Delhi

Sunday, 28 May 2011

We have come full circle since last Tuesday. We now have two nights on the train under our belt, and in between Varanasi.

It is fortunate for traveling logistics that we are a group of twelve. India train sleeper berths handily accommodate six. Arranged in our cars, prior to sleeping, we sit on benches, three in a row, knees touching three companions facing us, feet resting on our luggage. Each side of this space, the size of an average American walk- in closet, converts to bunks, three beds high. By the time of our second trip, we were seasoned train travelers and knew little things like: be ready, as soon as the train arrives at your stop other passengers are boarding to enter your car and you best be out of the way. Our first trip arrival into Varanasi ended 30 minutes earlier than expected and we were jolted from sleep at 5 am with three minutes to scramble out of our bunks and off the train, rushing headlong into newly boarding passengers. Talk about an abrupt wake up call . .

I realize that an inordinate amount of my writing has focused on the logistics of getting from place to place. Mobility is one of life's basic complications and in India it is a complication of infinite degree. The greatest factor is the sheer density of population. Delhi is the most populated city of India with 9,340 persons per square kilometer. Never was this more pronounced than the day we visited Old Delhi. What was once the old walled city of Delhi originating with the Mughal empire in the early 1600s, now dilapidated and crowded, Old Delhi is still the symbolic heart of the city. Traversing Old Delhi is like a journey into a post-apocalyptic scene that my imagination could not begin to create. At any point I could stand at a given spot and touch at least six people, three rickshaws, a goat, a motorcycle, a cart of mangoes, and a cow. Squeezing through the cacophony of noise and clutter presents a new view with every step. Lining the disarray of the streets are buildings in various states of crumbling demise, still in full employ despite missing walls or roofs, much like the many people with missing limbs still making their way through the chaos Draping the structures is an unfathomable amount of worn and tangled electrical wire. The air is as thick with smoke and particulate matter as the ground is with every form of refuse.

We have carried with us the weight of that afternoon in Old Delhi. It is baggage that has made heavy our hearts and confounded our minds with helplessness in the face of such enormous need.

On the same day, we visited the Gandhi museum, the man whose simple, beautiful, and courageous life is memorialized on the face of India's currency and more significantly by his example that despair and injustice should not be the final word.


When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love, have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it - always,
- Mahatma Gandhi