Today I had probably my all time most ideal day, ever. Seriously, if you asked me to list exactly what I'd do if I could do anything in the world, today would be pretty much it. Not even counting the India aspect.
Got up about 8:30 without an alarm or anything. There was hot water. Put on clothes which were clean, matched, and which I actually wanted to wear. (this wouldn't usually be a specific stipulation for my perfect day, but in India it needs to be said after two months with only two or three changes of clothes.)
I jetted off to the cafe across the street and had my favorite Indian breakfast - aloo parantha (basically flat bread stuffed with spicy mashed potatoes) and some of the best yogurt I've had in India so far, washed down with a big ol' cup of chai. While doing this, I read the paper. The sudoko was just hard enough to be interesting, but just easy enough to make me feel smart.
I got into a cycle rickshaw (favorite mode of non-train transportation in India, hands down) and headed into Old Delhi without incident. Old Delhi is all of my favorite aspects of New York, distilled into everclear. My rickshaw happened to take me up an entire street of stationery markets, and I managed to make a mental note of how to get back there later, because at the moment I was headed for one of my all time favorite ways to spend a day: historical nerditude.
The Red Fort (AKA Lal Qila in Hindi) was the seat of Mughal power in India - it's basically the Tower of London and Versailles rolled into one, except with way cooler architecture. It's also, hands down, the best preserved, maintained, and organized historical site I've visited here. Everything is clearly labeled. There are clean bathrooms, orderly paths, and kiosks selling drinks and simple snacks so if you get thirsty or realize you forgot to eat lunch, you can grab some bottled water and chips or cookies or something to tide you over and don't have to rush through the place in order to get out and find something. The museum is skillfully curated and has actual important artifacts on display. Even the silly little tourist guidebook the hawkers sell out front is full of genuinely useful and interesting background information (Aurangzeb staged a coup and murdered his two older brothers right here in the Diwan-i-Khas, for instance). So I had a fascinating morning learning all about the various Mughal emperors and the history of Delhi while also admiring incredibly beautiful architecture.
After I finished up there, I decided to have a wander down Chandni Chowk, the fabled main thoroughfare of Old Delhi. Chandni Chowk translates to something like "Crossroads of the Moon". Apparently it was the Champs Elysees or Fifth Avenue of 15th century Delhi, which at that time was basically the capital of the civilized world. This was the India that European royalty sent scores of explorers to find. This was where you could get all the jewels, spices, gold, silks, and perfumes craved by the back asswards folks in crappy third world countries like France and Spain. I think it's important to remember that at this time, India was such a world super power that the elite of Europe didn't even fricking know how to GET THERE. Literally.
In the intervening centuries, Chandni Chowk has been transformed into something that bears a striking resemblence to Canal Street in New York. Cut-rate clothing stores. Fast food restaurants and snack stalls. Teensy stalls selling luggage or cheesy souvenirs or a collection of random items you can't live without (buckets, padlocks, plastic sheeting). There are even designer knockoffs, which in India tend to be so crappy they in no way resemble the real thing (for instance a t-shirt with the Nike swish logo, except it's spelled "Nixe").
After an amazing lassi and a jalebi or two I decide that it's time to set off for the Jama Masjid. The Jama Masjid is just as major as the Red Fort - it's one of the largest mosques in the world and was the Mughal equivalent to Canterbury or Chartres or St. Peter's.
The weird thing about mosques is that the inside part, what I guess you'd consider the main sanctuary, is kinda dull. It's basically a big empty room. Sometimes it's a real pretty empty room, but it's not like a church or a synagogue or a temple, where there's a holy-of-holies or some sort of focal point.
What's interesting about the Jama Masjid is the outer courtyard. There's a huge tank, meant for ritual ablutions but also working aesthetically along the lines of a fountain. For some reason one corner is paved with birdseed, which means there are pigeons swooping around everywhere, little kids chasing them, mothers and big sisters trying to herd the little kids, etc. etc. It feels like a park or a public square. I could easily sit there all day.
What's even cooler is the fact that for a small fee you can climb up to the very top of one of the minarets and get a view over all of Old Delhi. Unaccompanied women aren't allowed to do this (I mean, this is Islam - we can't have people feeling all happy and inclusive and all...), so I teamed up with the first white guy I saw, this German convert to Islam named Imtiaz (who proved to be really interesting, but this blog is getting long and it's only like 2pm at this point). Climbing a minaret is actually not that fun. It's one big spiral staircase, and for a minute I was too winded and dizzy to remember why I'd gone up there in the first place. I really thought I was going to fall out -- which is funny considering that someone at Christmas warned me to be careful not to fall off the side of a temple. What about a mosque? Would that be OK?
