Day 5-10: Delhi: What's the hurry chicken curry?

I am beat. There must be some fatigue-forcefield around Delhi… But I’ve just had masala dosa with lemon soda and watermelon for dinner, so that should provide me with enough fuel to write a blogpost. I have been in Delhi for 5 days now. The city has some wonderful spots, and most people are really helpful and nice (as in most other places in India). The area I’m staying in, Paharganj Bazaar, is however filled with shopkeepers, annoying Indian boys, cows, hippies and Japanese tourists. I have nothing against shopkeepers (unless they happen to combine their profession with annoying boy-ness), cows, or Japanese tourists (unless they are Japanese hippy-tourists). The annoying Indian boys are a cultural feature, which can’t be helped without a new wave of die-hard colonialism (please don’t take me too serious here). Apart from being generally annoying, they also know their way around, so they can be used for my convenience. The hippies however, are really getting on my nerves. If I hear one more person say he/she is looking for him/herself, I’m gonna have to punch them. In the face. Repeatedly.

The shops here sell everything from Barbie dolls (bloody globalization) to two-metre long whips (why?). As I’m having trouble getting everything into my pack as it is, I try not to buy anything. Although the whips do look tempting, especially in combination with the hippies and annoyo’s. My room is quite bug-free and has a real mattress and soft fluffy blankets. Heaven. I’ve spent a lot of time lurking snuggly under my blankets. Perhaps a bit too much. I haven’t seen very much of Delhi yet, nor have I done very much studying. I think this is mainly due to the fact that my sleep is very interrupted (by singing sadhus and Indians with bells, mostly… I don’t know what they are getting at. Mad Indians…) I managed to arrange all my onward tickets (train, and plane), however. Yesterday I did my best to have an un-indian (in other words, silent and peaceful) day. To some extent I succeeded. I went to the Lodi Gardens in the morning. Very nice. Smelled just like my grandmothers backyard in summer when I was little. Same flowers. Then I went to the National Museum. Nice, if very expensive. Their Gandhara and Gupta collections are very good, and the moghul-section has some sweet swords and daggers. In the Harappa-section I found myself face to face with two oval white rocks, which only had a label in Hindi. I wondered what they were: Some kind of tool? A religious predecessor of the contemporary shivalingam?... I looked it up in my dictionary. Mongoose. I laughed out loud. After that I had a real espresso in a upperclass coffeelounge. They had trance on the musicsystem, non-pushy waiters, and the cleanest floors ever seen by human eyes. After about 10 days here, it was nice to have an deindianised day.

Yesterday evening I had dinner with Minna, and this morning we went to see the Bahai-lotustemple. This afternoon I had an appointment with the president of the hindu writers forum. It was a long way out of central Delhi, and it took me quite some time to find it, but the guy was nice enough, and gave me chai and some interesting books. On the way back I discovered the New Delhi Metro. Cheap, clean, fast, and lots of heavily armed soldiers around (I was gonna type safe, but the two are not the same). Now I’m in my office (which in Delhi equals the sikhi-internet-hut-nextdoor (god, I miss my illegal wifi)), trying to arrange more study-meetings and looking for more accommodation in Goa. I’ve changed my plans, and now I’m gonna fly into Goa, which gives me two more nights there (I hope to spend them in the state-capital, Panjim). So I better get to work, before I sink into laziness once more.