What is Delhi really like?

Delhi has many faces; my evening today probably would give you a fairly good understanding of what it feels like to be here. Vivek, a colleague of mine from work who rides in my carpool, and I decided to go after work for a beer and “galgappes”. We got out of the rickshaw in front of Kamaal Cinema market, which is quite close to both of our places, while a larger than average water buffalo, which means about the size of a small car, stood on the median separating the road’s lanes, starring straight ahead into space.

This small market isn’t too big by anyone’s standards. A few coffee shops, small restaurants, a couple stores selling different computer products or services, a furnature store, a beer and wine shop. We walk through the parking lot that is filled about 2/3 with small cars and 1/3 with motorcycles. Vivek walks up the two steps of the beer and wine shop to by our two cans of Kingfisher beer. Next, we order four small potato patties from the vender down the steps, which we will eat drenched in sweet chutney and raw onions. We then take our food and beers back behind the first line of shops to a park that sits between that first line and the second line of stops. To get there, we walk through a small, unlit walkway, where puddles from last night’s monsoon and flies from its aftermath buzz around, making designs in the thick smell of garbage that fills the air.

With our bags from work piled on top of each other on the dirty stone wall and bags of food and chutney lying next to them. I realize that a whole army of ants is hard at work, about three feet away from our food, scurrying up and down the wall and the tree that has grown adjacent to it. A small gecko quickly races up the tree trunk. The small fenced-in park is full of garbage though. Vivek realizes that they only gave us one bag of chutney, not two, so he walks back to retrieve the second bag. Meanwhile, I call my Italian friend Marta to figure out plans for the night. Once Vivek comes back, we talk about our frustrations with work and his ambitions to start his own tourism company, while he tosses his chutney bag onto what is left of grass in the park. I realize the sweet chutney is also a little spicy and the cold beer is not as cold as it was ten minutes ago when we bought it. The tasty, tasty food and warm beer fills me right up though. Behind us three dirty dogs lay on the top step next to one man also laying on his back and a second sitting in raggedy clothes on the steps of a business that has already closed for the day. As we finish two young boys come over to ask for our empty beer cans, as they will turn them in, along with other glass bottles they have collected, later on to collect a small sum of rupees. As we begin to leave, Vivek starts to also throw our paper plates over the wall into the park, but I stop him before he does and tell him, “Let’s throw them in the garbage can out front.”

We walk back to the front through the same alleyway to eat our “galgappes”, a very unique Indian food that consists of small balls made of a thin, fried flour exterior (about the size of a golf ball) with a little hole where sweet water with a few cut vegetables are poured inside the ball. As we wait to order, Vivek and I stand facing each other, talking about where our careers might be taking us, while beads of sweat from the intense humidity multiply on his forehead and mine slide down my back. I can feel all of my clothes sticking to me and I realize once again that there is no point in complaining about something like the humidity here. You just have to let it be and find a way to be at peace with this reality. I look around and tell Vivek to try and count how many women he sees in this market right now. We only can see two amongst 40-60 men working, eating, walking, talking to each other. These golgappes are messy and eaten in one swift toss into the mouth – you don’t exactly gulp them, but there is little chewing involved. I’m stuffed after three. Vivek has at least five. We pay about fifty cents for our post potato and beer treat as an unusually small man with crooked legs (possibly a little person) walks by us. As we get ready to walk home, Vivek tells me to wait while he indulges himself and buys a cigarette. In India, you can buy cigarettes one at a time. He lights it with an electric lighter hanging from the roof by a cord (kind of like a small electric stove on a rope), of which I tell him I’ve never seen before. Walking towards home now, a man tosses a small plastic box out of his car window, probably from food, out onto the parking lot near us and Vivek and I joke about the “incredible” technology that I’m learning about in India that I couldn’t find in the US.

Below are pictures from last weekend's Festival of San Fermin. This is the famous festival celebrated in Pamplona every year, which also includes many days of "the running of the bulls". We decided to be crazy and celebrated San Fermin and our friend Carla's birthday all in one :)