Notes from street level.


so, i am in Delhi, searching inconclusively for The Perfect Cycle Rickshaw to send home (peddling tourists around sunny, flat Oxford? for ten bob an hour?? what a super fabulous wizard wheeze! well yes it would be, if i could find The Perfect One, you know, like the shiny pretty ones you find in...Rajasthan. yep, i am in the wrong state, drat and damn.) so in lieu of further searching i will sit in a street cafe, sip a lassi and watch the world wobble by. Paris this most definitely aint.


snake hipped youths in designer distressed denim and tight nylon shirts, women in day-glo saris. fruit vendors, chai wallahs, drum sellers and peacock feather fan sellers. rickshaws with quacking horns, cycle-rickshaws peddled by emaciated mustachioed men, and beggars. a man has just crawled past on all fours, his bony, oddly elongated arse in the air, his polio stricken limbs as thin and straight and brittle looking as twigs. he ambles lopsidedly past, beaming a toothy grin at me. Hasidic Jews, bearded Muslims. the usual crowd of dreadlocked backpackers, kitted out in Aladdin pants, wooden beads and 'Om' t-shirts. flea-bitten dogs lapping at fetid puddles. soothsayer, snake handlers and fortune tellers. naked bulbs hang from shop interiors festooned with colour. pale regal cows lope past. a dark, mangy cow attempts to enter the cafe and dribbles on the floor before being shooed - respectfully - away. (one cow, i noticed, had a fly covered cow-pat smack in the middle of its back...). vats of bubbling oil, the latest theme from Bollywood warbled by an undulating doe-eyed diva through a crackly transistor. it is all here in this carnival of creation. this great cosmic joke.

oh India, how do i love thee? let me count the ways. (how do i hate thee? let me count the ways...)