Sometimes I wonder if there is order in chaos.
Whether an invisible hand is holding the threads together to prevent the fragile house of cards from collapsing.
This question arises as soon as you step out of the hotel door in the center of Old Delhi and face the chaos.
The noise. The stench. The people. The tuktuks. The bikes. The fruit carts. The taxis. The holy cows.
And then the question inevitably arises as to what one is looking for here.
Is there anything you want to understand?
The wise man knows and inquires, but the ignorant man does not even know what to inquire about.
So it is said somewhere.
Today I am among the ignorant who do not know what to look for.
But let's see. There's a long day ahead ...
Life in poverty
26 years have passed since the last visit to Delhi.
In the meantime, the city has grown, from 8 to an estimated 14 millions, and more are arriving each day, as the impoverished (or ever poor) farmers from the starving states of Bihar and UP (Uttar Phradesh) and elsewhere seek their fortune in the big city and often end up with their families on a sidewalk or on the edge of a garbage dump.
Two thirds of the people in India live in poverty: 68,8 % of the Indian population has to get by on less than two US dollars a day. Over 30 % even have less than 1,25 US dollars per day at their disposal - they are considered extremely poor. This makes the Indian subcontinent one of the poorest countries in the world. Women and children, the weakest members of Indian society, suffer most from poverty in India.
Most of poor people live in the country and keep their heads above water with odd jobs. The lack of livelihood-securing jobs in rural areas is driving many Indians to the rapidly growing metropolitan regions such as Bombay, Delhi, Bangalore or Calcutta. There, most of them face a life of poverty and desperation in the mega-slums consisting of millions of corrugated iron huts, with no adequate drinking water supply, no garbage collection and in many cases no electricity. The poor hygienic conditions are the cause of diseases such as cholera, typhoid and dysentery, from which especially children suffer and die. (see Message)
The Metro
Delhi owns an extensive metro system used by millions every day. Of course, the next station is not just around the corner, so I am soon approached by the assorted TukTuk and rickshaw drivers after my first step out of the hotel door.
"Where you go, mister? Very cheap price.” I shake my head, serious debates lead nowhere, as experience shows. But they don't give up that easily. The last arrow from their quiver (which causes cold horror in other tourists) is: “Station very far, sir. Many Thieves. Robbers. Steal your luggage."
I don't care. Just to be on the safe side I put on the fiercest face and cross the supposedly dangerous bridge with broad shoulders.
Of course, buying a ticket is a completely different matter. I do know at which station I have to get off, but how to get a valid ticket is not clear. Once again, I wonder how badly people speak English. Most of them do their best, but their guttural staccato English meets deaf ears. In the end, I pay 8 rupees, which is a bit more than 11 centimes, and now have a token to be scanned at the entrance and to be thrown into the slot at the exit. Foolproof.
Sometimes even for me.
Old Delhi - Amidst chaos
So I end up in the centre of the chaos without any further problems, which means in the middle of Old Delhi.
At first glance, nothing has changed at all. Maybe Old Delhi is simply the wrong indicator for this, because chaos remains chaos. And so everything makes an unchanged impression. Millions of people on the streets, on the crowded sidewalks, in between thousands of vehicles of all kinds, in the middle of it all holy cows, horses, dogs …
I throw myself with delight into the middle of the hustle and bustle, i.e. into the typical Indian bustle, and now the description becomes somewhat difficult, because you have to see it with your own eyes, hear it with your own ears, smell it with your own nose. Imagination is not enough there.
Imagine a hundred yellow-green TukTuks in a rather narrow alley, accompanied by just as many rickshaws, with a few cars as an ingredient, a few wheelbarrows, three-wheeled vans or tractors and handcarts, mixed and shaken with a million pedestrians walking next to and between the different vehicles on their way.
And of course a thousand dogs, preferring to take their beauty sleep in the middle of the street, or a few sacred cows, chewing away lost in thought.
Trip by bicycle rickshaw
To get a realistic impression, it is advisable to rent a bicycle rickshaw and let yourself be chauffeured through the crowd for a while. And so I sit calmly on my dirty pillow, which has given some relief to an estimated billion butts, and let the crazy Indian world pass by. The driver points out sights to me, although I have the greatest difficulty to understand him.
While all around us honking taxis rush by and we repeatedely avoid the strangest obstacles, we slowly approach the really narrow alleyways where at first sight, getting through seems to be hopeless.
It's not the first time to ride with a rickshaw (see Madurai), and despite the mostly chaotic circumstances I haven't seen a single collision. It's a matter of millimetres sometimes, but all participants in traffic are so used to this everyday hell that it somehow works out.
Also today.
Of course you keep to the left (India has left-hand traffic), but this is also a rule permanently broken. The best thing to do is to sit back, leave your destiny to the driver (mostly lean, hardened men of all ages performing a job that is certainly one of the worst in the world) and know that somehow it will work out.
