Norbert Summarizes

Here's something Norbert wrote to his family recently. Some things I've talked about before, some I have just never gotten around to. I thought you'd like his perspective too!

In the last two months things have changed dramatically: It’s over 40 degrees Celsius/100 Fahrenheit every day; I’ve actually had to present some academic work; we were presented with a kettle that turns itself off when the water is boiling; and we’ve developed an exhausting social life. Good times!

So last time, I left you hanging as we were about to depart JNU campus on an auto rickshaw. There are three main reasons for daring that: shopping, sightseeing, and socializing. Shopping is probably my least favorite of the three, but obviously cannot be avoided . I talked last time about the places we buy food—but occasionally we have to (or want to) purchase other amenities as well. In that case, the problem is figuring out where to go. Of course, we could go to one of the many new Western-style malls, where we could buy Western-style articles at Western-style prices. But where’s the challenge in that (and who can afford that in the long run on half pay)? The alternative is where things get difficult. India (or at least Delhi) has not (yet) embraced the concept of the supermarket. No Wal-Mart here! Instead, there are separate markets for different categories of products—the electronics market, the furniture market, the clothes market, etc. Unfortunately, the markets are not named according to their products, but according to their location, so finding each one involves a round of frantically looking through travel guides (not very helpful for that kind of thing), e-mailing acquaintances (who in spite of being people from Delhi, also known as Dilliwallahs, frequently don’t have a clue either), and calling friends (which is mostly successful).

For instance, the pictures from my new camera turned out to take up so much space on my computer that I decided to acquire an external hard drive. So where to go? After the previously described three-step dance, we figured out we needed to go to the computer market at Nehru Place. Things weren’t that much easier there: There are about 200 computer stores/stalls that appear to have exactly the same stock, each with a 1-2-meter/4-6-foot storefront, but no price tags on anything. In front of each store, eight people congregate, shouting at the top of their lungs to get the shopkeeper’s attention. Not being able to speak Hindi doesn’t help; many Indians at these places don’t speak any English at all. And God forbid you want to know something more complicated, like whether the hard drive will work with my PC as well as Susan’s Mac! By a not very scientific method of elimination (no crowds of more than ten people; no shops that can’t tell us prices; no salesperson who has to call somewhere else to find out prices—but sticking with the guy who actually pays attention to us for more than ten seconds), we finally ended up with a decently priced external hard drive—and had to go home to relax and recover. That was maybe four weeks ago—so far the drive has worked fine!

Then there was the time where our taxi driver couldn’t find the furniture market for a bed-side lamp for Susan (which we finally had to have assembled out of two other lamps and only realized at home it was lacking an on/off switch), the clothes market where we were able to buy a salwar kameez for Susan (but had to get her cord/belt on the street and take the whole kit and caboodle to a tailor on the parking lot to get the sleeves attached), and other similar experiences. I guess Dilliwallahs just allocate more time for shopping—we get exhausted after each expedition.

In contrast, I find sightseeing loads of fun. On the one hand, there are the official sites like the Red Fort, Humayun’s Tomb, Qutb Minar, etc.—mostly nicely maintained or restored sites from Delhi’s past. But more to the point, there are myriad places that tourists (a category to which we try very hard, and probably unsuccessfully, not to belong) hardly ever discover either because they’re not that ‘important’ or because they’re simply really hard to get to. For instance, we spent an amazing day in Mehrauli, which is one of the oldest parts/subdivisons of Delhi, to the south of the contemporary center. Many tourists do make it there, but only to see the Qutb Minar, an 12-13th-century tomb complex. However, Mehrauli actually has a lot more to offer, and walking around for a day is quite an experience. For instance, the fortress wall of one of the oldest versions of Delhi (there are something like 16 ‘Delhis’ from prehistoric times to post-Independence) goes through Mehrauli. We walked on it briefly, but gave up because it is used today as a toilet-cum-garbage dump—doesn’t sound like fun, I know, but actually still quite interesting. Then, after going around in circles for a while in tiny alleys, we found the local baoli—a public step-well, i.e., a structure that goes down into the ground maybe 30m/100 feet in increasingly smaller rectangles, each supported by a cool colonnaded walk around, at the bottom of which is the water. On the way to the baoli, we stumbled on some interesting sights, like a woman doing laundry in a 16th-century entry-gate to the city. I didn’t have the guts (or the arrogance) to take a picture, but I’ve since seen the exact image, and I think the same woman, in a coffee table book on Mehrauli. Then, we wound and found our way to the shrine of a Sufi saint, still the only white people far and wide. A kind gentleman guided us around a little, and I was able to approach the grave of the saint itself (though not Susan, since only men are allowed close). The place is so holy that people leave it without turning the back to the grave, which can be awkward if you don’t know where you’re going and don’t realize how cracked the pavement is. From the side exit of the shrine, we practically fell into the summer palace of the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar II (who was deposed by the British in 1857). This was a magical place: I’m sure it’s officially a protected monument, and it’s in pretty decent shape, but you don’t have to pay to get in, there’s nothing marking it as special, and the only people there are small groups of men playing cards, or having prayer groups, or doing God knows what. Again, a young man took pity on us and showed us how to get to the top, where the view was amazing, and took us to the parts where bits of the old paint are still visible. At the end, he wanted a tip—but he only asked us when we were in a place where his friends couldn’t see us.

