Saturday 11th October 2008

There’s a giant laminated five hundred rupee note sitting on my desk. It’s not mine, and I am pretty sure even the most oblivious of market vendors would consider it legal tender, but nonetheless it irks me that it has appeared. Even in their small valuable form, they are the most useless of notes, since you can only really use them in expensive bars and restaurants without raising eyebrows.

In any case, shortly afterwards a broad middle-aged Indian walks in, and grabs the note, clearly expressing delight about having found it. This is Chanchal, the man who shares my office cabin. He’s the man in charge of designing the graphics for the newspaper. Like all graphics guys (and techies), his office is strewn with bits of miscellany, and scraps of old versions of the paper pasted together that clearly represent some kind of private joke. There are outsize pictures of rifle shooter Abhinav Bindra, Indian’s only gold medallist from the previous summer, a bunch of snooker balls, various pictures of Bollywood actresses, and a diagram of how to find your G-spot (which he designed). Now, he is folding up the rupee note into some kind of origami object.

“It’s a rupee boat,” he says, nodding enthusiastically. There are three classes of people in the world I consider the most difficult to communicate with: Physicists, 11 year-old children, and guys who are really into graphic design. Chanchal sees the confused look on my face. “You see,” he says, in the slow loud voice he reserves for young foreign interns, “it’s going to be a rupee boat, and we’re going to have it sailing on a sea of Indian stock market.” This is where he chuckles in self-appreciation. “It’s like, ‘is it going to sink, or are we going to float?'”

Downstairs, at the newspaper’s sister economic journal, people are running around and throwing papers. It’s pretty unusual in this office for anyone to put so much as a hop in their step on the way to the coffee machine. The stock markets are crashing, everything is red, or preceded by a downward arrow or a minus sign. Apocalypse is nigh. The Guardian today reported that the stock market had dropped 800 points and the rupee had slumped to a record low. When the US bailout happened a few days ago, the Times of India wrote a slightly smug piece the capitalist giant softening along the socialist path. Now, everyone is asking themselves whether India could afford to do the same thing. But with a tax system that is dubious at the best of times, the idea of such funds looks fairly unlikely.

Most Indians (like myself and most of the people I know) really have no idea what this means for us. With barely three figures in our bank accounts at the moment, Malena and I quipped, we really have nothing to lose. But someone’s worried, and the word ‘recession’ was something I grew up with and was always accompanied by worry lines on my parents’ foreheads.

In the marketplaces, there are no crashing red charts, or talk of the depreciation of the rupee. There are two more immediate things to worry about: terrorism, and flooding. Chanchal, as he is folding a sail into his paper boat, warns me that I should stay far away from the markets on a Saturday. He says that most of the terrorist attacks have happened on Saturdays. “We call them Black Saturdays now,” he says. And then there are festivals, which he also says we should avoid. Delhi got away lightly at Dussehra (security checks being a pat on the pocket and a push into the crowd and still no one with a incendiary device got through. Sri Lanka didn’t get away so easily). India won’t get away as lightly again. What seems to us a bustling, jerking crowd, is a huge depreciation on the weekend market scrum that was common a few months ago.

And what the food market still sells is rocketing in price. Not because of the value of currency or the price of oil, but because floods in the north of the country have meant widespread crop damage. The price of tomatoes has risen to over three times as much. The price of potatoes – so beloved of Indian cooks – has more than doubled. The same goes for okra, cauliflower, capiscum: almost everything you could name that makes up a traditional Indian meal. And so the women who take their weekly budget to market, waiting on the needs of their husbands and children, are forced to become resourceful, or else eat less.

So, the besuited journalists and speculators stare at the markets. But it is another kind of market that frightens a billion Indians. An economic downturn doesn’t mean buying economy brand microwave lasagne, taking one less beach holiday a year or spending less at Topshop. The ordinary Indian wouldn’t even be touched by the Dow Jones, or the FTSE index. They face the same economic crises several times a year, every time there is flood or storm and the crop fails. And it directly effects what, if anything goes on the table.

