The Happy Snake

What can I tell you about Delhi from my forty hours here that you wouldn't already know or be able to guess? Probably not much: it's hot; it's crowded and bustling; the drivers are crazy. Such is true of many places in the developing world: from my admittedly limited experience, however, Delhi carries these stereotypes to tragicomic extremes. Take the drivers, for example. The greatest single instance of government waste in this country no doubt lies in the budget line item (if such a thing existed) for the painting of lane lines. In truth, the roads need only a double yellow line to demarcate the directional flow of traffic, and even that seemingly firm boundary is violated with shameless regularity. A four-lane major thoroughfare may, at times, contain eight or ten indistinct and ephemeral lanes of traffic. It's not that the marked lanes are exceptionally wide; the sheer variety of vehicles on the road (and consequent variety of widths of vehicles) means that they may be fitted together in a virtually infinite number of combinations. A bus and motorbike (or possibly two) fit one marked lane of traffic, as do a car, auto-rickshaw (took-took), and motorbike. Five motorbikes may ride alongside one another in a lane. The fitting together is not comfortable, least of all for passengers who hail from the comparatively sane roadways of North America and some European nations. They say that baseball is a game of inches: perhaps driving in India is a game of centimeters. And if it is any game at all, it most closely resembles Tetris, but only if all of the pieces were in a perpetual push to advance. The dance can be mesmerizing, I admit. There is some greater force guiding the paths of these vehicles as they jockey for position: there must be, or else traffic fatalities would rival disease as the preeminent cause of mortality in this country. Traffic here is an organism forever shifting in its shape and composition: first cars interspersed with took-tooks and a smattering of motorbikes here, now a bus surrounded by bicycles and taxis there. Bulging here, now tapering, then bulging again, a pattern that is endlessly repeated, like some snake that has swallowed an entire family of mice. In truth, I find it thrilling, and if I stayed in Delhi long enough, I would likely find it unremarkable in time. But I haven't even mentioned the pedestrians! Fearless, they cross the street with disdain for bodily injury. When forced to stop mid-cross, as they invariably must, they create their own lanes of traffic, which drivers must negotiate like any other in the street. The fact that pedestrians are moving both with and perpendicularly to the regular flow only heightens the intrigue.

How easily does misunderstanding arrive? Yesterday I asked a took-took driver to take me to the New Delhi Train Station so that I could buy my ticket. "New Delhi?" he asked. I repeated my destination several times, wondering how it was possible that even a driver who obviously spoke only a few phrases of English could not know this. I enlisted the help of some passers-by. "You want the New Delhi Railway Station?" they asked. "Yes," I said. "New Delhi Railway Station," they told the driver. We went.

Speaking of the New Delhi Railway Station, I found it frightening. People everywhere, like ants swarming a carcass in the roadway. I tried to make my way upstairs to the Foreign Tourist Office, where passage is booked with a fraction of the waiting and hassle than among the crush of Indians. I chose a route to the stairs that forced me to cross several queues of Indians waiting toe-to-heel to purchase their tickets. Coming to the first queue, I said "Excuse me" evenly and waited for a parting. No one budged. I pushed close. Still no movement, only steely glances from a tiny man waiting there. I was a head taller than everyone in the immediate vicinity. I retraced my steps and chose a route to the stairs circumnavigating the queues. It was a game of Red Rover that I obviously couldn't win.

At night, when I lie in bed and the clattering rush of stimulus has subsided, the pangs of homesickness arrive. I realize that my assurances to family and friends that one year was really a short period of time, that it would pass more quickly than could be imagined, were really attempts to quiet my own fears. On my second day in India, one year seems an eternity. These feelings, too, will pass in time, but at the moment my mind returns to them when it has the chance.

It's off to Udaipur now, where the substance of my time here will take shape.