There are many places like that in Delhi—old, beautiful, tucked away in parts of the city far from the urban center, part of the fabric of the city rather than separate monuments. There’s an excellent book called Delhi: A Thousand Years of Building that has become my bible in this regard: It has a section on each historical period that lists the relevant buildings (with excellent maps to find them) and describes their architecture (anybody know what a squinch is?). Thus, I’ve visited the madrasa (religious school) of the 14th-century ruler Firoz Shah, the tombs of the 15th-century Lodi sultans, Sher Shah’s 16th-century fortress Purana Qila, the 19th-century British quarters north of Delhi, the early 20th-century center of the nationalist movement in Daryaganj—you get the idea. (The 17th and 18th century are the Mughal time, which you might be more familiar with from pictures of Old Delhi and the Red Fort.) I’ve even pretty much given up taking pictures because it’s all just too overwhelming. Unfortunately, the heat is making these expeditions more grueling, but I hope I’ll get a few more in during our last few weeks in Delhi.

Finally, we leave JNU to socialize. Actually, much of the socializing happens on campus, since we have mostly met JNU people and since most of the professors live here. For instance, we’ve spent time with Kunal, who teaches history at JNU, and his wife Shubhra, who teaches history at a college attached to Delhi University, the other premiere institution of higher learning. They’ve been quite lovely—Shubhra in particular has been teaching Susan Indian cooking and has helped us out in terms of shopping a lot. Kunal and Shubhra are both Bengali (from Calcutta), so we’ve also learned—at least through their tales—about another part of India. Indivar is another wonderful colleague in the history department: We’ve been out for dinner with him a few times, he’s helped with travel arrangements, and I run into him on the track in the mornings occasionally. Having done his Ph.D. at Cambridge and going on world-wide lecture tours regularly, Indivar can contextualize Indian habits and customs for us.

But we’ve also met some people off campus, like Nilanjan (a friend of Daud’s and editor at Routledge India) and Walt, a graduate student from the University of Pennsylvania. Actually, Walt is an interesting case: He’s as white as they come (pale skin and red beard), but he’s spent a total of eight years in Delhi and speaks Hindi fluently—which comes as quite a surprise to assorted vendors, rickshaw drivers, and other Dilliwallahs. We were in a rickshaw with Walt the other day, and he didn’t stop haggling with the driver over the price until about ten minutes into the ride. Wow—I’m not even sure if that’s a good or a bad thing. I wonder what we’d hear people saying about us if we could actually understand them, or if they simply don’t care about us. The way the stare at us, it does seem we’re getting a disproportionate share of attention…

Then, we try to take advantage of some of the cultural opportunities Delhi has to offer. Twice now, we’ve been to talks by William Dalrymple, a British/Scottish author who is a bit of a hero of mine since he wrote the best (in my humble opinion) contemporary book on Delhi (City of Djinns), a fantastic book on eighteenth-century British soldiers and merchants in India adopting Indian customs and marrying Indian wives (White Mughals), and an excellent history of what the Indians call the First War of Independence and the Britishers the Mutiny (The Last Mughal). After one talk, we actually hung out with him at a bar and went for dinner, and he turned out to be a really nice (in addition to really smart) guy. Crazy fun!

Anyway, that’s how we’re spending our time in Delhi, but away from JNU. We’ve also been travelling a little, but I’ll tell you about that next time, hopefully in the not too distant future.