Delhi Days

A peak into the daily adventure that is New Delhi:


I go to the juice man in the market to get a cup of freshly squeezed juice. These juice stands are all over every city in India, I’m just fortunate to have one just a short walk from my flat. My juice costs Rs15 (a whopping $0.30USD) but the smallest bill I have is RS100 note ($2USD). Instead of giving me RS85 in change, he hands me the money back. “Change?” he asks.
He’s asking me for change! Nobody in this city will ever break a bill.

It’s just another day in Delhi.

The kids who play outside of my flat look at me with big innocent eyes, begging me to play. So I stop and give them some needed love for a few minutes. Then, when I say “bye bye” Aman, the oldest one, pulls my scarf off and runs away. While this is annoying, I’d rather have him do that then pull on my pants…the other day I was wearing loose pants with an elastic waste and my pants almost ended up at my ankles. But this time, his dad comes out and hits him for taking my scarf.

There isn’t anything I can do about it…it’s just another day in Delhi.

I try to barter with a rickshaw driver. I want to go somewhere where the cost should be only Rs50. He asks for Rs100. I look at him like he’s crazy. He explains he needs 50 extra because he “must make a U-Turn.” I tell him there are many other rickshaw drivers and he can take me for Rs50 or not at all. Sometimes he takes me, sometimes, I get in the next rickshaw instead.
The driver assures me he knows where he is going. He isn’t totally lying…he knows when he gets out of the rickshaw at the stoplight ten minutes later to ask for directions. If he’s found he’s going the wrong way “No Problem!” he just will drive on the wrong side of the road until we get to our destination. This usually isn’t a problem, except for when his headlight is out and we’re on a road filled with big-rigs.

Sometimes he stops to get water or chewing tobacco, to call “his girlfriend,” or to pee on the side of the road. He always sings, and has pictures of half naked bollywood stars, usually a man on the left (usually Shah Rukh Khan) and a woman on the right, cut out in the shape of a heart, taped to his mirror. The mirror which he only uses to steal glances at the white girls in his rickshaw, not for the road.

If he’s ripped us off, he’ll yell at his friends “Hauz Khas Apartments! Special Price!” If he’s picked us up at a rickshaw stand, he’ll bring his friends over to meet us.

“From where you from?”
“How you find India?”
“You so beautiful!”

It’s just a normal rickshaw ride in Delhi.

My fellow volunteer, Tom, a 62 year old Scot, is on his way to work when a car catches on fire next to him. Being a normal traffic day in Delhi, there is nowhere for the CCS driver, Kewal, to go. As Tom prepares for an explosion, perhaps with him as a part of it, the light miraculously turns green and Kewal puts the pedal to the metal. Behind them, there are flames and a lot of smoke.

The traffic in Delhi makes LA, the Washington Beltway, or the Bay Bridge at rush hour seem easy breezy. A trip across the city can take over two hours. Traffic lanes mean nothing here, and in a rickshaw, I can reach out and touch the person in the rickshaw next to me. Sometimes I fear a loss of limbs from the big-rig that barrels past us.

It’s just a normal day in Delhi.

Some volunteers and new-found friends and I venture out to a new part of the city in search of a bar. No bars there, drinking isn’t so big in India. Oh well. We find a fun and hip café with good food and hookah. On our way home we see a tent set up in a park in our apartment complex. The girls and I linger outside of the tent long enough for someone to notice us.

“Come in!” he says. We politely protest, but he asks again and so we enter the tent. It’s wedding season, and colourful tents are set up around the city. We hadn’t found a wedding, but rather a “mehindi night” or one of the parties leading up to a wedding for the women to celebrate. Mehindi is henna, and the guests generously allowed us to get henna on our hands.

Wedding season is in full force, and at night, the fireworks announcing a groom’s arrival are so close I can feel it in my chest in the flat. At the wedding I attended (not the one I crashed) the fireworks were so close (and poorly made) that one small falling flame just barely missed my hair.

It’s just another normal day, another crazy adventure in Delhi.