Thursday 9th October 2008

We’re sitting in a tuk tuk at a road block. I say sitting, but there are actually five of us piled in here. Someone’s neck is cricked, their ear to the roof, and there’s an unidentified leg in the air. I have my elbow in someone’s crotch and I’m sure someone’s hand is somewhere it shouldn’t be. At the crossroads ahead, barriers have been pulled across the road by policemen with rifles slung over their shoulders. Malena jumps out and approaches one such officer who is chatting on his mobile phone and swinging his firearm around his hip. She asks him whether his gun is loaded, and he responds by pulling out the magazine and showing her the bullets. She emits a small gulp.

This brings us no closer to fnding out what is behind the barriers, and now the pop of fireworks begins, and frenzied people are dismount their motorbikes and open their car doors in order to get a glimpse of sparkle in the sky behind the flyover. The only light to be seen is the intermittent flashes from the tops of Delhi Police cars. It’s universal human behaviour at this point for the stranded to ask each other questions and titter. There always seems to be the man who says he knows what’s going on; thus a taxi driver says a VIP is on his way, and that we won’t be moving for another thirty minutes. All of Delhi, it seems, is in chaos.

This is where all of Delhi has been all day, we think to ourselves. We had waited for thirty minutes for our car to take us to work this morning before we realised that it was never going to come. When we finally arrived at the offices, it was deserted. We were almost in some post-apocalyptic movie. Just before lunchtime the young guy on our team, who was the only person working on our floor that day, said we’d have a hard time trying to find food. Malena, ever resourceful, ordered Domino’s Pizza.

It’s not uncommon during this holiday season for someone to skip work without informing anyone – the universal explanation is that he or she “is probably at some Hindu festival.” Some festival, because there as many gods as there are Catholic saints and far more interesting: beautiful women, swans, demons, elephants; gods with no legs, gods with ten legs, gods with a thousand eyes, or with none at all. Gods with so many avatars, thus appearing in so many different forms, that it is competely impossible to decide which is which. And they have feast days that are almost as impossible to calibrate as the Queen’s birthdays. Puja (prayers) are offered on these days, hence the absenteeism. Today, however, everyone has skipped work. We had no idea why, because the people who make excuses for the people who skipped work has also skipped work.

We spent much of the day in the echoing silence of the office, before giving up and deciding to go home. Hailing at tuk tuk was almost impossible. The drivers has disappeared. And mysteriously, trucks would pass us on the road, carrying huge plaster statues of some god’s avatar. Occasionally, we’d hear the roll of drums, but as soon as we turned around to locate it, it was gone. It was as if all of Delhi was staging some elaborate practical joke.

But no. Eventually a Delhi-ite friend revealed the reason no one has bothered to tell us until today. Today is Dussehra, a major Hindu festival celebrated across South Asia. The rule of thumb in Hinduism seems to be each to his own (perhaps it’s really a post-modern religion?) and so in the North of India, they choose to celebrate Dussehra as the day the demon Ravan was vanquished by King Ram. Ravan was exiled through trickery (what trickery it was doesn’t matter). Whilst there, he was tempted by Ravan’s sister who tried to make him marry her (Ram already had a lovely lady-wife Sita, who, gallingly for her, was living with him on the ashram at the time). Spurned, Ravan’s sister returned home to tell her brother the story, and he went to fight Ram. Of course, good triumphed and Ravan lost. And so, huge Wicker Man-esque effigies of Ravan are burnt across the city, with fireworks and feasting and celebration that makes Guy Fawkes night look like some kids with a bunch of sparklers.

And here we are, having found some of the missing population of Delhi, albeit at a road block. We are still tantalised by the sound of fireworks and the smell of ash. Someone says they can see Manmohan Singh, and another Sonia Gandhi, but no one seems to be passing by at all. And then, inexplicably, the road block is pushed aside, and hundreds of drivers and passengers run and clamber back into their seats and rickshaws and motorbikes and trucks and the sound of car horns begins again, and somewhere someone is shouting as vehicles try to nudge each other in desperation to get going again.


As we hit Old Delhi, we are overtaken by the sidesaddle women on the backs of motorbikes, this time in crimson and emerald and russet-colours, flashing golden jewellery, their lips painted scarlet and their eyes smudged with kohl. They stop at the traffic lights and compliment each other on their outfits. Children scream and run along the roadside. The pop of fireworks can still be heard. Then, around the corner looms the mighty terracotta glow of the Red Fort, and we’ve found the place where all of Delhi have been. Thousands of them, teeming.


In the air is the smell of spice and ash, gunpowder and hot fat. The flourescent strips of fairground rides can be seen in the distance, as people whizz around ferris wheels at a rate to make a fighter pilot queasy. White tents are lit up with strings of fairy lights, and all around is dancing and dizzyness and people: so many people that you wonder how the crowd moves. Men climb onto trucks and railings, billboards and tree branches to try and catch a glimpse of the flaming Ravan. Below them, children clutch enormous bunches of heart-shaped balloons with both hands, trying to sell what they can. A street vendor pops corn over a huge fiery dish. The tungsten glows of ice cream vendors dot the pavement at intervals. And all around in chaos as people fight and claw their way through the crowd, tripping over children or jumping over leaking sewage pipes, embers raining down on their heads.


This is where Delhi is tonight, and it’s a whole lot more interesting than being at work. If this is what praying is, give me Dussehra any Sunday morning.