Meanwhile, Chanchal is still folding his giant 500 rupee note, and chuckling to himself as he tries to devise the perfect stock market sea on which to sail it.

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.

Thursday 9th October 2008

[To see the published version of this click here. And read other stuff on The Comment Factory website. It's brilliant.]

“I miss the gays,” sighs Elsa over this morning’s breakfast of Indian hybrid Pad Thai. Our cook has an originality in planning early-morning cuisine to make a gastronomically-liberal maharajah blush. Today is noodles, yesterday was spicy pasta (a favourite, especially served with green ‘chilly sauce’), and the day before it was sag aloo toasted sandwiches with french fry-shaped potatoes that were warmly soaked in vegetable oil rather than fried in them. He does, however, make an increadible daal and the best parathas I’ve ever tasted, so I’ve taken to becoming a two-meals-a-day girl.

Meanwhile, Elsa, who is from San Francisco and engaged to a man she has been seeing for six years, has been persuading us for the last five minutes that the homosexual community in San Francisco are the ‘best gays in the world’. She wants to find a gay bar in Delhi where she can soak up the atmosphere. Karsten tells her she can’t use gay men to supplement her lifestyle preferences.

In Delhi, it’s not uncommon to see men holding hands as they chew paan and walk down the street, or to catch a glimpse of a rickshaw passenger with his arm around a male friend in the back seat. It’s a public sign of friendship here (although not considered acceptable when displayed between women). Moreover, gaze around any trendy club or bar in the capital, and you’ll notice that the middle class boys are a little freer in their fashion. Elaborately coiffed hair and extra tight clothes are not considered the camp choice. In Bollywood, the macho protagonist hunks are shiny men with slick dance moves and open shirts that gyrate and swing. Men’s gestures and dress are completely sexually unambiguous – unsurprising, since concieving of anything else would be anathema.

A list of gay Indian celebrities wouldn't roll quickly off the tongue.

Homosexuality is illegal in India, and has been since the rule of the British. In the 1860s, Civil Servants considered it an abhorrence and it was criminalised. Queen Victoria infamously approved the legislation against sodomy (refusing to sign away the social freedom of lesbians because she didn’t believe they existed). An echo of this came recently when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was asked if he supported decriminalisation. His reply? "There would not be much appreciation for a law like that in India." And so the law remains in Delhi. Conviction can lead to up to 10 years in prison, plus a fine. According to the government, there have been no arrests in 20 years, though Human Rights Watch disagree. The law has been used to blackmail people, allow abuse by police, and, worst of all, leads to ostracism and a shameful excommuncation from the family.

And it is not because of a legal loophole or a lethargy over changing legislation that it remains so. In 2005 a suggestion by the Indian Law Commission to lift the ban on homosexuality was rejected by the New Delhi government. In 1996, Deepa Mehta’s film Fire was released. In it, two women are pushed together by the abuse and neglect of their husbands, by the end leaving their families for each other: poignantly, not before one of them is badly burned in a fire. It immediately banned by certain religious groups and on the first day of screening, cinemas were attacked by Muslim fundamentalists.

Ignoring the issue only causes India’s estimated 100 million gay, bisexual and transgendered people to move underground. Many liberal Indians blame the rapid spread of AIDs on the government’s decision to force the uninformed homosexual populace into the shadows.

Some, however, are beginning to emerge, blinking, into the light. Today’s Times of India carries a story that suggests hope, if only because it was printed at all. In Howrah, near Kolkata, two women in their early twenties (prime marriage-age) met at a wedding and fell in love. Now, they are accepted as a couple, and one girl’s parents are ready to adopt a child for them to make their unit complete. Not, it might be added, before they ran away together, leaving a note. “We know our relatives and society will not accept this alliance,” it read. “We have decided to leave our families and live elsewhere as a married couple.” When they returned to their village, they must have fallen backwards in shock when one of the girls’ parents killed the proverbial fattened calf.

