doubtful eye is placed somewhere else in the room, a hairline sneer appears. No matter how much you smile, he never smiles back, only nods. No matter how many times you thank him, however big a tip you leave, there’s no reply. When he walks away we laugh. And yet he claims us every time, when we walk in he sees us and seats us.
In the restaurant we pore over the menu and gossip about the other diners, spy on them and make up their stories in this colonial relic, this memory of the Raj. We guess what people do, what they mean to one another, who’s conducting an affair with whom, a century of secrets clinging to the stucco vaulted ceiling. Old genteel Delhi. A direct line to the British days, Ludlow Castle and Court Road. Before they bring in plasma TVs, before our waiter vanishes, never to be seen again.
We drive and we drive and he talks. He wants to show me every inch of the city, wants to exhaust me, fill my body with it, he wants me to know. To know the Ridge, the tail end of the Aravalli Hills stretching all the way from Gujarat, bursting up through the city like a dinosaur’s back, one hundred and fifty million years old, older than the Himalaya itself, cutting across Delhi to die after the Hindu Rao Hospital and the Mutiny Memorial. To die without ceremony by the Yamuna.
Across boulders there are ghosts that haunt the Delhi Ridge. Across boulders, bodies of women have been draped rag-dollish, cut up, mutilated, their heads caved in with rocks, rotting to the earth, feeding the wild dogs. Bodies of men too, tumbled down in ruins of red, red rock. Across boulders, looming large, above and beyond, where the demons hide out in the scrub. We drive and we drive as the sun goes down, and here within the half-dead trees monkeys gather and men roam; they appear without warning at the side of the road, running out sometimes to flag you down.
It’s the Southern Ridge he loves the best, he drives me there, around Tughlaqabad, the ruins of the ancient city, its desolate brawn of stone. He tells the legend of the Sufi saint, how he cursed the emperor who built these walls, condemned the fortress to be barren for evermore, populated only by animals and goatherds.
From the wild heart of Delhi this lonely city stands. Intruded and built upon, abandoned. There are forgotten monuments here, lost dreams. We’ve parked awhile by their side. Look, he says, watch the trees. Murders happen all the time, people vanish, men, women and children, in such a barren spot, the desolation of madmen, mystics, whores. A place as wild as anywhere in the world. Isn’t it wonderful? He says he walks inside himself sometimes, there’s nowhere else like it in the world.
Each day, as if our time is running out, we drive and talk. From Vasant Kunj to the farmhouses of Chhatarpur, through ancient Mehrauli.
Back again, overlooking Nehru Place. He stops to park at the side of the road, lights a cigarette. The scars of the twentieth century, the brutal Soviet blocks brushed in fine, choking dust, the crowds swarming in the gaps, charging the black market of computers, hardware,software. I’m worn down by him. He says, Look at what we’ve built. How wonderful it is to be alive.
Crepuscular. Delhi creeps as we go, the sun sinks behind the earth once more, bathes in the rotten Yamuna, drowns there. The temples erupt, the mosques, the droning of men’s voices, the keening of every faith, the desperate plea for the sun to rise again, the bats and the birds, the great tambourine shake, a bedsheet shook over the balcony to the street. And the beasts of the Ridge are going wild, making a noise of pylons and wires, a cassette being rewound, unfurling tape against magnet, the madness of the dying sun, inducing ritual panic as old as the earth.
In a city such as this you still know the sun. You know the moment it appears, you hear the bells ringing madly in praise, hear the chanting and the call to prayer leaping into the sky, the wild dogs barking in the
In the restaurant we pore over the menu and gossip about the other diners, spy on them and make up their stories in this colonial relic, this memory of the Raj. We guess what people do, what they mean to one another, who’s conducting an affair with whom, a century of secrets clinging to the stucco vaulted ceiling. Old genteel Delhi. A direct line to the British days, Ludlow Castle and Court Road. Before they bring in plasma TVs, before our waiter vanishes, never to be seen again.
We drive and we drive and he talks. He wants to show me every inch of the city, wants to exhaust me, fill my body with it, he wants me to know. To know the Ridge, the tail end of the Aravalli Hills stretching all the way from Gujarat, bursting up through the city like a dinosaur’s back, one hundred and fifty million years old, older than the Himalaya itself, cutting across Delhi to die after the Hindu Rao Hospital and the Mutiny Memorial. To die without ceremony by the Yamuna.
Across boulders there are ghosts that haunt the Delhi Ridge. Across boulders, bodies of women have been draped rag-dollish, cut up, mutilated, their heads caved in with rocks, rotting to the earth, feeding the wild dogs. Bodies of men too, tumbled down in ruins of red, red rock. Across boulders, looming large, above and beyond, where the demons hide out in the scrub. We drive and we drive as the sun goes down, and here within the half-dead trees monkeys gather and men roam; they appear without warning at the side of the road, running out sometimes to flag you down.
It’s the Southern Ridge he loves the best, he drives me there, around Tughlaqabad, the ruins of the ancient city, its desolate brawn of stone. He tells the legend of the Sufi saint, how he cursed the emperor who built these walls, condemned the fortress to be barren for evermore, populated only by animals and goatherds.
From the wild heart of Delhi this lonely city stands. Intruded and built upon, abandoned. There are forgotten monuments here, lost dreams. We’ve parked awhile by their side. Look, he says, watch the trees. Murders happen all the time, people vanish, men, women and children, in such a barren spot, the desolation of madmen, mystics, whores. A place as wild as anywhere in the world. Isn’t it wonderful? He says he walks inside himself sometimes, there’s nowhere else like it in the world.
Each day, as if our time is running out, we drive and talk. From Vasant Kunj to the farmhouses of Chhatarpur, through ancient Mehrauli.
Back again, overlooking Nehru Place. He stops to park at the side of the road, lights a cigarette. The scars of the twentieth century, the brutal Soviet blocks brushed in fine, choking dust, the crowds swarming in the gaps, charging the black market of computers, hardware,software. I’m worn down by him. He says, Look at what we’ve built. How wonderful it is to be alive.
Crepuscular. Delhi creeps as we go, the sun sinks behind the earth once more, bathes in the rotten Yamuna, drowns there. The temples erupt, the mosques, the droning of men’s voices, the keening of every faith, the desperate plea for the sun to rise again, the bats and the birds, the great tambourine shake, a bedsheet shook over the balcony to the street. And the beasts of the Ridge are going wild, making a noise of pylons and wires, a cassette being rewound, unfurling tape against magnet, the madness of the dying sun, inducing ritual panic as old as the earth.
In a city such as this you still know the sun. You know the moment it appears, you hear the bells ringing madly in praise, hear the chanting and the call to prayer leaping into the sky, the wild dogs barking in the
Similar Books
