three (and a half) days in delhi

got back from delhi wednesday night. i had flown there on some rather silly but extremely important mission to get my degree from the university of maryland equated with a degree from any university in india. it seems that the u of m is not on the list of universities here. so there i was on monday standing obsequiously in front of an officer in one of the many government buildings file in hand full of attested copies of everything in my life. thought the first signs did not seem hopeful as we immediately got caught in a inter-ministerial mix up, hopefully things will sort themselves out over the next week. as this was the only real work i had in delhi the rest of the time mukul and me spent meeting up with people we had not met in years and otherwise going to places in delhi that we had not been to before. these included the paharganj market with its collision of extremely local and extremely backpacker joints. through the narrow lanes we walked in the street where mukul mother lived and meandering ended up at the ramakrishna mission near the metro station. dinner was with shekhar and anandita at this very fancy restaurant on connaught place.



the next day after our disturbing trip to the association of indian universities we had the entire day ahead and spent it walking on ansari road in darya ganj with trying to find hindi novels for mukuls mother. we finally found the last on the list at a publishers office/shop at kashmiri gate.
i was so awe struck by the dazzling metro station there. delhi has always been perfect. a diagram for a city or rather a diagram of the nation. in a sense it is ideological. it represents everything we want to become. the metro is part of the nations claim for world recognition. the city is like the constitution – an ideal text that attempts to make us citizens of an ideal nation. in the evening after a visit to guddu mama our rickshaw took an alternative route back and we found a completely different delhi- a city of indeterminate street edges and unsystematic growth- in other words the ad-hoc madness of other indian cities.
tuesday- after a visit to the council of architecture to clarify what exactly the problem was with my paperwork again we had the rest of the day free. this time we drove across the yamuna to the vastness of the housing projects that lie on the other side- the hyphenated alphabetized and numbered housing colonies 1970’s rubber stamps. we met mukul’s mother childhood friend and his aunt right on the border where delhi becomes uttar pradesh. later we went to the national museum to browse through all of the cultural history of the country in pink and green painted rooms. the sarkari displays are awful but also vaguely comforting compared to the atrocious new age displays at the gandhi smriti building. but more on that later. evening we spent at yogita and nilesh’s meeting satyajit who looked adorable.



on the last day an obligatory trip to the aiu and then we spent the morning at the red fort with its gardens and palaces. on the way out we walked across the bridge that connects the red fort to the salimgarh fort which has become a museum for the indian national army trials. after a lunch at the india coffee house with its over the top harem interior we did a dynasty tour beginning with nehru’s house, then indira gandhi’s and finally gandhi smriti.








the nehru house in its palatial splendor had a door that opened out to the dome of the rashtrapati bhavan and rooms of old photographs and domestic items arranged in ‘as-it-was’ organizations. there was also awfully oversized digital prints of some ‘designed’ posters of his life.





at indira gandhi’s house the relics of the past took on a gruesome tone with her sari on the day that she was shot displayed neatly ironed in a glass case while in another room rajiv gandhis clothes on the day he was blown up make high abstract art. the path she took on the way her death is marked by a class walkway and the spot where she dies has clear glass.







at gandhi smriti someone thought museums need to be fun. it a pull out the stops digital multimedia experience of such shallow and childish content that it made me laugh. there are pads that you stand on and reach across for another persons hand- when the blue light comes on we know ‘unity’. or the raghupati raghav xylophone which when played reveals a drawing of cartoon men in different costumes holding hands – again ‘unity’! and there is more such over produced silliness. give me the older miniature dioramas on the ground floor any day.

the timeline


the prison with lighted bars


depicting unity

the house that tells stories


marking the spot b