porch. For me, the crowing peacocks did not tell of another world or an enchanted forest in the jungles of India as a Rudyard Kipling book may suggest. The often annoying shrills bellowed out by the beautiful birds meant I was home on the farm getting ready to go fishing, hunting or running through the barn from hay bail to hay bail trying not to fall into a crevice. In India, peacocks are anywhere with just enough green space to let the birds spread their wings. Their early morning singing, annoying I might add, wakes me up every morning from the adjacent nursery to my current home. It brings a smile to my face, if only for a brief moment because it is 6AM. I role back over and think of the farm. That is one of the few things that remind me of home in India. To tell you just how different life can be here I will try to recreate a thirty minute auto-rickshaw ride through Old Delhi I took the other day. It was an adventure in itself.

But first, you need a brief history lesson of Delhi to fully appreciate Old Delhi. Delhi has evolved over the ruins of seven cities, built by rulers from the Hindu Rajputs to the Mughals and finally the British. Old Delhi is the city of the Moghuls, created by Shah Jahan and dating back to the seventeenth century. It’s the capitol’s most frenetic quarter, and it’s most Islamic, a reminder that for more than seven hundred years Delhi was a Muslim city. Its greatest monuments are the magnificent remnants of Moghul empires, the Red Fort and the Jama Masjid, India’s largest mosque. Due to the tremendous economic boom of late, modern suburbs and developments encompass the tombs, temples and ruins that date back centuries; in some cases, the remains of whole cities from the distant past sit happily amid homes and highways built in the last decade or two. With its jam-packed streets, bazaars, tower blocks and temples, forts, mosques and colonial mansions there is a surprise around every corner. It is a place where suit and tie businessmen rub shoulders with traditionally dressed orthodox Hindus and Muslims, and the smell of spices, feces, burning trash, and cow dung fills the air with a rather strange aroma. This is Old Delhi.

“Mujhe Red Fort Chahiye” I try tell to the auto-rickshaw driver in my worst Hindi accent. He looks at me and just smiles. I fear I may have botched the only Hindi words I have been able to learn in a week so I ask him again in English; I want Red Fort! “ Oh, yes…100 rupee,” he tells me holding back a sly grin. No, No, I will give you 20 rupee. 90, 30, 70, 30, 50, 30, 40, ok 40 it’s a deal then. Lets go!

And we’re off in the green and yellow auto-rickshaw that smells of exhaust fumes from the harsh life on the Delhi streets. The streets are soon filled with every beast of burden pulling some sort of cargo; donkeys carrying sandbags for construction projects, mules carrying wagons full of cow dung, camels carrying larger trolleys filled with sacks of potatoes, horses pulling carriages, cows pulling or carrying an assortment of goods, and people pushing carts filled with vegetables. The four marked driving lanes don’t really mean anything since the buses, cars, rickshaws, animals, people, trolleys, mopeds and motorcycles are crammed six or seven across.

Ahh, finally a stop light; everyone will stop after the oncoming traffic honk their horns to signal it is their turn. Silence, if only for a moment because there is a beggar between three and five years old holding a naked infant while rubbing her belly signifying she is hungry and needs food. Children beggars are everywhere. I give in and give her a rupee. My driver then yells at me for perpetuating the problem. The next thing I know she has told her friends and I then have six children beggars swarming my rickshaw. The light turns green. Finally, I can get out of here. The children then must dodge the oncoming traffic that doesn’t slow down because pedestrians are on the bottom of the pecking order on the streets.

The streets get narrower and more congested as we near the heart of Old Delhi. My driver directs my attention to the right where a huge baboon is swinging from electrical lines above the street shops. This was not like the baboons I saw in Africa. This was the city kind that was black from sleeping in back alleys and scavenging through trash. Dreadful looking… but normal here. Make sure you close your hotel windows because they can be good thieves!

Damn! We hit a traffic jam. Everyone laid on their horns even more than they usually do which is a lot. I can’t see what the problem is ahead but the traffic begins to slowly creep along. My driver makes a quick maneuver around the bus in front of us blocking our view. Now way! Three mounted elephants are making their way through the middle of the street causing the traffic jam. We speed by the elephants along with a Land Cruiser, Mercedes and multiple other rickshaws. I was stunned and my driver looked at me and laughed.

Watch out! A cow was in the middle of the road and my driver was laughing, looking at me instead of looking at the road. Cows are the king of the road wandering with, against or across traffic as they please where they always have the right-away. My driver swerves out of the way just in time. The cow remains oblivious to the traffic and elephants going past as it continues to chew its curd in the middle of the road.

