Personal

The romance of a Delhi summer can be savored by conjuring up just one image – the vast cool corridors of Connaught Place.

The Raj era building, built between 1928 and 1934 – though formally opened in 1931, was based on the designs of World War I veteran Robert Tor Russell, Chief architect to the Public Works Department. Russell had worked in India before the War as an assistant to the famous John Begg, who along with George Wittet is generally credited for developing the Indo-Sarcenic style. Thankfully, due to exigency or choice, none of the Begg’s influence invaded Russell’s design aesthetic, which was dominated by the understated yet stately stucco neo-classical style popularized by Sir Edwin Lutyens. Russell’s aesthetic however did carry distinct echoes of Italian architecture- The opulent gracefully executed Tuscan loggias on both on both levels (the upper level structures have been increasingly converted into offices) being the defining features of Connaught Place.

Growing up in the eighties, Connaught Place, with its massive arcaded colonnades, circular columnar geometry which was never oppressive, upscale if slightly dowdy shops (as opposed to ‘upscale’ shops now which have interior designs that are almost always preternaturally youthful) with humming air conditioners (when air conditioners were a rarity) – was a constant source of wonder and awe. It was also the only place where one saw foreigners in Delhi – they, almost always in their sunglasses and shorts, walking unhurriedly yet purposefully.

Going to Connaught Place meant going through India Gate and parts of Lutyens Delhi. As we neared India gate, the temperature dropped a few degrees as bus gathered pace and air shed its molten edge in the leafy embrace of trees, and over the grassy expanse of the maidans. Suddenly the furrowed brow of the bus passengers relaxed as we entered the non-gridlocked, beautiful, stately, tree lined Delhi, and a near bonhomie was restored.

Getting down at Barakhamba Road, I remember always taking a few seconds to take in the faint yet pleasant excitement of being in this glorious commercial hub, feeling happy, and almost dreamily becoming aware of the pleasant rush of traffic and how the car horns sounded different – more sonorous, here. However, the two things that I remember most about going to Connaught Place are the shoe shops and Nirula’s. If mom wanted a sandal, it had to be from the Liberty shop in Connaught Place, and the Bata shop there was considered absolutely irreplaceable for men’s shoes. The air-conditioned Nirula’s with its exotic pizzas, which never tasted good but were ravenously consumed, and burgers, and ice-creams was heaven, albeit a heaven in which the feet and heart were as timorous as excitement complete.

On the way back home at night, happy with the day, the relatively empty bus with its dull yellow light seemed positively romantic. As we passed the ice-cream wallahs with their fluorescent lights covered in colored cellophane, and the strolling families, near India gate, the adventure was complete.

Hindu pride: Akshardham “spiritual theme park”

The huge red sandstone and marble monument, visible from the nearby highway, stands alone, proud, and out of place.

The local road abutting the walled complex has a few informal ‘check points’ where men in plain clothes check cars. As our Maruti Zen lurches into the ‘complex’, the true enormity of the ‘operation’ – the beehive of activity that keeps this place running – becomes clear. The complex employs at least a few hundred people (almost all men), mostly young, eager, full of self importance, and too prone to giving directions where none are necessary. The job of frisking visitors, shepherding them through metal detectors, collecting parking tickets, maintaining order, among other things, at this massive complex clearly leaves the workers flush with tepid excitement akin to what one feels when one stands in the back lines of a violent mob.

Swaminarayan Akshardham temple complex in Delhi is a large red sandstone-and-white marble structure built on a 100 acre plot on the Yamuna riverbed, opposite the disintegrating dingy hovels and narrow lanes of Pandav Nagar. The prodigiously carved temple, which took about five years to build and reportedly employed over 7,000 artisans during its construction, cost around Rs 2 billion (or about $50 million).

The construction of this gargantuan complex right on the dried up riverbed attracted the ire of environmentalists concerned about its impact on the river’s future sustainability. Their protests seemed a bit misplaced given that Yamuna is not more than a sickly nallah, and isn’t expected to do much better in the future. However, it is widely believed amongst the knowledgeable elite that construction of the temple, as the first building on the riverbed, was a master move by babus at the Delhi Development Authority interested in opening up the riverbed for commercial development. Being a temple, the structure will never be torn down, and under in aegis corporate developers can furnish claims for future development. The plan seems to have borne fruit with a Commonwealth Village for Commonwealth games scheduled in 2010 scheduled to come up next to the temple complex in the very near future.

