Dehli Dirt

            This week headlines are about Lelyveld’s book on Gandhi.  He portrays the Mahatma as having had a homosexual relationship.  Reactionaries in India suggest that the disrespect of Gandhi be added to the already existing Prevention of Insults to National Honor Act, 1971, which forbids acts that desecrate the National Flag or the Constitution.  So dirt of one kind but not what has preoccupied me.

            I have been unpacking many of my possessions this past month which came by ship from India where they have been for the past two and a half years.  And the dirt is noticeable, pervasive, and nearly impossible to remove from some things.  There is dirt on the top of every book, on the spice jar lids, on the decks of cards, on the creases of my hanging clothes, in every crack and opening in my printer even though it was covered with a sheet the whole time – and it goes on.   It’s made me think a lot about dirt and Delhi. 

            Why is Delhi so full of dirt?  Why did I have to have my home swept and dusted every day?  I thought I knew dust but I didn’t know anything until I set up a home in Delhi. 

            Dirt is generated in so many different ways in Delhi – some seem obvious, others not so much.  First there is just plain dirt from unpaved areas of the city.  Once you’ve driven around the city it is puzzling when there is so much concrete in evidence that there are so many places with open ground.  Often there is a strip of dirt between the black top of the street and shop fronts.  There are numerous unpaved allies and many streets in poorer neighborhoods are not paved.

            Delhi is situated on the edge of the great desert areas of Rajasthan. There are of course many parks and gardens – and many median strips filled with dirt and even occasionally plants.   There are crickets pitches in many places – formal and informal all of which involve some dirt as well.

            The cars emit plenty of pollution although the Delhi city government has decreed that all public transportation vehicles, including taxis beginning this year, must burn Compressed Natural Gas (CNG).  City buses carry the slogan on their sides “The World’s Largest Green City Transport System.”  Could be true.  But there are hundreds of thousands of vehicles burning diesel fuel – the largest contributor to emission pollution.

            And many of the poorest people, especially those living on the streets and underpasses, burn wood or whatever they can find that will combust to cook their meals.  During all the cool months, October through February, the nightwatchmen (every house has one) burn small fires in front of the house they are guarding.  They burn twigs, leaves, trash, whatever is around, throughout the night to keep warm.

Another major source of dirt and pollution are the fireworks – which are frequent.  Fireworks are used to celebrate weddings (on some auspicious days as many as 60,000 weddings in one evening) and any religious celebration except funerals.   One morning after Diwali, the festival of lights, when fireworks start at dusk and continue until midnight, non-stop in front of every home and in many major display centers, I wiped actual cinders along with the black dirt off our dining table in front of an open window.

The last source of dust that I discovered are the funeral pyres.  I passed an “Electric Crematorium” every day on my way to and from work but it wasn’t until the end of my stay that I attended a funeral.  I found that the funeral would be at a crematorium near their house, not the one I knew.   There I saw that there were 20 or so pyres and at least 6 of them were burning, or almost finished burning.  The pyres are made of large stacks of fast burning wood, and the body is anointed with ghee (clarified butter) by the priests who oversee the ceremony.  Two or three gallons are poured into the pyre.  The smoke bellows high and the wind carries it out across the city.  There are many of these crematoria, serving the many small neighborhoods that make up the sprawling city of 15 million. 

Delhi is dusty for all these many reasons.  As I wipe things off I remember.  There was no escaping it – and I managed to transport a lot of it back to Evanston.

The Autorickshaw Ride

                It’s about 8:30 am and time to gather things together to go to work.  I shut down the laptop, unplug it and cover it to protect it from the ever present, always abundant, Delhi dust.   I pick up my briefcase, make sure my planner is there, that keys are in my purse.  My lunch of leftovers is in the shopping bag from Rajender Fruit market.  Jack brings dog biscuits with him to feed the street dogs and we make our way down the three flights to the street.

                The morning is misty, dusty, grayish.  The haze that hovers in the winter time is a combination of fog, smoke from thousands of small cooking fires and the small fires the nightwatchmen burn to keep warm and car exhaust.  Our nightwatchman has left already having brought the newspapers, Times of India and The Hindu, to the door.  The dogs see us and are in a frenzy of excitement, competing for pats and ear rubs.  They eat the biscuits mostly to be polite.  The nightwachman across the street waves a greeting and smiles at our foolish behavior with the dogs.

                We walk, single file along the edge of the street, dodging cars, buses, already full autorickshaws, looking over our shoulders to try and spot a free rickshaw.  The first one who stops, seeing our white faces, says, “Eighty rupees” when I say my destination is Nizamuddin East.  I tell him I will report him for extortion and he speeds away.

                The second driver, nods, and says “Baito,” (sit down) and I climb in, putting the briefcase between my feet, hugging my purse to my side and my Rajender lunch bag in my lap.  Jack wishes me a good day – no overt expressions of affection are appropriate in public – and the driver shifts into gear and pulls into traffic.   I don’t have to remind the driver to start the meter, he reaches behind him and presses the button on the digital device to start the meter.  The fare will be Rs. 47 when we reach my office.