Gay clubs exist semi-openly in the cities, and there are signs that in liberal circles they’re beginning to be tolerated. This year saw the first gay pride marches in Delhi, Mumbai and Pondicherry. But India is a dowry-based social economy that partially condones (killing daughters) in order to afford a part in it. Decriminalising homosexuality in India will not happen tomorrow. Tolerance is far off. Celebration is practically inconsiderable.

Elsa might find her gay bar, and the gays to supplement her lifestyle preferences. But if she’s camping it up to YMCA, chances are she’ll be doing it behind darkened windows.

...Bollywood hunks

Tuesday 7th October 2008

I am the Anglo-Saxon terrorist.

The security guard looked at my gate pass suspiciously. I am white (starlingly so, I realise among these Indian faces), blonde, and for some reason I come dressed in a salwar kameez. He is dressed in a crisp blue shirt with a gold logo on the lapel, and wears his hat straight on his head. He a slightly sadistic smirk lurks beneath his thick moustache. He jangles his keys on his belt – they’re on a huge metal ring, like those on a cartoon jailer. He sits me down kneecap-to-kneecap with his junior officer, who eyballs me intensely. Occasionally one will shoot me a sentence in Hindi, and it is all I can do to shrug and look confused. Perhaps they think this is one of my tactics. I wave to my Indian-skinned colleague Neilesh who is sitting on the other side of the room, though he’s sensible enough not to open his mouth and reveal his American identity. I’m not allowed to move. They’re clearly not convinced that I really know him. It’s quite possible that the Hindu fundamentalists have sent me as a mole to infiltrate the newspaper. It’s quite possible that I am the Anglo-Saxon terrorist.

Twenty minutes earlier, I had asked the same security guard to let me into the office I’d been designated the day before. He looked at me, and then looked at the door and gabbled something in Hindi. When I shook my head and shrugged he picked up the phone and called security downstairs. He asked the morning risers who were in the newsroom who I was. None of them had any idea. So here I am, pinned to the chair by the gaze of the junior security guard. I’m wishing my boss into the office as soon as possible. A young man comes round with the chai – he served me several times yesterday. He nods to me, but his ackowledgement doesn’t fly with the newsroom gestapo.

India has become a security-paranoid country. Metal detectors line the entrance to buildings and stations: ramshackle planks of wood nailed together with wires protruding from the corners. Officers take your names and sign you in and out from desks that are so makeshift they barely stand on four legs. Security hasn’t been part of India’s culture. But it is now.

India’s too busy fighting its own terrorists to bother about the world’s. Muslim mujahedeen have terrified marketplaces. Hindu nationalists attack Christian refugee camps. The Naxalists, an underground Marxist movement that has been growing over the past decade, has been fighting a guerilla war for years along the central belt of the country. Stories of rapes, bombings, riots and slaughters shout from every day’s front page, creating a white noise that is slowly reaching fever pitch. There’s an electricity of fear in the air that Delhiites tell me never existed before. A filler story which ran in the Times of India today said psychologists have found an increasing number of anxiety disorders they link to terrorism. It’s not the veracity of the story that matters here, of course, but the fact it made it to the paper in the first place perhaps says something. The atmosphere is something akin to the fear the IRA inflicted on England’s cities a decade ago: attacks are not strategic, but instead are visited on anyone who gets in the way.

I’m not an Anglo-Saxon terrorist. Instead, I’m the intern at the newspaper who no one’s quite sure about. And the fact that I am quarantined and guarded here at this desk space could perhaps only be considered a drill for when the real thing comes. My boss walks in the door, shouts in Hindi and points to the jangling keys hanging from the security guard’s belt. The guard smirks beneath his logo-ed hat as he unlocks the door - he’s had his fun with the intern.

“Ignore him,” says my boss, handing the confiscated gate pass back to me. I look at my ID photograph: I’m wearing a flower behind one ear and grinning like a cat. My boss just leans over and whispers, “he’s an asshole.”