The temple is run by the Swami Narayan trust or more precisely, the Bochasanvasi Aksharpurushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS). The current leader of the group, Pramukh Swami Maharaj (which roughly translates to ‘leader’ ’saint’ ‘king’ respectively), is credited with inspiration for the temple. Apparently the guru had a vision in which he saw a temple near the banks of Yamuna, an erstwhile preserve of Mughal monuments, and voila in a few years, the dream was realized. A useful biography of this great man can be conveniently found on the web.

The complex, featuring a Disneyland kind 12-minute boat ride to allow visitors to sail through displays of Indian culture, and a large food court serving everything from Burgers (vegetarian) to Dosas, takes its name from the Akshardham temple in Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. The temple in Gujarat was the site of a deadly bomb attack, and hostage drama in 2002. Given the history, the temple in Delhi features extraordinary security measures – people are barred from taking in any electronic equipment, they are frisked thoroughly, and even asked to open up their wallets for inspection (strictly inspection, fortunately).

The Swaminarayan temple complex is a strange mix of architecture styles, ranging from Deccan to Mughal to Mewari. The intricately carved marble interiors are reminiscent of opulent Mughal tombs and palaces, the main building’s red sandstone facade seems to pay ode to Deccan style temples (most prominently Meenakshi temple in its ostentatious carving), while the boundary wall and supporting structure seem to be inspired by a mixture of Mewari and Mughal styles. Walking on the tiled pathways perpendicularly crossing its wide lawns (reminiscent of Mughal garden layout), dotted with garish faux roman (painted cast iron with paint starting to peel) sculptures narrating major Hindu allegories, and showcasing prominent Hindu mythological figures, I still vividly remember catching myself staring at a boundary wall that seemed deceptively similar to Red Fort’s. Similarities to Mughal architecture aren’t that surprising given that Mughal architecture itself borrows heavily from (Hindu) architecture in Rajasthan during the 16th century, but the effect is ironic indeed.

The temple exteriors seem to have been carved to inspire awe rather than convey a more aesthetic sense of beauty. The impulse to impress is most clearly seen inside the carved white marble interior sanctum, generally the most unadorned place in a Hindu temple - in line with the philosophy that devotees symbolically leave the world behind at the sanctum and enter a distraction free meditative space. The effect of all the embellishment seems strangely contrived, much like that of sets from religious mythological shows on television.

More pointedly, as a monument to both Hindu pride and ‘Shining India’, it is appropriately both a religious monument and a theme park. Hindu pride stares at emptily from the narrative sculptural montages, the embellished shell, and the self-satisfied awed masses that congregate here while ‘Shining India’ gleams in its insipidity in the food court, in the boat ride, in the musical fountains, and in the multimedia museum devoted to Hindu mythology catastrophically crossed with Indian history. But then it is mere natural progression from gaudy television dramas based on religious epics to gaudy monuments inspired by the same mythological television dramas. It is a mere natural downward progression - to be precise- towards a not-so-unique blend of pride, philistinism, money, religious fervor, and entertainment.

Bemoaning Delhi

Delhi doesn’t look like anything. It is amorphous, and as misshapen as only third world cities can be. It is but a mass of hutments, box like houses built to occupy every available inch of space (and a couple more created by bribery) crammed together across narrow lanes interspersed by indifferent wide diseased roads full of traffic and nauseous fumes, covered in brownish dust that suffuses the air, with a deathly sun beating over it.

People live in this place – a lot of them - but it isn’t that the city was created for them. Instead people have wrested savagely whatever little piece they can. And the combined savagery of poverty and corrupt government has created this tired undifferentiated mass of bricks, tar, garbage, and people.

It is as if the houses have come up, lanes been laid, roads built, with no thought, or care except the most pressing, the most basic one – to live. To talk of architecture is presumption, and to talk about the city’s “character” an even more absurd pretension still. It is nauseating to see Delhi through the goggle-eyed Western view of third-world – even their pictures of poverty with cute children with distended bellies due to malnutrition are exotic. There is nothing exotic about Delhi – no mystery that is lurking beneath its hutments, or its Nirulas, or behind the empty eyes of its ‘upwardly mobile’ middle class. Not that the brand conscious or the carefully brand weary middle class in West has something to boast about. But leave the pretensions home.

Delhi is there – people are living, driving, pissing on the disintegrating walls plastered with tattered posters that line some of its streets, fucking in their bedrooms, and coming out blank eyed in the morning from their cells. It is a city of elbows and impatience. It is a city full of people bent upon joylessly eating, and consuming, to fill that enormous chasm that opens up when you live such warped lives. It is a city of broken men, and women – with distended pot-bellies, cracked hands, and tired disfigured faces. And no – they don’t want your fucking sympathy, or even your ‘understanding’ for there is nothing to understand, they exist only to dig up another day from the bowels of another sleepless night.

