<..snipped..>
Anyway, I enjoyed linking myself from pillar to post, so to speak, while I was at your site. The snapshots of Delhi were rather nice, though the one with the cow-dung cakes was a bit quizzical. But, I must confess, it felt so nice to see Delhi, from out of the blue. I could almost feel the sun burning down my back while I was gazing at those photographs, and for that, my beautiful, I must thank you.
I read one of the pieces by Khushwant Singh: he ends his essay remembering a New Delhi that had no sky scrapers, that had vast empty spaces around its monuments. I cannot remember or identify myself with a Delhi bereft of its "filth": I don't think I can truly think of it as filth. I wonder sometimes whether I would crib about Delhi fifty years from now, if something drastic were to happen to it ... as I stand now, I can't think of something novel happening to that mother of ours {I know, Khushwant Singh's Delhi is sexless, and ageless, and I guess so is ours, but it does sound nice calling Delhi "mother"}: I mean, after all, has it all not happened to her already? What could be new and virgin for Delhi to experience, or go through? I can't think of an assault gruesome enough that Delhi hasn't borne, or happiness and joy more sublime that she hasn't celebrated. Rivers, apparently perennial have parched themselves out in her lap, and yes, sky scrapers have grown alongside the Banyan and Jaamun trees. And I am glad that they have, Bagchi: imagine how frightening it would be, were we to return home and find the air all cleanly personality-less, and buildings all washed bright and new.Gosh! all we would need then would be signs in green telling us where to turn to take take the "Exit" to South Delhi/East Delhi. But then again, you know, even if such markers were to prop up, and ITO clear up its poisonous skies, I don't think much could happen to Delhi to "change" it. It is the way everything combines so well, so effortlessly that marks Delhi out from any/every other city. Over the years {I agree, as compared to Khushwant Singh's 50 or so years in Delhi, our 24 odd years must seem like chicken shit, but in our own way, we have earned the right to judge/comment on Delhi ... after all, it is our home-town}I have come to believe that nothing can be taken away from Delhi ... things just keep getting added on. It is like the population explosion there: every day the people keep piling up, but there is always room for more the following day. This city actually grows!
The only other place that I have felt a similar attachment to, ironically, has been New York, perhaps because it too has that distinct disregard for propriety, hard-and-fast definition and restriction.
Delhi ... preserves, absorbs ... and thank goodness for that.
Now look at all this sentimental spill, I say!!!
Love,
Tripthi