The last few days have seen a huge amount of exploring from the back seat of rickshaws, and I feel a little bit better attuned to Delhi now - distances, neighbourhoods etc. Each day in Delhi generates so much fresh "material" (strange sights, arguements, moments of bewilderment), it is hard to know which incidents to report.

It is a hard, dazzling city, the long low red brick walls, broken down houses, the many markets for either rich or poor, the suddenly appearing ruins. One day in the main bazaar's long narrow central street, I looked up over the taxis and rickshaws for a moment and saw an immensely tall elephant walking towards me. I merely shrugged and let it and its riders pass.

I would tell you more about the secrets of the city, but actually I'm feeling too weary from the heat and have a growing sense of ill health. There's an ache in my stomach, just below the solar plexus area, which only goes away when I lie down, I have little energy, and this morning my appetite has completely gone.

These complaints are nothing, however, to Gari's, who has spent the last night in hospital, taking in fluids through an IV drip.

His decline over a few days went from just an upset stomach, to shivering, to a muttering night long fever (he pronounced once in his sleep, "It's Star Wars..." - this mystified him (post fever) when I told him about it, "But, I don't even like Stars Wars.."), then just an ever accumulating lack of strength and energy. Both of us were stupidly going on our previous experiences of being ill while travelling, and didn't appreciate the seriousness of his condition. By the time we got to the "East West" clinic, he could barely walk straight; by the time the doctor finished his initial diagnosis, Gari tried to stand and his legs gave way like falling skittles. He had developed, they told us, baterial dysentry, and as the infection had prevented him from eating or holding in any liquid for the last few days, he was on the edge of collapse. We were a bit shocked when the doctor recommended one or two nights in the clinic on IV, but by that point there was no other option. I supported his climb up the stairs to his room, helped him lie down on the bed and untied his shoes. His face had turned a pallid alabaster-grey, except for his lips and eyelids, which were now a weak purple. I sat beside him as a nurse set up the drip - within a couple of hours he was massively recovered.

I went back to the hotel to get some things for him: toothbrush, books etc; a journey that quickly turned into disaster.
The clinic is far into the south of Delhi, a long drive from the backpacker hub of Paharganj (the Main Bazaar). My drooped shoulders, stubbly and quite hapless richshaw driver agreed my price to get there, "As you wish, sir", and began driving me around and around and around the expanses of south Delhi, in futile attempts to find the clinic, interspersed with pronouncements that I would pay him more. In the growing darkness, we had frequent stops so he could ask directions, frequent slow periods to look at building signs in the hope he had come across it by chance.
We went through plush neighbourhoods, parks, low budget markets, shopping malls, new fancy blocks, housing areas on the verge of shanty town, an old palace broken up into many poor families' quarters - while nearby newly built luxury flats gleamed. South Delhi feels like the real centre of the city, rather than the worn rabbit-warren cathedral of the "New Delhi" areas we've been staying in, those long wide roads of government offices, hotels and history; South Dehli has a living feel, quite at odds with the rotting brick of the areas the guidebook focuses on. One sees a lot more women out and about in South Delhi, a lot more people generally around after dark.

My irritation with my hapless driver grew as we drove on into the night. A few times I stormed off and tried to get another rickshaw, but he followed me and begged me to get back in. The final straw was when he had driven all the way back to Khan market, close to India Gate, back in the north end of town. I just thrust the originally agreed one hundred at him and strode off, he followed me asking for more. I turned and shouted at him briefly, and walked on. A gleaming white taxi slowed by my side, one of the heavy set vintage style "Ambassador" Indian-made cars. I got in the back seat, the seats and ceiling were softed padded, the lighting was low. I could see the side of my Sikh driver's face - tightly wrapped turban, bristling beard, heraldic moustache. "Where to sir? - ah yes, East West Medical Centre, I know it well". The car growled smoothly into motion, the air conditioning cooled my irritations.
I got the driver chatting about his earlier life, wanting to test the thesis of William Damrymple's City of Djinns - that the majority of Delhi's population are Punjabis who have migrated to the city within the last fifty years. It turned out the driver had come to Delhi twenty six years ago, from a small farm in the Punjab, seeing little future for himself and his planned children. He now had three girls and a little son (his parents had insisted they wanted a grandson), who were all working their way through school and university. I told him, laughing out loud, about my hours with the useless rickshaw driver. In the flickering glow of the street lighting, the side of his whiskered face creased for a smile. "Usually sir, when people ask for the meter, we drive them all over the city. But it sounds like you have already spent a long time tonight, so we will go straight there".

I gave Gari his things, and went back to the hotel, feeling too tired to do much. The next morning, I had the symptoms I described at the start of this piece, and realised I should see one of the doctors myself when I next came over to visit Gari. The female doctor did various tests on me, and I went up to Gari's room, feeling increasingly weak. Sitting in a chair became uncomfortable, so I ended up sharing the narrow hospital bed with Gari. We lay shoulder to shoulder watching Galaxy Quest on TV. By late afternoon, Gari was vastly recovered and ready to check himself out - my tests came back, and, perhaps rather embarrassingly, there was nothing wrong with me. Not sure what was going on there, perhaps some stomach upset that had worked its way out naturally.

Sitting on the front step of a nearby shop, post hospital experience, Gari and I reflected on our first week in India. We were both a bit stunned, quietly reeling from how difficult it had been: health concerns, the heat, the oppresive pushiness of Delhi. I expressed my sadness at how few Indians I had been able to converse with; non tourist focused people have seemed far less interested in chatting than I had hoped.