There is no redemption in Delhi, even for the rich. Why should there be? Rich can hide in air-conditioned cocoons but must give in and sadistically abuse their servants, generally young boys 10-12 years old - if the nimbupani isn’t cold enough.

Since the north excels in aborting female fetuses, and ‘protective’ attitudes towards women by their parents, and predatory attitudes towards them by young males stifle their movement, you only see hordes of young men on the road. Since there is little impetus to implement child labor laws, kids sell – sometimes surprisingly high-end books to people who will never read them but will talk about them– at red lights.

Delhi, as Dalrymple points out during one of his sane moments in the largely delusional novel dedicated to the city ‘City of Djinns’, is a refugee city. Delhi, until the economic reforms for mid 90s, was defined by two things – entrepreneurial Punjabi refugees who came after partition and built their lives piece by piece, and the largish babudom. Post ‘95, it increasingly became a grotto for the myriad poor - predominantly from North India, and simultaneously an embodiment of Delhi government’s aspirations, and the rich Indians’ aspirations, both mediated by the reality of poverty, corruption, philistinism, and greed. Both aspirations fed each other, as they still do, to sap soul out of the city – leeching the richer neighborhoods of languorous bungalows shaded by Gulmohar trees, and with walls draped by Bougainvilleas – carefully replacing them with multi-storied boxes, replacing town roads with enormous highways to accommodate the rapidly multiplying cars, and tearing down some of the poor localities and eviscerating small businesses based on their ‘unauthorized’ status. Whatever vestiges of culture Delhi clung on to were preyed upon and consumed during the last decade or so as Delhi grew one enormous housing project - endless grid like arrays of shabby quality 4-5 story flats- after another. The taps dried as water shortage became more acute, and now aunties in ‘good’ neighborhoods rejoice if they get water for three hours every day. The sad part is that Delhi is the capital city and boasts of some of the best infrastructure that the country has to offer. There may be some joy still. The umbra of carnage wreaked over the past decade may still yield to the faint light of the globalized penumbra. After all McDonald’s is here and Ronald, the jovial and orange clown, seems inclined to show us the way to perennial peace and civilization.

A marble tomb called ‘Shining India’

The Singapore Airlines flight SQ 408 landed at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi at 8:45pm, a full 15 minutes ahead of schedule. Unfortunately, there was no gate available to greet the early arrival. After waiting for about 15 minutes, a gate was found and the weary passengers started “deplaning” into a stale-aired tunnel devoid of any air conditioning.

Passing through it, we reached a smallish marble-floored concourse also devoid of functioning air-conditioning. India is perhaps one of the few nations in the world where the government spends, what is undoubtedly, an exorbitant amount of money to cover the floor with marble, and then leaves the air-conditioning unplugged. Marble in my memory is inextricably linked to the beautiful elegant toy-like tomb of Arjumand Banu Begum, better known as Mumtaz Mahal, and the marble floors that line the homes of the nouveau rich in Delhi. The concourse of Indira Gandhi Airport is also one such tomb – a tomb to India’s bureaucracy, the babudom (a pejorative term used to describe Indian bureaucracy) whose dried pan spittle adorns the lower extremities of the walls, and higher areas of corners, and one such hanging statement about clueless money.

I was soon making my way through the staircase to a smallish area that had the immigration counters, as passengers from another flight – this time from Malaysia as my surreptitious sideways glances at people’s passports and immigration forms later revealed - poured in. The area became crowded as people flowed over on to the staircase.

I belong to a class of people who are unable, or perhaps unwilling, most of the times to be assertive. So the waves of people pushed me back to my due spot- near the end of the line. In the interim melee, a man in his mid 30s behind me called out to his wife, ‘Arrey issey main dekhta hoon tum jaldi say line mein jaa kar lago (I will look out for him – the kid – you go hurry up and stand in the line). The passengers though were generally quiet and undemanding showing a detachment that only comes from having lived in plush comforting environments for some time, or when you are a young ‘foreign tourist’ and all ‘this’ is part of being in a new country. Of course the fact that all of the Indian (expatriates or natives) passengers –a majority of the total passengers - belong to the super elite for whom pretensions of patience in front of fellow elites are important also helps keep the verbalizing of resentment to a minimum.

The other airplane that had come from Malaysia was full of Muslims in full regalia – skull caps, flowing robes, and slippers. The foreign wonders in our line wondered. I wondered too, albeit innocently.