I can see the Red Fort, almost there. The traffic becomes even more congested; cow, Lexus, horse and buggy, camel pulling a trolley, Land Rover, three bicycle- rickshaws, five auto-rickshaws, Mercedes E-class, more cows, beggars, touts, donkeys loaded down with sacks, two buffalo… “Red Fort!” my driver yells. I give a hundred rupee note. “No change, no change…I wait you here after tour.” I took my tour and my driver was awaiting my return just as he said. Then, I got to take the second strangest ride of my life back home; second due to the fact I was becoming slightly more accustomed to my surroundings.

First Week In India

india 160, originally uploaded by Benjamin Long.

My first week in India had been eventful to say the least. Two days before I arrived in India, a friend from college hooked me up with her friend, Vik, in Delhi. Vik’s family offered to take me for a couple of days until I get oriented in another new country. It couldn’t have been a better situation because Delhi is quite a hectic place where everyone needs a quiet place to catch their breathe. I got lucky yet again. Thanks Mary.

I didn’t really know what direction I wanted to take with my project in India. There are so many different aspects to investigate with cattle. India has thirty per cent of the world's cattle with twenty six different breeds mixed together. Cows are everywhere! Because the cow is respected as a sacred animal, it's allowed to roam unharmed, and they have grown accustomed to the traffic and the rhythm of the city. So, you can see them roaming the streets in towns and cities, grazing unmindfully on the roadside grass verges and munching away vegetables thrown out by street sellers. As opposed to the West, where the cow is widely considered as nothing more than walking hamburgers, in India, the cow is believed to be a symbol of the earth - because it gives so much yet asks nothing in
return.

For animals powerful enough to stop traffic and holy enough that they’ll never become steak, cows are treated dreadfully. Scrawny and sickly, they survive by grazing on garbage on the street. Due to this maltreatment, different religious organizations in cooperation with the government have set up gosadans (homeless cow shelters). No joke! I plan to visit some of these shelters soon to see them for myself. I have also heard that the city of Delhi has cow catchers to round up the homeless cows and take them to the gosadans. I could see myself wrestling down cows in the streets of Delhi. We’ll see?

Another aspect that has fascinated me is an organization called RSS, composed of members from the extreme right of the Hindu faith. I have heard stories of people following around cows awaiting fresh pee to come pouring out so they can fill up their cups. They believe that a cow’s pee replenishes the body. This is similar to the Maasai’s belief of drinking blood. Both are thought to rejuvenate the body and spirit. I am trying to get in touch with the RSS to see if the rumors are true.

In the time it has taken me to figure out which direction to take, I have been the ultimate tourist visiting numerous temples, mosques, shrines and forts that are scattered across Delhi and the surrounding areas. My favorites have been the ghost city of Fatehpur Sikri, Humayun’s Tomb, Taj Mahal, Jama Masjid, and Nizamuddin Sufi Shrine. Fatephur Sikri was built by the Mogul emperor Akbar to be the imperial capital. After building the city from scratch and living in it for over ten years, they finally figured out there wasn’t enough water to survive. So, they abandoned the capital city and it remains a ghost palace even today. The Taj Mahal is simply incredible due to its size and detailed art work in the white marble. Jama Masjid is the largest mosque in India and I think the largest in Asia as well. On Fridays, it is flooded with people trying to pray inside. Nizamuddin Sufi Shrine is one of the seven required shrines that every Sufi has to visit during pilgrimage. It is hidden within a bustling Islamic neighborhood that the average traveler would never stumble across (I was lucky and had a friend to show me around).

It is also wedding season in Delhi. Hindu weddings are quite the affair with it being more of like the coronation of a new king and queen rather than a matrimonial union. Every night since I have been in India, I have fallen asleep to the thunder of fireworks, blaring Bollywood favorites, and a little Justin Timberlake thrown into the mix as well. I asked my hostess, Praveen, how I could attend one. She smiled and showed me an invitation to a wedding the following night. I was excited. I went out the next day to buy a traditional Indian kurta-pajama and was ready an hour before our scheduled departure. We arrived to the wedding that was in a huge tent with wall to wall carpeting, a neon green, pink and orange dance floor, pink fabric forming small huts and an endless buffet serving India’s favorite dishes. It also turned out that I was one of only four or five men wearing the traditional kurta-pajama with the rest of the men wearing a suit or khakis with a button-down shirt. A great lost in translation/culture moment. After Praveen made me sample every type of food on the endless buffet and I could no longer move, the groom arrived on his noble steed preceded by his dancing family members. His family dances up the entrance with the bride’s family standing flat footed ready to receive the dancing mob. It took the family about an hour to dance up the ten meter long entrance. They were in no hurry and were pulling out some impressive dance moves. I was nodding my head with the music when someone spotted me and pulled me into the mix. I cut a rug for a brief moment and then retreated back to the masses. The bride and groom made their way into the tent and took their places on the red velvet covered chairs on center stage. There were about four hundred people there and that is considered very small. A large wedding reaches well over a thousand in attendance. It was still a great time even if it was “small”.