Sunday 5th October 2008

“Shuutiyaa,” Rubin shouts above the cacophany of laughter, “means to have a thousand vaginas.” It was 4 a.m. and we are sitting in the foyer of the Taj Mahal Hotel. Rubin is leaning back in a red antique chair, while beside him three girls recline on a sofa, bursting with giggles. Above our heads are several domes, adorned with gold, and a fountain tinkles in the centre of the marble hall. There are fresh flowers on the receptionist’s desk and around the room; not the lurid orange marigolds that women on the street sew into garlands, but lilies and orchids, and shiny green foliage.

We’ve just come from a sweaty four hours in the hotel bar, ordering mojitos and dancing to everything from ABBA to the Chemical brothers. Not a hint of a raga. Among the white faces, young and hip Delhiites clinked glasses, dressed in tight T-shirts, designer jeans and heels. Some leaned up against corners with each other, kissing: unimaginable in any other public place. Here, a double whiskey costs 6,000 rupees. Neilesh winced at the idea of paying $12 a pop as he pocketed his reciept.

Now, we are exhausted, though our local found companions are still more than merry. Ruben is still regaling his companions with blasphemy. He explains that he’s just come back from doing a PhD at Columbia University in New York, which he said was basically “time wasting for a year.”

I excuse myself and visit the ladies’. There, a small, dark-faced Indian women bows to greet me. She touched my arm to stop me reaching for a paper hand towel and bends forward to place a large basket of freshly laundered towels. When I’m finished I have nothing more to do than to throw it in the bin in front of me. Somehow it feels different from the black women who sit in the toilets of bars and clubs in London, amongst an array of perfume bottles and face creams. Inevitably they are slumped in their chairs and they don’t really care who enters or leaves and by the end of the night, they have stopped their lacklustre distribution of ragged hand towels. In the marble bathroom, I turn around to the uniformed woman who is wiping the handtowel and think of the man who brings us steaming hot chai every time we return to the house, and cooks our meals on demand. Indian politician Pherozeshah Mehta once said that in India “your sahib [master] remains your sahib whether in office or not.”

Ruben is still creating screeches of laughter across the inebriated group. “How do you know that Jesus was Bengali?” he asks, choking with laughter at his own joke. “He lived at home until he was thirty, he believed his mother was a virgin, and she believed he was God.” More laughter. Neilesh explains to him that in New York that’s a Jewish joke. It doesn’t matter to Ruben, who proceeds to explain that in his teaching days, he’d gather his students around, open a bottle of tequila, and interpret the Koran. Together, he said, they even started the Wikipedia entry for the Indian head wobble (it doesn’t exist).

I go outside for a cigarette. There, three young men who were also in the bar stand and smoke on the steps, even though it has been illegal to smoke in public for 3 days now – since Gandhi’s birthday. The doormen don’t bat an eyelid. They come and ask for a light, and invite me to a polo match. “It’s on us,” one of them says, flicking back his coiffed fringe as he places his sunglasses on his head. “You’re our guests.” He winks, and climbs into the BMW that has just been driven onto the red carpet by the valet boy.

There are more millionaires in Delhi than there are in New York, whilst over one third of the country - 350 million people – live below the poverty line. Thirty five to forty per cent of the population live on less than 45 rupees ($1) a day. The glass of wine I drank tonight would be around two weeks’ wages. Delhi’s middle classes are rising in population, but not as fast as the rural poor, who are growing at a rate far exceeding the rate of economic growth. Delhi is both surrounded by, and dotted with hopelessly crowded urban slums. At night, the smell of burning dung rises from them, though they are hidden from our house. Similarly, there is no sign of a beggar here in the hotel forecourt. Here, even every car is searched upon entry, James Bond-style, as gatekeepers open the boot and checked underneath with mirrors. With security like this for the guests, unwelcome ones don’t have a chance.

Begging is a daily occurrence in Delhi At traffic lights, outside shops: anywhere in the streets. Many will walk beside you to wherever you are going, imploring. Often, mothers gesture to their children who reach out with dirty, chapped hands. A few have amputated their own limbs in the hope that they might raise a few extra pity-rupees. Some are under the influence of mafia groups. Some are simply starving.

