mumbai - delhi - not quite lahore - mumbai

metro station - karol baug

sonal in bharats balcony - mayur vihar phase 2

bharat waiting for his work to get done at cp

waiting for visa- pakistani consulate

bharat and his father paintings

rohit sonal yogita nilesh- rohits room

back from failed mission lahore no 1 –. the consulate needed a letter from islamabad- the ministry of interior to allow me to get a visa. so the rest of wednesday (after i had spent monday and tuesday- collecting papers, getting signatures, attestations, addresses, instructions on ways to behave) i spent calling mumbai from delhi for lahore to call islamabad to fax delhi and tell mumbai to tell me in delhi if it was possible that the aforementioned letter would reach in time for me to be able to make this trip. naturally- not.

so here i am back in mumbai, having had a three day sojourn in delhi with bharat and sonal.

but i am getting ahead of myself.. hell was this monday. emotions and events were running high what with the last day of college before exams with students in trauma about not having the notes, of being disallowed, of just being themselves. as there was a collective breakdown of emotional well being among the students and the faculty and i was also trying to get my papers in order to be able to leave on wednesday- and make a presentation of the schools mumbai work. the last straw was being assaulted with valsans piercing stare into my eyes as we sat on the parapet telling me “you have become soft.. or mau .. earlier you were a steel hand in a velvet glove- but now you are like sonal.. soft through and through” i mean really.. the boy has a serious problem. i ran like hell away from this annoying analysis. earlier interesting - at least, the boy has become a bad compilation tape of himself.

the next day was a little better- mahavir jayanti holiday and i took a kingfisher flight to delhi- 10 at night. the girls were all hotness personified- red tight skirts, tightly bound hair ad the stiffest smiles this side of simi garewal. yana gupta went on for a good ten minutes on the monitors showing us sexy ways in which we could wear our oxygen mask. sona and sony (from spa- whom it seems i had met at the varkey forum a few years back at cept) came and picked me up and dropped me into the guest room at the hostel. all i remember from the first night is that rohit who lived next door came and we spoke for a while.

the pakistan embassy is opposite the one for the us of a.. but don’t be fooled by the map- the distance between them is enormous- and terribly boring to walk down. in front of the pakistan consulate there were hordes of families waiting for their visas- they seemed to have slept on the street. there were also men furiously typing out forms for the illiterate. i bought a form from them, stood in line and was soon hanging around in front of the embassy with my entire trip rescheduled. so i take a rick to bharats house. and begin my three days of doing nothing much.

the rickshaw drivers generally in delhi this time were not as unbearable as i remember them to be. once the rate was negotiated upon, it was fine. the entire process of negotiation was, i think, just one of those city cultural things.

bharat lives ‘trans-yamuna’- mayor vihar phase 2. a dda colony of beige and cream coloured two storied houses with a lake somewhere nearby. i got completely confused trying to find my way there. in his house are huge paintings on the walls by his father and a great balcony that overlooks a park. i think i start liking delhi only when i start seeing it through the eyes of people who live there. its all very pleasant and suburban- a nice place for kids to grow up- very sheltered from anything that might be potentially destructive. it’s a way of seeing that i think has determined the plan of the city. the class and identity divisions are so much more stark. the city space is like a diagram of a strict class structure – the avenues of new delhi, the lanes of old delhi, the bungalow plots of gk1, gk2, the dda tracts and tracts of middle class housing and the lal doras and slums somewhere in the middle- generally unseen. the lines in between these differences are so rigid. it was this weirdness that fascinated me about the city. it has a strange edginess that i found disturbing-like these parallel cities are running right next to each other looking inwards- with no connection to the outside. its very strange.. surreal. its like one of italo calvinos invisible cities come alive, enabled by the incredible authority of money and power.

but living in one of these enclaves is very pleasant. walking down eucalyptus lined paths around lakes,conversations in the moonlight and darkness. though it does make each neighbourhood rather self sufficient (complacent?) and peaceful, it does make the most unbearably tedious roads in between them. i cant imagine taking a walk down a city street. a human being walking is an aberration. and in the heat he must be just plain silly.

but then there is the metro. i absolutely loved it. i genuinely believe that it is going to make delhi a great city. it is perhaps the only thing that connects the city truly- shamelessly cutting through all ghettos. it was the only place that i saw a genuine mix of different classes in the same space. its clean, well designed and well maintained. damn good.

anyway, i spent all my time then either in the spa hostel or in bharats house- and in the evenings spent time with rohit nilesh and yogita on one night and at rwitees birthday party where i met all of sonals very sweet classmates.

i went shopping of course.. books at connaught place after wlaking in circles for what seemed like hours; and mor ebooks at the very posh khan market. ‘the constant gardner’.

the flight back was ajet airways late nighter that was even later. i got back home at 3 and slept for hardly any time beofr eoign back to college for a local managing committee meeting.

anyway.. back in bombay for now but only until islamabad tells lahore it has spoken to delhi.. then lahore will speak to bombay and then i leave for delhi again. hopefully the visa thing will happen then.- and then lahore- here i come.