delhi, Delhi - the eyes of a city

What does it mean for me to write about Delhi? A foreinger, an outsider, in the belly of the city-beast, often described as hell? A city born out of a navel, on a bed of snake and lotus? Do I write about Delhi, the capital of the newly independent India, the largest metropolitan of this great nation, home to extrodinary national monuments? Or do I write about delhi, the lower case city, conqured by streets ridden with trash, broken pavemens and everlasting smog? And what is it like, to walk in such a city, as a woman? To play a game of derive, free the movement from taylorism, adapt experimental behaviour and wander through alleyways, finding perhaps the beating heart of hers? 

We arrive at sunrise at India Gate. We were told that this area would be safer for us. The sun emerges out of its sleep, sheepishly peeping between the reddish stone and yellowish granite archway. We sit atop the fountain, by manicured lawns. Police men and soldiers are roaming the grounds, shifting our movements and motioning us around. We are under constant surveillance, we are followed, we are surrounded, we must escape. And so we turn, and again we are surveilled, but now we are under constant scrutiny of curious eyes, penetrating, pregnant with wonder. They see our foreign and feminine nature. We look back, through them, trying to decipher the city, as if they are not a part of it. 

Rather than a linear derive, we form a spiral path, walking the rigidly planed grid of the India Gate area, finding temporary autonomous moments of solace, when the street is empty and deserted. Two blocks, five blocks, the flowers on the trees bare no resemblance, each unique, however each of the same uniform nature. Under the apparent diversity, lies unity. Sometimes a butterfly emerges between lush leaves, sometimes a bike honks from nearer distance. We continue to walk, hoping to find something at least. We see the heat radiating from the asphalt roads, pulsing into the sky. We drench sweat, our shirts turning translucent. Our bodies cannot but interact with the city, and the city interacs with our body: small particales penetrate our skin and we start to share the same urban stench; we taste it with every sip, with every trickeling of sweat. 

The day melts under the blazing sun of Delhi, and night creeps in. We find no refuge in the night air: it is engulfing and as dense as an old heavy blanket. Not only does it not protect us, it exposes us, brings with it the anticipation of lenience, of promiscuity. Perhaps we should have dressesd up as men, set free and unseen. We are touched, fondeld, we feel the warmth of the stares growing colder.

 In a sense, just like Lord shiva's third eye that turns gods into ash, to see is to destroy. Trying to see the city, its truth, to peel it like an onion, layer by layer, to uncover its translucent truth in search of a core, eventually leads through a path of futility; the onion has no core, we had not found the heart of the city. It had regurgitated us, sent us on our way home on the sparkling metro line. I don't think it wanted us to see it, not like this at least. Not with our eyes covered by curtains of fables, true stories and fear. We watched, never fading into the scence, never truly drifting.

Tamar