Back in the hotel, Ruben is sharing his tequila-inspired interpretation of the Koran. When it is time to go, and the sun is beginning to rise, he calls for his silver Saab and we all bundle in, giggling and sitting on each others’ laps. Ruben at the wheel sways the car from side to side on the empty road. One of our friends has already lost his license for drunk driving, he laughs, but his driver at home will take him anywhere. Besides, Ruben laughs, in Bangalore at least, the breath test for drivers consists of breathing into the policeman’s face as they sniff your breath. He’s passed that one many a time.

There are plans made for dim sum tomorrow; for cricket some time this week. We drive past one of the settlements from where the burning dung smell is rising. It’s at the end of our road. We fall out of the car into the semi-darkness, still giggling, and roll towards the gate. The watchman, who has already been working for the majority of the day, is ready with smiles to open it for us, before we can even touch the latch.

Monday 6th October 2008

Delhi’s streets are dotted with small huts with corrugated iron roofs. They sell sweets and cigarettes and paan: an addictive mixture of betel nut, tobacco and lime chewed by Indians that creates the red globs of spit found sporadically on the road.

It’s down such a road that our jeep drops us off. The newspaper’s offices are contained in a large concrete building. It would look non-descript in Birmingham, but here it looms above the vendors as they lay out their plastic jars and lines of fresh citrus fruit. Inside, the marble corridors and mirrored elevators are polished of every speck of street dust. Men stride up the stairs, alongside women who walk in tiny steps in their salwar kameez.

The news room is an open-plan office on the third floor. It is largely deserted this Monday lunchtime. Few people arrive at work before noon, and even afterwards it is barely half full. There is none of the manic buzz of a newspaper newsroom back home. Instead, people are gathered by the hole in the wall which constitutes the office canteen. Through it are passed hot thalis and samosas, and tiny steaming cups of chai. People stand in the doorway gossiping. Yet everything here will get done on time: a paper will be sent to the printers by deadline, and in the hand of 17 million Indians by tomorrow morning.

Downstairs is the online section, which like most newspaper website departments, is slicker, not to mention more recently refurbished. In the corner a man in a waistcoat and bow tie stands next to a coffee machine. He asks what you would like: cappuccino, latte? What he offers is pretty much the same no matter what your answer, and comes in a paper cup barely bigger than a shot glass. It gives you the feeling that whatever you are drinking is ever so slightly precious. It’s also a good excuse to get up from your desk several times a day for no apparent reason.

It takes us five hours to get our computers online. One technician comes up, and talks to another technician, who comes up and calls for another technician, who comes and calls for another. Whilst they are congregating around the workstation, we sit and talk to Subash. Subash is old and wise, and looks as if he should be sitting in a turban under a banyan tree. He is small and bony-armed, and one of his teeth sticks out of his gums as he speaks. He commands a quiet respect as he places his battered leather briefcase on the desk and sits wearily in his chair. He says he spends his mornings working and his afternoons reading The Hindu (the liberal Indian daily) and The Guardian (for his international news).

He tells us that he is working on some research about the recent sectarian violence.

All over India, sectarian violence has been increasing in intensity, and will probably continue to do so until the elections are over. No region has been quite so badly hit as Orissa, in the East of India. In the last few weeks Hindus have attacked the Christian minorities living there. Christians, who account for 5% of Indians generally, make up 14% of Orissa’s population. In Orissa, they own many missionary hospitals and schools, and provide badly-needed aid to people largely ignored by the government. Some conversions, of course, follow. Many Christians have fled to refugee camps, which have in turn been attacked and pillaged by Hindus. Riots have been frequent. Yet the local government refuses to send in police, and the central government will not interfere with the army. Just over a month ago, a Catholic nun was raped by a gang of Hindus, and a priest who came to her aid was likewise attacked. Then, two days ago a young child who had been taken in my missionaries was also raped. It was later discovered that she was, in fact, Hindu.

