The border looked impressive from the air,stretching away into the night and separating one set of cricket lovers from theother—over 700 km of lights. Arriving after an eight-year gap, steppingthrough the human barricades, each vying to get your backside onto the rear seatof their taxi of course, and touching the earth of mother India. Sigh!
Well, what to say, it’s great to be back? Sure, especially when things thattook months or years now take hours, like getting a mobile! Or getting mobilearound the city—10 minutes to Chandni Chowk and the heart of Old Delhi on aMetro that puts London or NYC to shame, wah bhai wah, and an ever-hungrySardar friend to sample the biryani from every one of the dhabas nestling up tothe Jama Masjid.
But how much has really changed, I wonder. Do the new hi-tech currents have muchimpact deep below the surface? Is all this globalised hot air just beingabsorbed with the enormous appetite for assimilation that India has demonstratedthroughout its history, leaving mere cosmetic pockmarks on an eternal surface?Perhaps these thoughts are immaterial in areas where practical materialismabounds, as it does in the rush of urbanity, and we, like any other nation, arebut a collection of individuals struggling to survive, and, if lucky enough, toentertain ourselves. The bazaars haven’t changed and the DTC buses are stillroad hogs even if they run on CNG. There is a palpable pride however,optimism-burgers at McDonald’s and nationalist-dosas at Sagar’s, althoughnot quite a la George Bush. People seem happier to share a nationalidentity, and unless I’m dreaming, Hindi seems to be asserting itself afterbeing confined to a sidekick role at the helm by an anglophile upper class.
I managed to cross that border I saw from the skies. Wagah and Faisalabad,glimpses of a Pakistani Punjab— inspiration for much of Delhi’spost-Partition Punjabi nature. The match was a high-scoring draw, there wasn’tmuch vegetarian khana around and it was obvious that comparing technicaldevelopments and infrastructure is an obsolete activity practised only byautodelusionists. However, the pace of life was more leisurely, the languageflowery with embedded etiquette and the instinctive habits of hospitality—qualities of the mythical ‘old’ Delhi that poets dream about!
But who wants a sob story of yet another phoren-return putting on airs andsticking Marlboro in top-pocket? Humph, how about an inversion of that concept,for haven’t you heard, India is the place to be? This is the mystic Eastwhere, as Gita Mehta might have described, politicians once topped thephilosophical charts and beggars are now chauffeur-driven to their bastis.Even the Goras are beginning to admire our muscles as they seek out the hi-techgyms of Bangalore and Hyderabad instead of the ancient cocktail of pot andmystic buggery on the beaches of Goa.
I eat my paneer and take a drag on my Gold Flake, remembering that everything isan illusion anyway. Even the fact that it’s great being back.
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This article originally appeared in Delhi City Limits, April 15, 2006