In due time, my number came and I handed over my passport to the clearly overworked and unsmiling man across the counter; the job is perhaps lowly and the government babu (pejorative term used to describe Indian bureaucrats) at the counter looked impoverished - he had a noticeably dirty collar, the shirt was yellowing and worn, and his tie was little askew. He stared briefly and stamped.

Then came the robust baggage trolleys – not the dainty ones that I saw in Hong Kong - on which I plunked my suitcases, which came slowly and sullenly over the conveyor belt looking worn and maltreated. And I was off into the dusty crowded outside, and into the hands of my parents.

My first impression about Bay Area is that it looks like a mosaic of post-industrial wasteland interspersing unending sprawl peppered with preppy downtown districts, all sun baked and connected by enormous amounts of tar. The endless lanes of black tar that connect virtually everything to everything are constantly polished by a multitude of cars that zip by at all times of the day.

Bay Area of course is more than what I mention above. It is also a Mecca of technology – the home of Silicon Valley. There are parts in San Jose and Milpitas where technology companies line both sides of the street. Often times driving in Bay Area seems surreal as one zips bye signs of top technology companies like Google, Apple, Cisco, Oracle, Microsoft, A9, Symantec, Sybase, VM Ware and countless others. The mind is faintly awed and confused at seeing names of the companies whose products I use so often.

Where there are computers, there are Indians. Or so it is these days. Sunnyvale, Fremont and San Jose feature mini Indian towns with countless grocery shops and even a dedicated theater (Naz, run by a Pakistani) for showcasing the best of Bollywood and Tollywood. The Indians here fall into three distinct sections – students, computer professionals and then the underclass of taxi drivers and gas station attendants. Each of these distinct sections of Indian populations feature an ethnic majority – taxi drivers tend to be Sikhs or from Punjab, and computer professionals tend to be from the South (primarily Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh).

The technology industry in Bay Area has a lot to do with both the quality of universities here and the enormous of money that the government spends here to maintain variety of nuclear/arms labs – from Livermore to NASA Ames Research Center. Of course the quality of the university is actively sustained by the money they get in government funding to maintain these labs and in doing research in concert with Department of Defense.

On to the universities - While Berkeley looks a bit dog-eared and is in a slightly impoverished setting reflecting its status as a top-notch gargantuan public university, Stanford itself looks like a tropical resort isolated from a preppy downtown that shows surprisingly little influence of the more than 12,000 students that go to school here. Both universities have a lot in common and among them - abundance of top-notch talent, and an abundance of Asians in the ranks. (Berkeley’s undergraduate population is over 40% Asian since California outlawed Affirmative action). They also have a lot of their departments that feature in the top five in surveys by US News.

No discussion about Bay Area is complete without referencing its astronomical cost of living. Coming from Boston, an expensive market, the rental prices in Palo Alto still gave me sticker shock.

Bay Area is a puzzle. At once intimidating due to its traffic choked highways and the sheer expanse, and welcoming for people tend to smile more than they do on the East Coast. California epitomizes what US is about –a place where everything has been optimized for economic efficiency and where people themselves have become synonymous with the system they work in. People smile the empty smiles of customer service representatives. And a day turns over and people have to go to work again.

London, the heart of the old empire. The city made infamous by Dickens. A city that sprawls and meanders shackled by its building laws. But where o where is thy charm?

I went to London expecting a charming European city with a laid back appeal but found it to be a bustling megapolis in its last stages of shedding its soul. Yes there are numerous green areas and yes there are few skyscrapers but yet it seems as if the soul of the city has been taken away by the avenging horde of tourists who stock its every corner, the corporatization of its stores and streets and the hustle and bustle that does stop for the history that envelopes it.

The first thing I noticed when I reached London is how little it is different from US. The feel of London is almost like being in some uncertain city in US. The second thing I noticed, and much more shocking, was the preponderance of the closed circuit cameras. This looks like a city under siege with a Closed Circuit camera hanging from every roof, every gate and every passageway. I felt like I was under constant surveillance.

Travel

Public Transportation system in London is pretty darn good. Given that a lot of it is more than a century old, it is amazing how well the underground subway network works. The buses are super-efficient double deckers that make your head spin if you sit on the upper deck but extraordinary remarkable efficiency and convenience.

Food

London is dotted with hip sandwich shops - predominantly EAT and Pret a Manger. Both look snazzy and hip and the food is good. What I really enjoyed in London is getting those Chutney and Cheese sandwiches - sweet onion chutney that goes fabulously well with the dull taste of cheese.