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I am still not dead. The weather in Delhi is less horrible than it was in the weeks before I arrived, but still fairly punishing. I have bought a lot of books and read a lot of roadsigns and spent long, long hours on Shatabdi, watching the landscape whip by in a neverending sequence of paddy fields and bare light bulbs.
Delhi is supposed to be more civilised than Himachal, and it is in some ways; but at other times it seems to strangely, self-consciously hip, and hollow, too, considering the poverty being swept about the streets but never removed, like moving the dust around a room. In Himachal I went to a Hanuman mandir at the top of a mountain, 500m climbing straight up, and at the top you couldn't see the ground, only layers of cloud and rain beneath, and patchwork toy cities, and the border posts and barbed wire and the valleys going down into China. It was perfect and pure up there - the lone stray dog was being fed prasad by the pilgrims and seemed serene, as stray dogs and humans go - and back on the Deccan, it's raining but hot and argumentative and I'm getting twitchy.
There is so much noise. I miss my life left behind, but it seems like it belonged to a different person, as always happens. I miss going out on my own. I like the food, though, all spiced and perfect, even tomato soup and oversweetened coffee, and I like eating mangoes the way they ought to be eaten, sweet and dripping and gloriously, gloriously, ten-rupee-a-kilo abundant. I like the heightened colour of the sky, and the flowers, geraniums and tulips and roses by day and jasmine by night. I like the twilight that doesn't come, day becoming night in a minute's rush of darkness.
I don't like the dust, and the noise, and the horrible, horrible feeling of NRI privilege.
Five more days. I don't know how I feel about it.
Delhi is supposed to be more civilised than Himachal, and it is in some ways; but at other times it seems to strangely, self-consciously hip, and hollow, too, considering the poverty being swept about the streets but never removed, like moving the dust around a room. In Himachal I went to a Hanuman mandir at the top of a mountain, 500m climbing straight up, and at the top you couldn't see the ground, only layers of cloud and rain beneath, and patchwork toy cities, and the border posts and barbed wire and the valleys going down into China. It was perfect and pure up there - the lone stray dog was being fed prasad by the pilgrims and seemed serene, as stray dogs and humans go - and back on the Deccan, it's raining but hot and argumentative and I'm getting twitchy.
There is so much noise. I miss my life left behind, but it seems like it belonged to a different person, as always happens. I miss going out on my own. I like the food, though, all spiced and perfect, even tomato soup and oversweetened coffee, and I like eating mangoes the way they ought to be eaten, sweet and dripping and gloriously, gloriously, ten-rupee-a-kilo abundant. I like the heightened colour of the sky, and the flowers, geraniums and tulips and roses by day and jasmine by night. I like the twilight that doesn't come, day becoming night in a minute's rush of darkness.
I don't like the dust, and the noise, and the horrible, horrible feeling of NRI privilege.
Five more days. I don't know how I feel about it.