A saying about India is that you either love it or hate it. Another saying is that in the first three weeks, everyone hates it - it takes three weeks to adjust enough to give yourself a chance of loving it.
My take on this is that the first few days are wonderful, but if there is indeed an initial three week hate period, Gari and I are certainly in it.
There are a number of bewildering things about India. While this section is going to be inevitably quite negative, I'm just going to write exactly how I'm feeling - as always, readers are completely free to add comments if they want to correct me.

1. How is it every other country in the world (well, the twenty-thirty odd I've been to at least) can organise safe bottled water (it seems in India one should check with each bottle that it's been properly sealed, and even on popular brands, the pesticide content may be one hundred times EU recommendations)? How is it so easy to get sick from the food, when grimy shack diners in rural China can routinely produce healthy meals?

2. The way Delhites treat each other seems brutal - people physically push around and through others, with no apology or acknowledgement. Watching a queue for the cinema, everyone stands completely chest to chest, not an inch of air inbetween, sometimes with hands on the next man's shoulders, even the very first people in line for this huge cinema - because they know if they give an inch, another Indian will push in and take their spot. To my outsiders' eyes, there frequently seems no trust at all between strangers in Delhi, no fellow feeling.
It's an enormous travel writing cliche to complain about driving, but I can only assure you that Delhi is unique. The same "cinema queue" principle operates on the roads - cars squeeze up together, ruthlessly and brazenly zoom / push past and round if anyone slows, and heavier cars seize right of way.

There is something about Delhi that forces you into aggressiveness. Being assertive, calmly saying no, has no effect - the tout will keep following you, the shop assistant will keep proffering. Gari had wanted to get a couple of made to measure suits while in India, we had visited a tailor, and today on Sunday we returned for the first fitting. While the suits were begin fetched, the staff of the shop showed us a seemingly endless array of scarfs, table clothes - then after the fitting, tried to get Gari to spend four hundred pounds on three wooden elephants. Saying no to one table cloth just meant another would be immediately rolled out, expressing a lack of interest in an elephant just brought indications that they could discount it for us. It was a life saver that there had been two of us.

--

It's strange. Aspects of India seem so incredible: the art, which each region seems to produce in a unique style and technique (and I suspect I could buy a suitcase full of rugs, wall hangings, pashminas and bedcovers - and most of the expenditure would be the suitcase); the history: ancient holy Varanasi, the Bengali merchants who traded with the Roman Empire, the desert Rajput kings; all the different environments of the sub continent's incredibly varied geography; all the different peoples and unique cultural areas like the Gujarati Kutch. But right now the obstacles are undoubtably daunting us, making us wonder whether uncovering these wonders will be too costly.

That said, neither of us are even close to booking a ticket home or anything, and are trying to plan constructively. We'd both been thinking about what lessons we've learned so far, and last night, drew up some guidelines for the rest of our trip. Spend a bit more on accomodation and food, to keep ourselves healthier; rise very early and sleep during the hot middle of the day; slow down a bit and try and get to a less oppressive part of India while we adjust. We've just been exhausting ourselves fighting the desert midday of Delhi - and we are drawing up fresh plans of where to travel to. I think, like thousands of Britishers before us, we have arrived in India, got ill, and will head for the highlands for more European climates. Will update you further as we firm up our plans.

--

Gari and I went to the cinema on Sunday night, as a final treat for our departure from hospital, to see a Hindi "bloody thriller" called Racht. It was a wonderful time - absurd sound effects and odd editing to make things scarier, then a sudden cut away to a pumping song and dance number (one song was a Hindi version of Blue's "One Love"...). In the cinema, we sat on the balcony area in the more expensive seats. Around us were male and female groups - in the cheaper stalls below, the audience were entirely young and male, and cheered and shouted at the screen. The film was in Hindi, but every so often a character would say a couple of words in English. Worst of all, the English was frequently a teasing pregnant word like, "actually...", or "by the way...", then straight back into Hindi, leaving us desperately suspecting that we had missed something vital plot-wise.
About half way through the film, however, our inability to understand the dialogue became less important, as it became obvious that the film was a blatant copy of the American film "The Gift". With a few Indian touches, such as a long-lost-to-an-American-scholarship boyfriend, who can miraculously return in the final scene so that the Cate Blanchett heroine character can finish the film with a man, Racht is a scene by scene remake... Wonderful.
Racht isn't exactly like The Gift however, particularly in terms of the level of violence against women it portrays. In the scene where the psychic heroine has gathered all the characters to a lake where she believes the dead body to rest in, the Keanu Reeves character drives up, sees his wife, strides over and immediately slaps her, full strength, across the face. She collapses to the ground - none of the police surrounding them react in any way. The heroine shouts at him - the wife beater then punches her in the stomach (the camera focuses on his fist going in) - again, none of the police intervene (and unlike as in The Gift, the character is a rich woman). The Greg Kinnear "love interest" character then steps in and starts fighting the wife beater, but this feels more like the actions of angry boyfriend than someone dealing with a public menace. Clearly, Racht is not a serious film, but the scene, and the nonchalence of the police as these two women slump to the group in pain, left us both unsettled.

Gari had, by coincidence, earlier read a newspaper interview with the actor that plays the woman puncher. The (female) interviewer asks him about his latest role as a wife beater - he corrects her, no, my character is merely "aggresively assertive". The interviewer then asks him, which does he think is the lesser of two evils, to be a violent husband or a hen pecked one?

He thinks about it, and concludes: they are both as bad as each other.

Daniel, 12 September 2004, Delhi