Delh in Turmoil for Games

The whole Metro project, along with my favorite engineering project, is because the Commonwealth Games will be here in Delhi, Oct. 3-17. The city is in turmoil as every median, every curb and every sidewalk is being torn out and rebuilt. The dust pervades everything but there are thousands of villagers finding employment in the blazing sun to make this transformation come about. We will need to celebrate them when the time comes. There is a flame, called The Queen's Baton, being circulated through the Commonwealth countries - caught this ad in the newspaper.
There is one more thing about the games ... this being written from Evanston, but I have to finish this with a note about the suspension bridge at the Moolchand flyover - I took video, put it on YouTube but can't get it to post. Trying several options!

The Moolchand Metro Bridge

Of all the Metro construction this is by far and away the best thing - the Moolchand fly over bridge. There are 3 layers of highway at that point - one underpass, the ground level Mahatma Gandhi Inner Ring Road, and a flyover on the Lajpat Nagar road - so the Metro had to find a way to bridge all three. They began building the super-structure about 12 months ago. Then slowly they've progressed. In the past 3 months they've been adding the cables. I never saw them putting the cables in until about 2 weeks ago when Sunita was driving us home - we went over the flyover and we saw workers installing the 4th cable on the west side of the street. Very exciting. Here is an artists rendering ... I can't get a picture in the morning because I approach it from the east and it is only a hazy silhouette at best. Zindabad Metro!



And here is a link to a video view of the bridge almost complete - all the cables in place.

More thoughts on Sunday

This morning I went to church alone, in the clear, bright, hot light of late May in Delhi. My driver was Yashpal, back from Himachal. The word earlier was that Yashpal would not return from Himachal - that he was working for his brother who had a government job. But the lure of more money from driving in Delhi must have brought him back. He doesn't have his old mobile phone because he got one in Himachal that costs him roaming charges in Delhi. So I have to remember to call him on Pawan Sharma's number. Pretty confusing as I have 4 Pawan's on my phone.

Yashpal had apparently just heard of the accident from two weekends ago where 4 young men were killed right at the corner of Ansal Plaza, just past the taxi stand where the drivers wait for fares. He showed me where he said the car hit a pile of construction rubble and then flipped over the median. I had seen the broken class and debris left after the accident and it horrified Yaspal to tell me the story. The boys killed were all related, cousins and brothers, on their way to the bus terminal for 2 of them to return to the Punjab.

Sunday morning driving is bliss - no one else on the road at 7:30 am. We flew through South Extension and around the Jindal stainless steel installation, shiny outer space globes of stainless steel set in the middle of the spaghetti bowl of access entrance and exit roads. Going up Aurubindo Marg (where the elephant is waiting patiently at the light in the picture above) is no longer an unbroken tunnel of aqua, red and green signs saying DELHI METRO, but is opening up a highway again, with an elaborate green fence, and the construction of metro stations evident on either side. Further on the aqua sign board tunnel continues - I love reading the Hindi for METRO, the "m" being easily recalled but the "tr" being one of those seldom used, conjoined consonants and then the "o" also being easy. Four little sounds, m, tr, o.

I dread entering the church because when it's 100 outside it's 10-15 degrees hotter inside. The red sandstone absorbs the heat and holds it like a reliable oven but without anything to bake except us. There are several dozen fans placed strategically around the sanctuary. The trick is to find the best place to sit, not too close where you have to constantly get the hair out of your eyes or too far where you don't feel any benefit. We were all wiping our foreheads and necks. I pity the pastors in their long robes and vestments.

When I got home Lucy the street dog was waiting to say hello - I just saw her out of the corner of my eye and went back to give her a rub. She licked my chin and my toes ... her hello. When I left for church Lucky was there looking bright eyed and ready for a biscuit. I rubbed his neck and big clouds of dust came off of him - hazard of living on the street under the cars. As I went to close the door of the Wagon R, I looked down and found Lady sitting there waiting for her rub and pat. I hadn't seen them all week.

Now for packing and learning to Tweet.

Thouhgts on Sunday

Objectives for the day - learning how to Tweet, blogging, packing. I read the review of a favorite book recently, Dreaming in Hindi, that accused the writer, Kathy Russell Rich, of not revealing how she really feels. I know that is one of my problems, not being able to say how I feel because I haven't been able to analyze for myself how I feel. It's not that I don't feel - just that it is easier to react with vehemence but not with any greatly nuanced feeling. I'm going for the nuance.

It is Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was with us at the Cathedral Church of the Redemption; more or less in the form of poltergeists causing hymns to be announced too soon, almost forgetting to Pass the Peace, and people going for communion before their row was called. It was good to see error in a service that is usually flawlessly led by Pastor Dennis Lal.

I am going to quote a piece from The Chronicle, the Cathedral's newsletter:

A lifetime ago - or so it feels -Rev Kenneth Sharp conducted a retreat for young people at the School of Prayer in Rajpur, Dehradun. Like everyone else, I found some sessions especially meaningful, such as those built around meditation and reading, but chafed under others, such as the slightly dreary routine, or so at least it seemed to me, of organized prayer. I enjoyed however, the company of my new-found Prayer Partner, Jenny Hills from Nottingham. One after noon, when I was complaining of the vexations of a life of prayer she showed me a fragment of a poem that I learnt later was "Little Gidding," by T.S. Eliot. It read,
You are not here to verify
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. Your are here to kneel
Where prayers has been valid.
I enjoyed the poety - then as now - but decided Jenny was being a little over-enthusiastic about prayer.

Some years after that, when I was studying in Cambridge, I got a change to visit Little Gidding itself. It is a site in southeast England where prayer has been unbroken since an Anglican community first made its home there in the seventeenth century. This retreat was enjoyable because we were left to ourselves to wander down shabby muddy country lanes, exactly as in the poem, with the low, flat, featureless East Anglian countryside stretching as far a eye could see. We had a cheerfully austere Ploughman's Lunch of bread, cheese and fruit, the British notion of a ruralized meal no farmer has ever really eaten. Suddenly when we went in to pray, and my wrists hit the handrails, I remembered the phrase, "Your are here to kneel/Where prayer has been valid." I reaslized what Jenny had been trying to say long ago, that against the importance of the act of prayer none of the irritations of life such as stagnation, boredom or discouragement ought to matter. I still don't think I'm good enough to agree, but when I now teach the poem "Little Gidding," to my Masters students in Delhi University I think of the long and twisting route I've gone down, and wonder very much what lies ahead.
Christel R. Devadawson