But then I caught my breath and my balance and spent forever looking out over the city, or more correctly one small segment of a city that is twice as big as L.A.
After getting down, which was thankfully a lot easier than getting up, I sort of stupidly decided to get another rickshaw back to Connaught Place, which is the main drag of tourist-centered New Delhi. It's where all the good state-run craft emporia are, as well as the big Fabindia flagship (Fabindia is like Banana Republic with an Indian twist), and lots of other good shopping. Which was half the reason I came to Delhi in the first place. I say "sort of stupidly" because traffic was outrageous, and because Delhi has a metro with a stop right on Chandni Chowk which goes directly to Connaught Place in like 3 stops. Luckily the outrageous traffic made for really good exploring, because while my rickshaw-wallah played bumper-cars I got to scope out all the weird little stalls and beautiful old mansions from back before Partition when this area was still the creme de la creme of Muslim culture in India.
Inching along, we came upon a woman who'd been looking for an empty rickshaw for ages, and between the Hindi-speaking driver, English-speaking yours truly, and bilingual her, we agreed she could ride along. We spent the rest of the traffic jam talking about her mother in law, Hawaii, and all sorts of other interesting things. This is the BEST thing about India - people actually talk to each other, and not just small talk but anything and everything. Which was about to be repeated to brilliant results just a few minutes later.
After finally reaching Connaught Place, I had what I'd usually call retail therapy except there was nothing to be healed. It was like Christmas shopping, except better because everything is both beautiful and cheap. I even got to console myself that 90% of it was for other people, AND was at shops that sell "village industries" crafts and clothing, therefore not all evil and consumerist. In one of these shops I jumped into a casual conversation about the movie Lagaan, which is the only movie I've ever seen which is about cricket and taxes and yet still manages to be really, really fascinating. This developed into a longer conversation between me and this Brazilian girl named Raquel who is making a documentary about Bollywood. We finished our shopping together and decided to go for chai.
On the way to the chai stall, we passed a big group of mehendi-wallahs. You know, what in the US is called "henna tattoo". Raquel has lived in India for several months and thus knows good mehendi when she sees it. I'd been wanting to do this, but seeing a lot of ugly work on other tourists. We started up a conversation with two of the mehendi-wallahs, Anjali and Rajkumari, who agreed to get their kids to bring us chai so we could do both at the same time. It's a lot like getting your nails done back home. You sit back, relax, have girl talk, and basically have an excuse to do nothing for a long time. And even better, when you leave a nail salon you look ordinary and presentable -- when you get mehendi, you walk out decorated.
The sun went down, and calls to prayer came from every direction, from all the mosques, the Shiva temple, the Hanuman temple. Because Raquel speaks pretty good Hindi, we were able to converse more deeply with the mehendi-wallahs than I usually get to with nail ladies in New York, so lots more idle-yet-intense conversation ensued while they worked, and then in the hour or so that we had to wait for the henna to dry enough for us to use our hands. Another mehendi-wallah came back from the Hanuman temple with prasad for everyone. Prasad is sort of like communion, except way more casual and it actually tastes good. Hanuman temple prasad is a golden sphere of sweetness called a laddu. Since my hands were still way too muddy to touch anything, someone just popped my share right into my mouth.
This is another one of those amazing India moments. Nothing like it can exist anywhere else on the planet. I'm sitting in the middle of a public square, getting my hands painted with mud, and someone comes along and hand-feeds me holy candy.
When our hands finally dried, Raquel asked if I wanted to get dinner. It seemed she had a coupon for Domino's pizza (how surreal is this?). For a second I was mentally rebelling against eating pizza, Domino's no less, in India. Especially to crown my perfect day, and that ridiculously intense moment with the laddu. But then I gave in - I came to India to experience all of it, not just the quaint parts. And for better or for worse, Domino's pizza is India. Luckily Indians have all their own seperate pizza conventions, and we ended up getting chilli paneer on ours (chilli paneer being one of the more popular dishes in the Indian take on Chinese). We went back to Raquel's guesthouse to order pizza and hopefully scrape the dried henna mud off our hands before it arrived.
This whole thing had developed the same way you make friends as a kid - you see some other kids who look interesting for whatever reason and start playing along with them, without the need to join a club or take a class or be formally introduced. This is possible in India in a way that it's just not possible in the west. Raquel and I exchanged info and I bundled into an auto-rickshaw back to Pahar Ganj.
Why can't every day be this awesome? Even in New York - it doesn't have to involve crazy India stuff like randomly making friends in a shop, or having people pop sacred sweets in your mouth.
P.S. I haven't forgotten to blog about Agra, the Taj Mahal, and all that -- I just keep having so much to say about Delhi... It's coming, I promise.
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