Dangeling About

Photos: Delhi

jellopolis — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 14:42:00 GMT

Delhi, Day One: Part 3

jellopolis — Sun, 16 Apr 2017 21:10:00 GMT

The road home. Or how Corey got his groove back.

With the setting sun, the temperature is less oppressive. And either I've adjusted to the smell, or whatever fuel was burning is exhausted. Or maybe, Lord Ganesh has granted this foreigner a brief respite … a tiny thali serving of calm. How long will this feeling last?

In the immortal words of the Kinks, “paranoia will destroy ya” and I'm meditating on this message as we take advantage of the evening water show distraction factor to retrieve our kit from the coat check. It's getting dark and the dreaded scourge of humid evenings buzz about cruising for their sanguine supper. I haven't yet started my anti malarial pills either so the sooner we book it to the sterile safety of our hotel the better.

Retracing our steps to the entrance we find our egress blocked. Bzzzt. Smack. No soup for you Mosquito! And now we must backtrack through the garden and more ‘skeeters. Yipes. “Don't panic,” I repeat internally, “the risk of malaria in the city this time of year is, according to the CDC, extremely low.” I have complete faith in math and science. I'll be just fine but I'd prefer to not test the odds.

Anna suggests looking for a gift shop because exits and gift shops are like papadams and chutney, always served together. She’s right and our faith in commerce is rewarded by a mosquito free trek through well lit paths. Our faith in security is also rewarded as the exchange of our locker token produces our deposited gear completely in tact if not a little dusty.

And now for the real test: Securing a ride home. It's crazy how worked up I got in my first attempt at transportation in India. I've taxied in LA, NewYork, Chicago, London, and Paris and I've used Uber and Lyft in those same cities. These apps make getting a ride almost effortless. But add 30 degrees F to the thermometer, 40db to the ambient noise level, quadruple the busiest foot traffic you've ever seen, and octuple the traffic (they fit a lot of tuk tucks and scooters in the space of one luxury SUV I tell ya) and it's just unsettling. It's like you know how to roller skate but now you have to do it on a trampoline juggling hedgehogs balancing a glass of water on your head. Oh and then there are people shouting at you, constantly trying to sell you something or begging for food for their babies. That part just sucks by the way.

So we make our way out past the security stations and onto the street. The raging river of traffic surges along so my first strategy is to find a place where 1) a car has a chance of stopping without destroying the space time continuum, and 2) we have a chance of entering said car without terminating our own precious subscription to said space time continuum. I eventually learn that the answer to these goals seem mutually exclusive. To 1) it's anywhere. Literally cars can and do stop anywhere. The second is nowhere. Which is partly due to the fact that cars will go anywhere, there is no ‘good’ place to stop. You can only hope to minimize the disruption.

I pick a place near a bus stop that looks accommodating, staring at my phone and initiating a ride request. We're matched with a driver not more than 50 meters away but heading the wrong way. It says two minutes to arrival, which is dubious given the 180 about face required across 8 lanes and 62 micro-lanes of traffic. But we're pointing in the direction we need our go so I know the driver will make the adjustment and come to us. In instances where we are on the wrong side, it will be us who has to wade through a sea of angry metal and unibody fiberglass.

Two minutes become eight and between declining multiple solicitations from Tuk Tuk drivers, dodging disfigured beggars, and repeating the license plate of our driver’s car I'm exhausted. By the time our rider pulls up I feel like the dog whose master has just arrived home after a long day of work.

Anna and I, again, slide across the bench seat into an air conditioned realm so much more familiar. “Hotel, boss?” our driver confirms. Yes. Yes! This is how it works … and away we go.

Delhi, Day One: Part 2

jellopolis — Sun, 16 Apr 2017 19:00:00 GMT

For all the drama of getting started, the actual trip was mostly an uneventful crawl through serpentine sub-lanes of traffic. We wedge our way through scooters, busses, trucks, and pedestrians separated by a buffer zone the width of a human soul. A glorious emergent choreography allows us to be packed so tightly that sardines feel blessed by their own luxurious arrangement and yet the collective is able to progress without perpetual murder. It's truly miraculous. I will never, ever drive here.

