Delhi Metro does not simply move in space, it moves in time.
You leave the semi-contemporary locations of New Delhi, and get underground. Everything is made of steel and glass, there are escalators and displays that announce when the next train will arrive. And they are on time.
Very few things remind you of where you are: [...]
Archive for August, 2008
M for Metro
Posted in My India on August 22, 2008 | 2 Comments »
L for Language
Posted in My India on August 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Along with other 22 official languages, India is an English speaking country.
The problem is that Indians are not an English speaking people. Signs are in English, money are in English, documents are always also in English. Clerks in the grocery store only know rice, bread, how much? and some numbers. Rickshaw drivers only know left, [...]
K for Kitchen, Bathroom, and Everthing I didn’t know
Posted in My India on August 22, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Things in my South Delhi flat divide in two big groups: those that I changed, or fixed, and those that I just had to accept.
They were equally hard, the fixing part and the accepting one.
To begin with, as my postmodern self learned with a bit of a shock, there is no Ikea in India. Or [...]
J for Jugaar
Posted in My India on August 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Jugaar is a Hindi word that doesn’t translate. And it doesn’t need to, because it wouldn’t make sense in any place that I can think of. Instead, it makes all the possible sense in India, and I am lead to think that jugaar is what India is based on, what gives it its ultimate energy [...]
I for Imperfection
Posted in Uncategorized on August 22, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Almost two years ago I moved to Paris. I thought it would have been the most inspiring place for a wannabe writer, but it turned out to be a little too wonderful to be written about. There is a mistake, I discovered, in the syllogism at the basis of my happiness: I love living in [...]
H for Hello?
Posted in My India on August 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
At the age of eleven, following the adventures of the Dover-based Smith family in my English textbook, I learnt that when English-speaking people pick up the phone, they say “Hello”.
Almost fifteen years after, following my own personal Delhi-based adventures, I learnt that in India when people pick up the phone, they don’t simply say “Hello”.
They [...]
G for Gai
Posted in My India on August 22, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Here we are, to probably the favorite and certainly the happiest letter of the alphabet. G for Gai, which is Hindi for, oh yeah, cow.
Coming to India you expect cows to be hanging around in the streets, blocking the traffic and what not, well, that is exactly how it is.
I will begin saying that, thanks [...]
F for Filth
Posted in My India on August 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Never get too romantic about this place, I am told as I get here. I try to obey and keep my disenchant about this reality. It’s so true: even to my ever-so-cynical eyes India has its charm, and sometimes I really feel on the edge of romance.
But I have a trick that really keeps me [...]
E for Electricity
Posted in My India on August 22, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Electricity here works (or doesn’t, depending on the luck of the day) in a funny way. To begin with, the wires. Wires here aren’t disciplined in any way. They grow wild on the utility poles. When one breaks, it isn’t replaced by a new one: the new one will be put next to it, over [...]
D for Dust
Posted in My India on August 22, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Before coming to live here, even when you came as a tourist, one thing about India you most likely have heard is that there’s a lot of dust.
What you don’t know unless you live here, try to have a house and keep it clean, is ho much dust is the lost of dust everyone speaks [...]
