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Tag: India

Old Delhi, May 2024 (#9 in series: on sale)

 

Residents of Old Delhi can do much  – for some residents, I suspect, all – of their daily shopping without ever having to walk through a shop door.

A great deal of buying and selling is conducted on streets and footpaths, with no “showroom”, no elaborate “displays”, and no physical barriers between a customer’s hands and the goods on offer.

Testing/tasting the wares is easily accomplished.

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Old Delhi, May 2024 (#8 in series: reading)

 

 

When I first walked in Old Delhi, its were the most “happening” streets I had ever experienced

32 years later that remains true.

(In the interim, I have visited a number of “megacities”, including the biggest one)

In 1992 I thought, “90 minutes in Old Delhi would give an alert writer enough characters, events, and wildly divergent circumstances to populate an ‘epic’ novel”.

In 2024 that is still true.

However, an alert visitor would not see and hear only crowds, commotion, conflict, conversation and commerce.

On Old Delhi’s streets one can also see a resident enjoy a moment of solitary, quiet contemplation.

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Old Delhi, May 2024, (#7 in series: washing, in the open)

 

 

As Charlie Rich most famously sang – in 1973 – no one knows what goes on behind closed doors.

In 2024, even far away from Nashville, those words still hold true.

However, collectively, Old Delhi’s residents’ live a much greater portion of their lives “in the open air/out on the streets” than do people in Nashville…or any “Western” city.

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Old Delhi, May 2024 (#5 in series: wired!)

 

Old Delhi’s “wiring” has to be seen to be believed.

Externally, everything electrical is “above ground”, rather than “above board”; electrical connections are “highly informal”.

The “regulatory hand” is nowhere apparent.

This post’s images were both taken from “our” rickshaw; the first looks left, into a lane, the one below looks straight ahead.

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Old Delhi, May 2024 (#4 in series: resting, with musical bonus)

 

 

Old Delhi is assuredly one of the world’s busiest, noisiest and most crowded urban places.

All that notwithstanding, some people choose to sleep on its footpaths and doorsteps…or they simply have no other readily-available resting-place.

Tourists are highly likely to be overwhelmed – or highly stimulated –  by the sheer volume (in more than one sense) of human activity in Old Delhi.

However, at least some local residents appear to be utterly at ease, relaxed and unhurried.

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Old Delhi, May 2024 (#3 in series: kites at mosque)

 

 

Q: who usually rules the skies over the Indian subcontinent’s megacities?

A: Milvus migrans – black kites.

One of the world’s most abundant raptor species (possibly, the most abundant) has proved very adept at taking advantage of the “rubbish” discarded by urban humans.

If one is almost anywhere within a big Indian city, one needs no bird-watching expertise to see black kites; simply look up, and there they are!

”Holy” places are no exception…

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Old Delhi, May 2024 (#1 in series: Jama Masjid)

 

In the context of the Indian subcontinent’s human history, what we now call “Old Delhi” is not very old.

The original walled city was meticulously planned; its foundation stone was laid in 1639.

Then named Shahjahanabad, it was the result of Emperor Shah Jahan’s decision to shift the Mughal Empire’s capital city, from Agra.

What is still Old Delhi’s most imposing structure was built between 1650 and 1656; at that time Jama Masjid was the subcontinent’s largest mosque.

In 2024 it remains one of India’s largest mosques – probably, its second biggest.

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Triple K “expedition” (#12 in teaser series: roll over, John Cleese)

 

Monty Python’s Flying Circus premiered John Cleese’s “The Ministry of Silly Walks” in 1970.

The sketch satirically skewered British bureaucracy’s upper echelons.

More than a decade earlier, India and Pakistan had already perfected the art of highly choreographed “silly walks”…but in real life, with neither satirical nor comedic intent.

Various “silly” walks are a key element in a bizarre military ritual, still conducted late each afternoon on the Indo-Pakistani border, less than one hour’s drive from both the Indian city of Amritsar and the megacity of Lahore.

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