An erratic amble through slum and stately park lands us near our target and after a brief slalom around a series of stout barricades and armed guards we arrive at a dusty parking lot. I tell the driver for the seventh time that we really and for truly will find our way back to the hotel just fine, pay the fare, and exit the cab.

Here I'm fully expecting a raging sea of humanity and my foresight proves mostly accurate. Admission is free - as is the 'coat check' where visitors stow their bags, cameras, phones, and anything from a rather long list of forbidden articles. But these lines are no worse than a wait for Splash Mountain. You even get occasionally misted by scented water in the third and final segment of the waiting game. Once you exchange your secular relics for a shiny oval token they separate the males and females for segregated pat downs. I'm not looking forward to being fondled but these gender specific security measures are less invasive than the queuing habits of those behind me. I have a new appreciation for what too close for comfort can mean.

Anna waits patiently as there are easily 10 times as many men going through security. What's striking to me is how the moment the line split, the gents started acting like boy dogs. Laughing, pointing, something adjacent to but not exactly like cat calls. It made me sad. Without the stabilizing force of women the world would be doomed.

Inside the grounds are clean, strikingly clean given how dirty everything else is in Delhi. Akshardham is very new, after all, so maybe this will change in time. Well, of course it will ... I just wanted to see this place to set a baseline of what ancient architecture might have looked like when new. The artisans used no metal tools or supports - they are forbidden - and only traditional techniques outlined in their holy texts (Shilpa and Vastru Shastras).

The temple is enveloped in more than 140 sculpted elephants and they all look majestic. My favorite frieze features an elephant with seven trunks named Airavat. I don't know much about this heroic beast, but if I needed to go into battle, I'd want a battalion of those guys on my side.

http://akshardham.com/explore/mandir/gajendra-peeth/

Consistent technique is hard to manage across a handful of talented 3D artists. Remarkably, the plinth appears to be crafted by a single pair of hands even though it surely took hundreds. Make that 7000! Wow!

But the crown jewel of Akshardham (at least the free part) is up a steep flight of scorching steps - you must remove your shoes to enter the Mandir. As the faithful kiss there fingertips and touch the stones before climbing, I dance my way up playing a grownups version of the hot lava game.

Inside it is much cooler, the shaded stone floor acting as heat sink rather than pizza oven. The centermost chamber is roped off so the throngs of devotees can pay their respect, but no touchie. It feels alot like the mobs around the Mona Lisa so I scoot stage left and walk around the hall's gilded main attraction.

The mandir's nine intricately carved domes, called mandapams, are delicately layered lattices and as you enter each chamber you simply must look up and fall into the infinity of space and time. I do this over and over again. The faithful must think I'm a moron because there are statues depicting important people receiving wisdom or enlightenment or mangoes. But I'm drawn to this intensely spiritual sensation. Hindus get the bigness of space and time and lean into it. I want to lean into it too.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Akshardham_Dome.jpg

Flanking the center chamber are statues of Brama, Vishnu, and Shiva but my favorite has to be Ganesha. Maybe it's my daughters' childhood love of elephants, but Lord Ganesha speaks to me. He is smart and seeks to create order. I dig him.

Having completed 300 degrees of the full loop I decide to head back toward the center chamber. A third viewpoint is accessible and far less crowded than the others, so I peer in. Again the significant narrative details are beyond me, but what's impossible to miss is the jewel encrusted walls and pedestal on which a 15' gilded statue poses. I have to assume the gems are just dazzling swarovski crystals, but maybe not. 14 year old me imagines rolling an 18 to hide in shadows so my bard can use his thief-like abilities to prise a couple stones free. Oh D&D, how you shaped me.

Now ... how do we get outta this place!?

Delhi, Day One

jellopolis — Sun, 16 Apr 2017 16:35:00 GMT

Miraculously rested after a long, long flight I feel rejuvenated. Perhaps appropriately for an Easter morning. We have some time to explore before the work starts. How thrilling!

Its time to wade into an intensely foreign landscape.

Time to see with more than my eyes, to stress-test every sense.

Time to wade in ... no, there is no half-stepping. We’re going on an adventure. Now.

We are bold. We are ready.

Anna and I gather up our supplies: a small ruc sack, some water, cash, our phones, and a camera that I may not even use and head outside of the hotel. We have a destination in mind and absolutely no idea how to get there.

