Life- through Delhi

Life, life would be so much better if it started with a nice cup of coffee every morning. Or if I were back home, warm Zutho. I don’t know why I say warm zutho because no one drinks it like that but I guess the thought appeals to me.

This morning started with rain drizzling in through the railings in the corridor. Delhi-rain. Monsoon rain. The other night I woke up to a loud crack and a rumbling above my roof. I thought it might be an earthquake or a drunken husband and wife fighting this late at night. It was the fearsome Monsoon, it was the thunderous proclamation of the skys: that we are mere mortals under its sky. Under this Heat, under this Winter, in the shivering soul shriveled from any form of dignity by the footpath. In hatred, in human divisions and its consequent indifference, its frequent appeals to the Conscience and how that all seems so normal. Indeed, Human is a mortal, flawed.

I seemed to have learned a little. Let go a little. Belittled a little. See patience, touch a little bit of humanity without being condescending. Feel home within this. Whether that may be India’s caste and class system, with the rickshaw-puller­, the vegetable seller and my different face. Or within my own hell and need for another me, like in a parallel universe where the other me is not hurt and resentful, but healed and whole without hatred consumed. This is closer to home, isn’t it? I felt ‘home’ where I went and where I laid my head. But here the heart constricts, I am not the observer any longer. I’ll have to say something sooner or later, give my due. I seem obliged to oblige. Perhaps that’s why the feeling of home and the feeling of being confronted is diluted and still existing.

But won’t life seem better with a cup of chai and kachori from the fat-bellied Bihari across the street. Bare India, bare me and bare you.


Kachori- An Indian snack made of flour and eaten with gravy.
Bihari- Bihar, state. A person from Bihar.
rickshaw- cycle-taxi :)