Christians have not responded simply because they are outnumbered and scattered. No one is given any support or aid from the government. But the work of Hindu fudamentalists serves only to polarise voters along religious lines in the lead up to the election. If they succeed, the BJP (India’s Hindu Nationalist party), is likely to come into power, as they did in 1998. That time, they ran the government until 2004, but not before secular tension reached boiling point. On 27th February 2002, 52 Hindu nationalists were burned to death when a mob set fire to a train in Godhra, Gujarat. When the local BJP government suggested that Muslims were to blame, riots broke out that left over 2,000 people dead and 12,000 people homeless. Several official enquiry bodies still cannot reach a conclusion.

Signs of religious tensions are by no means obvious on the streets of Delhi. Jain ‘Happy’ schools stand beside Hindu temples. Women walk through halal markets on their way back from puja – Hindu morning prayers. But in rural village, official poverty is at an average of 75%. Tribes and castes fight for civil service jobs, for land and for government food aid (a quarter of which is stolen before it reaches the people it should nourish). Here, Hindu fights Christian, not only because he stands for his religion but because he stand for his life, and those of his family.

Here in the newsroom, Subash considers these things gently. He is reflective, sorrowful. He looks into the distance for a long time before he puts his fingers to the keyboard. And when he does, he is ashamed that he has to bring tragedy to his readers.

“We try to write about good news,” he says, “or the answer to the bad. But right now, I don’t know what the answer is.” He shakes his head and straightens out two sheets of paper that lie on his otherwise sparse desk. Somewhere behind us, the gang of technicians is dissipating and we are back to our computers, where we jump onto our Gmail accounts as if it were years, rather than days, since we had last seen them.

Around the cafeteria hatch is the hum of gossiping voices. A man comes around with a silver tray containing more little cups of chai. At his desk, Subash sits, considering.

Barack in Bollywood

Barack Obama: he may cavort with domestic terrorists, but he is a Bollywood icon, so who cares?

Saturday 4th October 2008

“Is there anything I can do for you?” asks the manager of the newspaper’s printing press. He has the six of us in his spotless office, and outside we can hear the whirr of machines and the sharp smell of ink. He sits straight and clasps his hands before him. His smile is fixed, and his eyes fill with excitement. We’re not sure what he can do for us. He prints our daily paper already. Karsten, a Californian with a dry sense of humour and dead-pan delivery, looks confused. “Show us the printing press?” he asks. The mind boggles as to what else he might expect us to need. A job? A souvenir? Some lifestyle advice? Evidently, he felt that we required a glass of coke, for these duly appeared on a silver tray.

The press is located an hour’s drive south of Delhi. It’s one of two presses our newspaper owns, and prints the majority of the 3.7 million copies, along with the 773,000 copies of it’s sister paper, an economic journal. They’re delivered everywhere, even to the remotest areas of the country, and all before mid-morning.

Back home, in my household at least, a weekend paper is bought and remains untouched all week. It’s eventually banished to the toilet to curl at the edges. But then, almost everyone is literate: what’s there to prove? Here, newspapers are genuinely guzzled, perhaps because their smaller size makes them that little bit less intimidating. “I bought the New York Times once,” an executive editor at our newspaper had once said. “I could barely carry it up the stairs.” I found the $4 worth it just for the wedding section, but didn’t feel that this was an appropriate comment to make at the time.

But in India, having a newspaper delivered is a sign of literacy. Poignant when you consider that almost a third of the country is illiterate. These things are precious, and a sign of status. The choice between tabloid and broadsheet is a question of age rather than class.

The printing press is a Methuselah, a monster made of rolls of paper the size of several breeze blocks, speeding belts of newsprint crossing each other like a series of enormous white ropes and pulleys, and crisp folded papers which snake to the ceiling and around to the mailroom. Here, they are cornered and packed by swift metal arms, before being shoved in the direction of a team of young men. They swing the bundles on the back of trucks as if they were aid packages. “manual labour is cheaper than machines in India,” says the manager. “Unlike the West.” We try to avoid guessing just how cheap.

