"You'd better be back by sundown," he says in a motherly tone, "or it'll get dangerous." For once this week, he's not talking about the terrorist threat, but the riots that traditionally break out the evening polling booths close.
Today is election day in Delhi. The BJP, the Hindu national party, headed in the city by the aptly-named Vijay Jolly, is challenging the government's Congress party, led by an iron Chief Minister with the more unfortunate title of Sheila Dikshit.
Before the terror attacks, the papers were packed with concerns over the pollution at the Yamuna River, the state of public transport, and the skyrocketing price of tomatoes. But the events in Bombay have muted the pre-election buzz.
The usual election precautions are in place: a police presence on every corner, army lorries in the streets, and three 'dry days' in which alcohol sale is banned across the city. But these scenes are small beer compared to the carnage 700 miles away.
Michelle and I drag our equipment into rickshaws, zipping across the city to interview voters as they hit the polls. Except that they don't seem to be hitting the polls at all.
We step out in the middle of the market and ask for directions to the local polling station. A street wallah shrugs and returns to his job of squeezing fruit. A man buying cigarettes flicks his hand in a general direction. We hail a cycle rickshaw. Our wallah, who must be at least sixty years old, huffs and puffs and every two minutes is forced to get out and push. We ask a young girl where she is going to vote. She says that the voting here has been postponed until next month. After circling another market for fifteen minutes we still haven't found anything, and are beginning to think our rickshaw wallah will not survive another ten yards. We dismount and catch a businessman on his way to work. "I'm sorry," he says, "But no election today. Our candidate has expired." This is not bureaucratic lingo. It turns out he really is dead.
After a while we find a bona fide operational polling station at a school in the bustling bazaar area of Karol Bargh. Children run about, set loose for the day. They mob our legs and jump up at our camera, waving, trying to get on film. We try to look for voters, but are shooed away by stern looking policemen. They tell us we don't have official electoral commission press passes and can't stay. But the cops seem unruffled when we set up ten metres away on the other side of the road. Some of them even pose for the camera.
We park our tripod and get out our notebooks, poised for interview. And wait. And wait some more. The trickle of voters is slow. A man hobbles out on a walking stick, aided by his daughter. Time passes. We look around at the shuttered shops. Only the man selling paan and sweets is open for business. He grins as he takes advantage of other people's discarded business. A few men venture out of their houses, asking us questions in Hindi. Why are we here? Why aren't we in Mumbai? Surely that's where all the journalists are...
India is the largest democracy in the world. I point this out to a young man in a yellow fleece, who seems to be the only person in the area to speak English.
"All the rich people have left the city," he says. "It's a holiday, after all. Why not go on holiday?" And why are all these people standing around? Why aren't they voting? He simply shrugs.
India is not an apathetic nation, at least not by Western nations' standards. On local election days in Britain, most potential voters barely shake the dust off their shoes, whereas turnouts in India are consistently between 50 and 60 per cent, even at the worst of times. And where middle classes in the UK are more likely to tick the ballot, in India it's often the dalits and lower castes who are particularly active. But today terror is the buzzword. Democracy is on the back burner. The streets are strangely empty as people remain glued to their televisions and radios, venturing out only to buy some overpriced tomatoes. The only excitement for a truckload of policemen in Central Delhi this afternoon is the sight of two foreign, female reporters, standing beside a video camera and tripod, looking completely lost.
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