Mad Dogs and Kiwi Twits
We went for a ride on the Metro to Connaught Place. The metro is a lot busier this year - you actually have to queue for a token. Although the queues are still fairly civilised there - unlike a lot of other ones in Indian suituations, where it’s every man for himself and the more elbows you have the better. Again, we went through an electronic gateway and were scrutinised by security guys. Mind you, the first guy looked at Paul’s bag and then I lifted mine towards him and said “woman’s things” and he waved me away. This mortal fear of womens’ handbags appears to be a worldwide phenomena.
Connaught Place is a large (really) circular area with a round garden in the middle and shops around the outside of that. Of course we got out of the metro through the gate on the opposite side of where we needed to go so we had to walk through the center garden in the roasting hot sun. A truly horrible feeling. (At 40-odd degrees, this is not such a good joke.) By the time we got to our destiny I was almost reeling from being broiled alive. Only mad dogs and kiwi twits will put themselves through this. To add insult to injury, we went to a restaurant to cool off and have lunch and I ordered vegetable pakora. I was so busy reeling that I hadn’t realised that the restaurant was a southern Indian style one. They really like their spices down there. And I do believe that half of Southern India’s spices were loaded into my pakoras. This is just what I needed - broiling on the outside and blistered on the inside. Spice is all very wonderful, but I don’t understand this concept of cauterizing your tastebuds so you can’t even taste the food anyway and even drinking water now hurts. I was really kicking myself by now because I was really hungry. Oh well, lesson learnt and in the future I shall make careful enquiries as to the origins of the restaurant chefs.
Finally we got back to lovely, smelly, noisy, crazy Paharganj. Now this place I feel at home with. Across the road from our guesthouse I amused myself haggling for a second-hand book - a great pastime, this haggling with the locals - went up to our rooftop for a plate of nice, mild chinese chow mein and commenced to get over my jetlag, hunger and internal blisters in the laziest manner possible. In fact, I went to sleep at approximately 4.30pm and found myself wide awake at 4.30am. At this time of day, only prowling cats and lizards are awake. However, they all kept me company out in the hallway while I continued reading my book and waited for the rest of the world to catch up with my totally sane sleeping and waking habits.
Sunday found me back out on the street trying to find my tailor from last year. I led Paul down the alleyway he was in - creeping past Paul’s previous tailor’s doorway, a man we love to hate - but couldn’t find my tailor anywhere. So, back out onto the street to find the Ravindra Bros. material shop. Couldn’t find that either. So, down another alleyway to Sunny’s place. Sunny, as it turned out, was the guy that recommended the Ravindra Bros to me in the first place, so he gave us directions. When we got to the shop (essentially a large hole in the wall at the side of an alleyway, or ‘lane’ and Paul so nicely puts it), I gave the main brother (a smiley man in a fabulous turban) a photo I had taken of them last year. He was grinning from ear to ear about this. It was well worth the trouble it took to see that look on his face.
Tags: India, New Delhi, Pahar Ganj, Spices, Tailor, Travel