Turning left never requires a glance behind to see what’s coming – it is the responsibility of the on-coming vehicles to watch out for traffic entering the street.   I sit back in my little cozy bench, enclosed in  yellow canvas.  This driver does not have the usual triumvirate of gods adorning his dashboard.  Instead he has decals of several different film stars – I don’t recognize them.  He is obviously more interested in Bollywood than religion.  Of course it may not be his autorickshaw – it could be his brothers, or brother-in-laws or some other friend or relative who has allowed him to drive for the day.    He has the usual rearview mirror, this one large enough to see everyone who might be seated in the back seat.  The side view mirrors are turned in, as they are in all autos, so that they cannot be knocked off by passing vehicles.  It makes them useless for seeing traffic coming from behind but affords a full view of the back seat.   Helpful in some circumstances I suppose.

As we make our way up August Kranti Marg toward the Ring Road where we will turn right we are in a stream of traffic that is 4-5 vehicles across.  We pass the taxi stand and I hope that Hardeep does not see that I am taking an auto instead of one of his taxis.   The top of the auto comes down just enough that I am fairly well hidden.   I have my Kashmiri shawl pulled over my head because of the chill and to cut down the wind which is a further disguise.  The beggar children at the stop light pay little attention to me as the passengers in cars are more likely customers.

We are only on Ring Road for half a mile or less before we turn north, but that gives me time to assess the progress of the suspension bridge being built for the Metro at the Moolchand flyover.  It is a marvel of modern technology – taking the Metro line over what is already a 3 level traffic exchange.   The four cables on each of the support pillars have all been attached.  It was sometimes days between each cable leaving me wondering if there was a sequence or just a random order.  It appeared that they were adding some sort of concrete sides beside the track.   It will still be months before the first train travels on the elevated track.   The project has been in evidence all over Delhi – endless miles of blue barriers with the Metro logo painted on each one.  The construction sites are in operation twenty-four seven as they say – glimpses inside reveal men with orange hard hats and very un-Indian like precision and orderly piles of construction equipment. 

As we take the left hand turn onto the north bound highway the auto bumps over the place where pipes had been dug up and not re-covered.  I am always cautious to hold onto my briefcase and bags as we round the corner.  There is a dhaba right there, across the curb in the back yard of Flavors.  Flavors is a high-end Italian restaurant run by a Thai woman.   The menu includes gourmet pizzas, arugala salads, pasta dishes with capers, olives, and desserts that are chocolaty or melting delicious tera misu.  The dhaba is India – there are men in their cotton shorts, squatting beside buckets of cold water, sloshing themselves with water using a tin mug to dip from the bucket.  There is always one man making big, thick, rotis, rolling them out and tossing them onto the cast iron pan set over red hot coals.  There are large dechshis of chai steaming on other fires.  There are never less than a twenty men at the dhaba getting ready for the day and their first meal of the day.  I don’t see them on my return journey so they are perpetually in the acts of preparation in my mind’s eye.

The long stretch of road that leads to Nizamuddin is a limited access highway of sorts, with guard rails and a median.  People stream back and forth across the 8 lanes, running with their palms held up to stop the hurtling traffic which strangely seems to work.  There are buses, bicycles, hundreds of motorbikes, small cars, big cars, three-wheeler trucks, water tankers, men pushing carts, and of course many, many autorickshaws.  Hundreds of people line the curb and street at the bus stops.   Some people run to jump into buses that are already full and do not stop.

We pass the partially constructed Lajpat Nagar Metro stop.  I have vowed I will walk up the stairs and into the station before I leave India.  The man who used to live in the paper and tin shack on the Def Col flyover has returned.  The police moved him before the Commonwealth Games and he was nowhere in evidence for several months.  He is back.  The remnants of a plastic bill board have been fashioned into a roof and 3 walls.   People are stopped along that flyover feeding the pigeons.  They stop their cars and put out bushels of grain, wheat I think.  They have not heard of the bird flu evidently.

Next the road passes under the flyover of the road built to connect the player’s village to the main venue for the Commonwealth games.  One of my regular taxi drivers has worried with me endlessly about the length of that flyover span.  It looks entirely too long to be safe – as though it might come crashing down onto us as any moment.  Shortly after that comes the Electric Crematorium.   With a big sign painted on one of the high walls, “Clean Delhi, Green Delhi.” 

We take the exit to the left, past the Methodist Church with the Mogul monument in the yard, past the handicap people who live on the street under the flyover.  They don’t beg but they live there on the street, under the highway with their bundles of possessions.  More people, recent arrivals in Delhi live in the median of the next street and on the newly constructed sidewalks.  Their clothes are hung to dry on the fences surrounding the Muslim graveyard. 

Just two more Mogul monuments, one with a blue tile dome, that serve as traffic circles before we reach the tree and mansion lined street that leads to my office at the YMCA.  There are speed bumps, large ones every fifty feet which means the auto slows down.  The traffic is somewhat less but there are many more pedestrians.  I explain in Hindi that I am going just past the post office, then the tea stall on the sidewalk, to the big gray gate on the right.  The auto driver eyes me in his large rearview mirror.

 “Where did you learn to speak Hindi?” he asks. 

“Here.  In India.  As child.”  I respond.

“You speak so well.  It has been an honor to be your driver.”

“Thank you,” I say as I step out, gathering up my brief case and bags.

My assistant has gotten my “missed call” and meets me as I disembark.  We go together into the building.