The hotel, orderly and cool, rests at the intersection of flood and deluge. Nothing is within walking distance. We will need a car, a driver, or a teleporter (yes, please!) if we are to get anywhere.

We part the massive front doors and breath in the sweet acid aroma of smoldering tires and diesel fumes. We will surely melt in this reeking tandoor called outside.

There’s movement everywhere. Too many people. Too many cars. And we’re only in the driveway. I don’t know where to focus. Its hard to think in this torrent of sound, we’re surely dialed in to the hold-music* for a library in hell. And speaking of … it’s 107 degrees and humid. I thought I was prepared for this but I’m instantaneously and absolutely overwhelmed. Panic mode activated Level 3.

Every single nerve is on red alert. I feign calm and rely on skills perfected in other cities. Nacent cities, baby towns, low stakes rehearsals for friends and family by comparison. I fumble for my phone.

Our destination is a theme park like attraction for Hindus called Akshardham, a beautifully crafted temple complex, maybe 6 miles away as the myna bird flies but easily 50 minutes away by bumper car. I'm not about to chance an autorickshaw or Tuk Tuk on day one. So I call an Uber (a sin I will attone for once home).

I'm connected with a driver before I realize what I'm getting into. The fare is agreeable. The pick up point is ... unfortunate. Set nowhere near our steamy perch beneath the palms, the location lies somewhere beyond the secure gates and at the nexus of intersections too numerous and ill-defined to count. On the plus side, the hour long ride is all of 200 rupees - a price I'm more than willing to exchange for getting un-lost at a later date (but that is a different story).

At this moment, I'm overwhelmed. I don't know how to get there from here. Where is here? Where is anything? WHY is anything? My heart races and my willpower loses its first skirmish with fear. "Oh no freaking way" I mumble as I cancel the ride. Disgusted with myself, I plead with Anna to ask the valet to call us a cab. I really try to disguise the brewing panic attack but I'm failing. My inner critic gashes me with his Scimitar of Failure +4. I'm a terrible travel companion, a disappointment, a fraud, and a coward. The phone rings. The number is Indian, surely its the driver desperate to reclaim the sweet fare that got away.

"Hello?" I answer pathetically.

A barrage of Hindi erupts. If he's speaking English, then he's doing it through an impregnable accent generator. Someone clever should make that app. She'll make a fortune.

"Cancel please. Cancel, cancel." At 20 cents a minute I can afford to be more polite but my panic level is climbing: Level 5, tick. I'm desperate to try a new tactic. I need to not suck at travel, but I need to get out of the dark and angry ocean and back to the deep but mellow end of the excitement pool. A place neither safe nor unsafe, but at least I can swim.

Anna has arranged a cab, for which I'm grateful. I've pissed off the Uber guy (sorry Rajit) but he’ll get over it. And a black cab soon lurches up the steep driveway. OK. This I can do. I open the door for Anna and we slide across the bench seat together.

"Akshardham temple, please," I request with newfound bravado.

"Akshardham … Akshardham?! Very long way. Long way. 1400 rupee. I take you." The driver has a deep, textured voice like a bass string bowed by sandpaper played through a pool of oil and gravel.

"Woah! That's too much," Anna and I respond as one mind, in stereo.

"You go one way? ... or (something unintelligible). We go. 1400 rupee. Long way."

Anna, using her 'sweet' voice, a treat reserved for small children and simpletons says, "No. Too much. Uber said 200 ..."

"No Uber! No Uber here. I take you. One way 600 rupee. We go now yes." This guy could easily play Froggy in the New Delhi stage production of Lil' Rascals.

"500 rupee," I haggle. Poorly.

"No 500! 600 rupee. Good price. Very good price. We go now, ok." He starts to drive slowly.

I look at Anna. She wants to bail. I do some quick math. 3x the Uber rate divided by 2 for being intelligible minus 50 for not having to die simply exiting the parking lot minus another 50 because we're already moving. Hey! We're really doing this. The car is moving along now.

"Ok. 600 rupee. Yes" I say as if it was my idea in the first place.

And we're off to Akshardham.

*Cacophony for Horn, Motor, and wailing soul in B-flat Minor