Impressions of New Delhi

I am sitting on his shoulders as he strides towards some unknown destination. Happy to just go wherever he is taking me. At some point he wants me to start walking with him. I protest and he holds my hand and coaxes me into walking. I am holding a paper bag full of goodies we enter a hospital room and my mom is there with my newborn brother. We are at a picnic and he is looking mad because an uncle does not want us kids to eat pakoras while sitting in his new Fiat car. It's a cold winter night and the whole family is cuddled up in razais. We are chatting, arguing, laughing, fighting. His voice is always the loudest and his laughter is the most infectious. Bedtime stories are his experiences of the partition and the Korean war where he was part of the Red Cross Medical Corps. We are in the front garden of our Chanakya Puri house, its a holiday and he decides to race my brother and me. We laugh more and run slow. Aunty B regales us with her stories of going on shikars and sh

Statistics say that every hour 2 women are raped in India. Surely this number can in no way explain why the Bus rape case has attracted so much attention. Delhites were up in arms. Newspapers were full of every juicy titbit that they could search out. Newsreaders went ballistic, panelists screamed out their points of view on every channel. The youth took to the streets and were burning public property and the police were having a field day, water cannoning and lathi charging the protesters. So my question is: Why was this rape different from the others? Rapes more dastardly that this one have happened before. A quick google search reveals an endless list of high profile rape cases. Kashmir Kunan Poshpora incident (1991) Shopian rape and murder case (2009) Kerala Suryanelli rape case (1996) Kiliroor Sex Scandal (2003) Maharashtra Aruna Shanbaug case (1973) Jalgaon rape case (circa 1982-1994) Mathura rape case (1974-1981) Tulasa Thapa (1982) Manipur Thang

It must be embedded in my dna - the instinct to bargain for anything I buy from a vendor. It's as though I think he has no right to earn any profits! I go vegetable shopping and I ask the sabziwalla - how much for the onions? He says, "20 rupees a kilo." And I go - "I'll give you 15". Or he says, "madam your bill is 138 rupees" and I say, "here's 130". I don't bother about his working conditions, I don't worry that he may not have money to pay his children's school fees. I saunter away feeling very pleased. I saved 8 rupees. Then, on another day when I walk into a Reliance Store to buy rations a reverse action happens. And it has happened often - My bill is 2154.55 rupees and I walk out paying 2155. I gave 45 paise extra and I am still not thinking about the owner of this retail chain. Surely - Just the electricity used to keep his multi story eyesore home in Mumbai running could light up the lives of all t

At a random red light in New Delhi, during peak traffic, with windows rolled up and airconditioning on full blast, I am suddenly confronted with a face unwashed. She peers at me through my drivers window. Her hair is matted, her clothes are rags and her blackened fingrnails beat a tattoo on the pane. I scrounge around in my bag for a few coins. "You aren't going to give her that!" scolds my driving companion. Beggars are just lazy good for nothing so and so's. Ask her to come to your house to work for a days meal and see how fast she'll go away. But why should a 6 year old leave familiar surroundings and climb into a strange ladies car to wash her dishes to earn a meal?? Surely she has survived life on the streets because she knows better than that. Besides, wouldn't that be child labour? It puzzles me. Why do we look at beggars as lazy good for nothings. Dodging killer bluelines all day, dashing between unpredictable bikes and scooters, inhaling diesel

Yesterday I suffered a panic attack as I saw my daughter step out of the house. She planned to catch the metro to meet friends in Gurgaon. I was fine with that. She would be back before dark - and that was reassuring. So what was my problem? I had read the morning papers. Some days ago a young college girl had been shot dead in an area crowded with people. A few days later the killer has been nabbed. What worried me was that being in a crowded public space did not protect her. Whether any bystanders tried to help her or not is another question. So the culprit is behind bars - why was I still panicking? Possibly because, unlike the vociferous banner wielding protesters - I do not blame the police. I see the eve teasers and stalkers as frustrated testosterone charged men who do not know what it is to be friends, or have relationships with a member of the opposite sex. They get their behavioral cues from bollywood and tollywood film heroes. Or possibly an equally misguided peer group. Th

Once you reach the metro station at Central secratariat, buy a ticket for chandni chowk. Like any self-respecting time capsule our modern day wonder - the spotlessly clean, state of the art metro will deposit you into another century. Step across the sleeping sadhu, walk past the Kali temple, skirt the electric station duisguised as an ancient, if rather grimy, ant hill and you will hit a path that is blocked by several rikshaw pullers. The most agile one will leap over the others and offer to take you for a chandni chowk ride. Jama masjid, jain temple, ghalib ki haveli, dariba kallan, paranthe wale gali, kinari bazaar, red fort and back all for just Rs 100. and if you say yes to that you are being generous. He expects you to bargain him down to at least Rs 80. As you climb into your rickshaw be prepared for the colours, smells, sights and ofcourse the people. More people than you have ever seen before. All of them jostling, and elbowing their way to do whatever they have come to chand