We are lead through a yellow perspex door and told to take of our shoes. We’re about to enter the temple of the printing plates. “Are there everlasting gobstoppers in here?” quips Karsten. It certainly seems possible that we might soon be bundled into a boat and sailed down a chocolate river, or at least one made of ink. Two engineers sit in front of glowing screens, examining the PDFs of pages for the day. I think of my days as editor of my university newspaper when, at 4 am, our phone would ring off the hook, nudging us to send the paper. Voices would get more agitated at the press until they broke into a threatened refusal to print. These men seemed too relaxed for all that. Huge printers churned out precise aluminium plates for the cyans, magentas and yellows. It was a masterpiece of fine tuning. I cast my mind back to the student days and felt a pang of guilt.

At 4 am, we drive through the sleeping city until we reach the outer circle of Connaught Place. Amongst the shadows of colonial columns, a glow emerges. Turning the corner, we are met by the bustle of newspaper vendors, each of them scurrying between piles of newspapers, gathering their supplies for the day. It is one of several such ‘depots’ spread over the city. It was extraordinary to think that across this huge country, thousands of vendors were now doing the same. It is like a newspaper carnival, with the same trucks we had seen leaving the printing press backing up to drop off their heavy load. Somehow everything is counted, and each of the 400 vendors, known to the staff, is given their usual share of the booty.

Some set out the multicoloured carpet of their magazines right there, waiting for the early morning commuter rush that will begin in a few hours. Others have spread out blankets, or makeshift mats made out of old newsprint. Sitting cross-legged upon them, they count their papers and place the supplements inside. As the sun rises, they gather up their bundles, loading them onto the back of their bicycles and mototbikes and speed off to their beats around the city.

It’s a simple system, and a manual one. India is still a manual society. Though mammoth machines and precise technology exist to do the most pressing of tasks, there is nothing as cheap here as the human hand. And these cheap hands are the lucky hands. Vendors, packers, those that mop the factory floor: all of these are more economical for their bosses than a robotic arm. In restaurants and cafes too, more staff line the walls than would be needed to wait tables in the busiest of lunch hours. Outside taxi queues and tuk tuk lines, men hang around who seem to have no use at all. Uniformed figures sit at road blocks fanning themselves under umbrellas. People are cheap, so why not have more people? Why have newspaper shops, or vending machines, when a man can sit on a street corner, or throw papers into houses for the price of a 30% markup on the 2 rupee paper they deliver?

It’s surprising that the legacy of manual labour seems to exist in a country that is known for its rapid industrialisation. But this is a side of India that may never disappear. And, in the newspaper distribution business at least, it doesn’t need to.

Friday 3rd October 2008

It is said that Indian drivers are second in expertise only to Formula One racers. In Delhi, you can believe it. Road markings do not exist save for road signs which implore drivers to use them. But instead, Indians use their car horns for a kind of sonar effect. Sounding a horn doesn’t mean, “what the bloody hell are you doing,” it means, “look at what the bloody hell I am doing.” As a result, Delhi driving is accompanied by a cacophony of beeps, honks and, presumably the odd yelp.

Today had been an induction into the paper, which included several sessions entitled “brand awareness”. This generally involved showing several slides of the newspaper’s changing masthead, a constant reminder that they were the highest circulation newspaper in the world (after The Sun, of course), and a couple of showings of a promotional video voiced by Amitabh Bachchan. It was conducted while we wore mandatory logo polo shirts, and scribbled in our own-logo reporter’s notebooks. They’d laid on spicy vegetarian pizza and burgers made with spicy potato patties to please my American comrades (the house we inhabit is non-smoking, non-drinking, and vegetarian. It also seems impossible to get a cup of coffee).

