I would have to, I was informed last week, travel for work. Never one to shirk responsibility, I was all relaxed nonchalance as I nodded my assent. Of course, my firm, set visage seemed to say.
No problem, my squared shoulders indicated. Bring it on, and in spades, said my ramrod straight back. Tell me where, and I’m on my way – that was my response, in a nutshell.
To Delhi, was the response.
Gulp.
Now, I have nothing against our capital. It could, I grant you, do with a slightly calmer population, and brakes might be a concept Delhi’s citizens might spend some time revising, but on the whole, I’m fairly fine with it. The food, in particular, is one of Delhi’s stellar attractions, and no city that serves good food can be all bad.
Well, apart from one niggling little problem. You can’t breathe while you are there. I mean that quite literally, by the way. I was there for four days, and for all of the four days the air was thicker than an Agatha Christie plot, and unhealthier than a deep fried rice cake.
Right from the time we landed at Delhi airport, and were welcomed by an impenetrable wall of smog, up until the time we flew out and above that ghastly pallid grey soup of a city, the air was consistently, unrelentingly unhealthy. And that was bad enough as it went, but the real kicker was the fact that it was not just the air that was bad – the visibility was lower than Kumble’s popularity in the Indian dressing room.
Low visibility is a problem in other parts of the country. In Delhi, it is a way to commit suicide, for as has been explained in an earlier column, the brake to a Delhi driver is like Marvel’s Avenger series to us. Fascinating, but entirely fictional.
A driver in Delhi, it may interest you to know, doesn’t respond by driving at lower speeds, on account of not being able to see beyond the bonnet of his car. No sir, he responds by driving slightly faster. His reasoning, as far as we were able to make out in those four terror filled days that we spent there, is that nobody else is going to slow down anyways, so you slowing down is basically asking to be rammed from behind. So you may as well get done with the journey as quickly as possible. In a perverse, entirely chilling way, this makes sense – but that, I suppose, is what those Japanese pilots told themselves in World War II as well.
Our workplace in Delhi was a ghastly, terror-inducing, bowel-emptying 40 kilometers from where we were staying, and by the end of the fourth day, Hanuman himself couldn’t have recited his chalisa better than we could.
Delhi during its foggy winters is assuredly not for the faint hearted – nor is it, come to think of it, for the faint lunged, if you’ll excuse the poor English.
And so the next time you hear me ‘female-dog’ about our lovely city, just tap me smartly on the shoulder and whisper “Delhi” into my ears.
Don’t, on second thoughts. I’m still not up for thinking about it.
He doesn't expect the paradox to be resolved in his lifetime
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