So in this respect - first conclusion - nothing has changed (except that one or the other rickshaw driver organizes his next tour by mobile phone). The shops still offer the same range of goods western tourists have little use for.
All along the streets there are smiling, relaxed people who even wave to me in a friendly way from time to time. Does someone in Switzerland speak of density stress? Ridiculous. If there is any density stress anywhere, it is here. But you have to imagine: on my first visit, India had just 660 million inhabitants. Today, there are twice as many, and the number is growing all the time.
It is assumed that India will soon become the most populous country ahead of China. 1.3 billion! Imagine that number. You would not even find the few million Swiss if you put them out in India.
But - and this is the most astonishing thing about it - people have come to terms with it. All they know is this infernal noise, this incredible density.
The Red Fort
The Red Fort is also impressive on the third visit, my favorite mogul jajahan (the builder of the Taji Mahal) did a great job here too.
As a bonus for those less interested in history: the Tadj Mahal was built in honour of the late favourite wife of Jajahan, Mumtaz Mahal. It ruined the state budget, and it later led to his downfall (a note: the good guy wanted to build a second identical building on the other side of the Yamuna River, but this time in black granite).
And another difference: of course, every Indian is constantly taking photos, especially selfies. To my own surprise I am asked to be available for a photo. Me? If I were a young pretty blonde, ok, but an old man with floppy hat and crazy beard? Once again - he who understands India he understands the world!
But while the visitors are still taking pictures of themselves along the well-tended gardens, it starts to rain and everybody takes refuge under the overhanging branches of the few trees.
The Jama Masjid - the largest mosque in India
After visiting the red fort, I let a rickshaw drive me to the largest mosque in the country, the Jama Masjid, During the drive there, along further streets and alleys and squares, I resist all the seductive abilities of the driver to buy some junk.
The mosque reminds me of others of this kind, the second largest in Pakistan and therefore one of the largest and most beautiful in the world, in Lahore in Pakistan, the famous Badshahi Mosque. It is considered one of the most important works of Indo-Islamic sacred architecture of the Mughal period.
But today the focus of interest is not the Badshahi but the comparatively small Jama Masjid in Delhi. The sky has brightened after the short rain shower, but the sun still shines soft and round and hardly visible through the cloud haze. The minarets stand upright as they have since they were built in the 17th Century, today strangely illuminated by the unreal light of the afternoon sun.
A catwalk for families and little girls
The huge square in front of the mosque seems to be very popular with families. You might think it's Sunday or Friday, the holy day of Muslims. Nothing of the sort, it is an ordinary Wednesday, and yet numerous visitors or believers have gathered. They might be pilgrims from other parts of the country to pay their respects to one of their greatest shrines.
Where's the damn bridge?
Then with the Metro back home, two stations as in the morning, but now I make a mistake and take the wrong exit out of the Metro. I am somewhere, but not where I should be. There is no clue, no building that looks familiar to me.
Shit!
That doesn't sound very exciting, but it is. Nobody knows, least of all me, where the damn bridge is leading back to my hotel. It doesn't take long to find a whole bunch of curious and helpful Indians gathered around me, all trying to help me, but basically have no idea what I'm looking for. And Google Maps, this indispensable tool for not getting lost in the world, shows many streets and places, but none of them looks familiar to me.
Well, with a little help from my friends, even this problem eventually dissolves into nothing, and I can finally get something to eat ...
Night train to Jodhpur
The evening then, although dog-tired and ready for bed, is far from over, as I have to take the night train to Jodhpur.
Once again density stress: at this time, the metro is so crowded that I only manage to get into the car with my backpack with the kind assistance of some passengers.
After two stops I am close to suffocation, at least a little bluish on the face.
As expected, I am not the only passenger waiting for the departure of the train. As always, an astonishing number of people have gathered on the ground, eating, laughing, chatting and having a good time.
And then the world stands still for a moment
The train arrives on time, I get something to eat, have trouble getting rid of a slightly damaged 500 rupee note and hand it to a beggar. He is sitting on the naked floor, a young guy, probably barely twenty, and when he looks at me, the world stops for a moment.
In India one is permanently confronted with incomprehensible poverty, indescribable suffering. The soul responds with inner retreat, arming itself with distance, with an invisible armour. Because without it one is lost.
But there are those moments when escape is no longer possible. When the hardest armor is penetrated. The young man's gaze is strangely lifeless, no smile, no grateful nodding, as is usually the case with beggars when they are given something. He seems to be in another world.
At that moment I feel that it is no longer our world.
He slowly rises, his legs have the circumference of my wrist, and walks away with slow, laborious steps. I have seen much suffering and poverty, but this image brings tears to my eyes. Up to this moment everything was right on this day, now nothing is right anymore ...
I don't know how much longer I can stand this poverty. The skin gets thinner, the armour more penetrable …
PS Matching film: The Lord of the Rings - Naked in the Dark (the most beautiful scene of the trilogy, where lostness and friendship and courage come together)