It has been a busy week getting adjusted. I will be the first to admit that India is not for everyone. It is a land of extremes that are endlessly confronting: rich and poor, pristine and dirty, terrible but incredible, material and spiritual. India can’t be generalized or even be put into a few categories because it has everything and its opposite living side by side. In most countries this incites violence stemming from jealousy or resentment but everyone seems to co-exist here in their own way.

Not an Ordinary Week

Not an Ordinary Week, originally uploaded by Benjamin Long.

My journey from Argentina to India wasn't your typical week in transit experience. To start, I arrived in Sydney the day before the 30th Gay Mardi Gras kicked off. I didn't realize this until I tried to check into multiple hostels upon my arrival into Sydney. All of which flat out rejected me and one receptionist even laughed at my ignorance. Not very nice... Anyway, after a 13 hour flight with no TV to pass the time, I was too tired to get freaked out about my situation. I found myself in an Internet cafe in Chinatown searching for a hostel gracious enough to take me in on such a momentous weekend. In the process I struck up a conversation with an Irishman named Dave. It was only ten in the morning but we headed to the local Irish pub to blow off some steam. What can I say, he’s Irish and drinking is national pastime in Ireland. After a couple of beers, he offered me a place to sleep on his hotel room floor. The thought did cross my mind about his intentions seeing how it was the weekend of Gay Mardi Gras but I had never met or even heard of an alcoholic Irishman that was also gay. I decided to go with it, the story of my life right now. It turned out to be a very nice hotel located on George Street, the main street in downtown Sydney.

Sydney was just voted the most desirable city in the world to live in. I can believe it after visiting. The city is immaculately clean with numerous pristine parks scattered around the city, and then there is Sydney harbor. The harbor is a little piece of heaven where the sun always shines, a breeze always blows in from the harbor and with the Sydney Harbor Bridge and Sydney Opera house providing picturesque portraits that even the most amateur photographer can't screw up. It’s close to paradise in my book. It truly is a great city but also very expensive.

I have never been to Mardi Gras back in the States or to Carnival in Brazil, but I can now say I have been to Gay Mardi Gras in Oz (Oz is the shortened hip saying for Australia). With over 10,000 people participating in the parade, I have never seen so many jock straps, speedos, ass-less chaps, the color pink and black leather in a variety of forms in all my life with the constant background music of Kylie Minogue's greatest hits. That being said, it was an amazing sight to see. Many of the floats had political and religious overtones to go along with the liberating outfits. "Gay Is The New Black" and "Would Jesus Discriminate" are the two saying that I remember the most. The streets were jam packed with eager onlookers to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the event. The parade lasted for hours. We decided to leave a little early and as we were making our way through the maze of people, we somehow managed to find ourselves on a side street where the floats were preparing to depart. There is where we got a up close and personal look at all of the floats; very different but clever to say the least. It was a great event all together with a very international crowd of participants enjoying the freedom to express themselves openly. It was a great event.

Over the next three days I was able to catch some sun on famous Bondi beach, explore the Blue Mountains which just make me homesick, and managed to catch a nasty stomach bug, a precursor to Delhi Belly that awaits me in India. I caught a 15 hour flight to Abu Dhabi, the richest city in the world, only to get stuck in the airport for 13 hours awaiting my flight to India. I cleared customs and tried to find a hotel room in the city but after five hotels were booked solid and the cheapest of them was asking $125US a night, I informed my taxi driver to drive 45 minutes back to the airport where we began our fruitless journey. Along the way I was able to gaze out the window at the second largest mosque in the world lit up at night, a magical sight, and the city itself. I now know whose coffers are filled with all of the money I spent filling up my Toyota Tacoma with gas for so long. Abu Dhabi is quite a sight, even at night.

In one week I traveled from the Paris of South America, Buenos Aires, to the most desirable city to call home, Sydney, via the richest city in the world, Abu Dhabi, and have finally made it to one of the most polluted hectic and bizarre places on Earth, Delhi. I think I am going in the wrong direction when I put it like that?

There was a poster in my freshman English classroom in college that depicted the globe turned upside down that said something to the effect, “The New World.” I always loved the poster but I am just now learning to appreciate its meaning. I can now understand what is means after being crammed into a rickety old rickshaw zigzagging through Delhi traffic sweating at the numerous close encounters to my drivers amusement as he looks me through the rear view mirror while still holding his hand firmly on the horn for no apparent reason while dodging weary pedestrians, begging children, nomad cattle and countless motorcycles weaving in out of the madness. It is organized chaos in the truest sense of the word. The world has been turned on its head for me once again. Now it is time to try to make sense of it all.