Delhi Market 8th May, Friday

Delhi is busy. Not only is it the capital and bound to be heavily trafficked, but it is also preparing for the Commonwealth Games in October. This involves a massive road improvement scheme, and almost every street appears to have road works along it somewhere. Being India, the niceties of segregating work from pedestrians or traffic is not observed. Pedestrians clamber over piles of sand, or paving blocks, or bricks; the workforce digs holes and lays blocks around the pedestrians. Drainage trenches run alongside the road, and planks are laid across for shop access. Nothing stops the road building, and nothing stops the shopping. The road gang ladies knock-up mortar beside the bricks, and the well-heeled ladies hitch up their saris and splash round. We are in their way, and they are in ours, but I hear no complaints. The traffic drives over the piles of earth and sand. The city is red with dust, and today it is very windy. Everyone’s clothes are filthy. There are only a few moths to go before the games, some of them involving the monsoon. I wish them well.

With time to kill between checking out of my hotel and my evening train, I ventured into the market places, behind my shades, naturally. Several vendors offered me sunglasses
‘Look, I have some’ I said, pointing to my face.
‘These are good glasses ma’am’
‘Mine are better, I don’t need glasses’
And a small shoeshine boy hurried after me offering his services ‘I’m wearing trainers,’ I said, exasperated, ‘what do you think you are going to shine?’ An Indian lady with embroidered sandals was having similar trouble, so I felt better.
I turned down one of the side streets to the usual accompaniment of ‘hallo ma’am, hallo’ to attract my attention.
One passerby said, ‘hallo’ pause ‘sexy’. This was so surprising that for a second I didn’t even find it funny. What I did find was that, ‘Piss off you creep’, needs no translation, as a number of stall holders laughed, & repeated the phrase several times to each other. As a rule, the men here aren’t rude or derogatory. A boy of around nine, in a group of well-dressed lads in the Little Taj in Delhi called ‘bitch’ after me when I refused to give them Rs 100 for a plastic flower, but that’s been all, and then that’s probably small boys everywhere.
One strange thing happened. An elderly man with unkempt hair and in traditional dress, was carrying a long bamboo pole about 2” in diameter which he waved about and sometimes banged on the ground, shouting something. He stood in front of me and brought the pole above his head in the manner of an axe. Staring very hard at me, so that I could see white all round his pupils he yelled ‘HIN-DU-STA-NI’ and menaced with his pole. I was astounded. No-one else around me – and the streets were crowded - said anything or did anything; they just let this weird scene play out in front of them. He shook the pole at me again and shouted something else. He was an old man, and it was a big pole. If he tried to hit me he would probably have fallen over, but I could have certainly stepped out of the way. Perhaps he thought I was the menace. I took off my sunglasses, maintained eye contact, and walked by, while he stood in the road, pole above his head, still shouting. I have no explanation.

Not all stalls in the market are retail. Apart from the shoeshine, there are cobblers and carpenters practicing their trade in the street, but the most popular and prolific are the mobile phone repairers. They have small electric or gas soldering irons on their tables, and boxes of printed circuits, and they sort your phone out while you wait.
I have developed another new tactic. Sorry England, my motherland, but I have become selectively Scottish, and will be denying you many times before the cock crows if expedient. Apologies too to all north of the border in the Highlands and islands, but little is known about Scotland other than that it is near England. The Scots are seen as poor; the English as stinking rich, and as I have failed to dispel the myth of the latter, I am now subscribing heavily to the myth of the former. This may (or may not) reduce the expectations of drivers and porters.

Heading off on the next leg of my journey, I collected my luggage from the Royal Holiday, who charged me Rs 50 to look after it, and fetched up in a taxi at the Nizamuddin railway station. This is a clean, modern place, and the first I’ve been to with signage which I can follow. They make train announcements continuously in at least 2 languages, each preceded by a little jingle (shades of Hi-de-Hi).

So that was Delhi, which passed without significant incident, but thank you anyway to the British Consul for the email warnings, but I was scheduled to be in Delhi, and I was very watchful behind the dark glasses.