Eight hours of slideshows later, we decide to venture out to a market called Greater Kailash I to shake some Delhi dust into our hair. One of the highlights of any tuk tuk driver’s day must be spotting a couple of whiteys flagging them down on the road, in order to charge them at least twice what they would anyone else, (which, granted, is probably the difference between 30p and 60p) and then persuading them that it is ‘good price, madam, good price.’ Next comes a pas de deux which involves the driver climbing back into his rickshaw, while the haggler walks away, each sneaking a look behind at the other to see who breaks first. If you’ve misfired, he really will drive off and leave you without another tuk tuk (and goodness knows when the next will come). But if you’ve hit the right spot, and he won’t have anyone else lurking around the corner, he’ll sigh, agree to your price, and then inevitably try to convince you at the end of the journey you owe him an extra 20 rupees.

On this trip, we manage to lose the game to five tuk tuk drivers, before we befriend two Indian women on the road. Their destination is on our way, so after a showdown with two drivers at a time, we fix something like a reasonable price and all bundle in. This is another common sight in Delhi, though not one we’d ever taken part in before: to fit as many bodies into, or onto, one vehicle as possible. In the case of a tuk tuk, this normally involves some kind of limb sticking out the side, which will have to be cramp-inducingly yanked back in to avoid decapitation by the zooming traffic. We are off.

Delhi roads are full. Delhi cars are full. Taxis full, tuktuks full, motorcycles are full. It’s a not uncommon sight to see an entire family on a motorbike: the man can be distinguished as the only figure wearing a helmet, while the woman rides sidesaddle behind, sometimes with a baby, but never holding on, sari blowing a vibrant banner in the wind. If there is an extra child, or even children, they’ll be sitting over the handles. On today’s journey, we pass five on one bike. It’s become a game to see who can find the motor with the most people.

Honking vehicles weave madly in and out of each other, sometimes in and out of people, and always at speed. And yet you would be hard pushed to find a dented piece of bodywork in the city. Instead, it’s possible to sneak a peek into the sides of other rickshaws. Sometimes you will see a bundle of bodies, or a huge bundle of books tied together with string, a huge statue of Ganesh, or sometimes a bunch of boys in their sunglasses and tight denim at the beginning of a night out. More often than not, there will be several pairs of eyes peeping out at the white faces, or children running alongside on the road to catch a rare glimpse or induce a wave. On the rare occasion the traffic might stop, Delhi maps for sale will be thrust in front of your face, or a tray of coconut slices, or copies of celebrity magazines. At other times, a grubby hand will emerge begging for a few rupees.

If you are lucky, you’ll stop for a refuel, and join the line of bright yellow and green tuk tuks waiting for the pump attendant. You’ll be thrown out on the concourse, with all the other tuk tuk passengers, and the atmosphere will be something like a railway platform all of a sudden, the private transport becoming communal for a few moments before you’re all aboard again.

You’ll pass families settling down for the night in roadside tents made of blue raffia sack, their washing hanging on the chickenwire above. A peek inside might reveal a greying plastic jug or two and maybe a mucky child. You’ll cross rivers throwing up a sulpherous smell, flyovers smelling of hot, spicy ash, and over it all the thick dusty air which slows your breathing.

Tonight, as usual, death is close, but never likely. Our driver laughs as a pregnant woman emerges five inches from our speeding windscreen. “I have been doing this a long time,” he grins, as he negotiates her width between his tuk tuk and the next. She looks nonplussed. The traffic being awful, he decides to take the pavement, following a volley of motocycles, and throwing dust over the row of blue tents beside. And then, being informed that he has overshot our house by at least half a kilometre, he performs a u-turn onto the pavement once more. Avoiding an encampment of Pakistani soldiers outside their embassy, he turns head-on into five oncoming lanes of traffic. It is now that my poor, frazzled fellow passengers and I have had enough. “Stop!” Malena yells, throws some rupees at him (goodness knows what they are – his luck is in), and jump out. After all, we are not Michael Caine and this is not the Italian Job. We walk off into the dark, to the sound of his laughter, and, I imagine, head shaking with pity.

Whiteys, I imagine him thinking. When it comes to driving, there’s so much they have to learn. But we are better at brand awareness.

Thursday 2nd October 2008

“We’ll have to teach you the rules of cricket,” says the Editor-in-Chief, “and then you’ll know what civilisation is really about.” The familiar Indian joke is visited upon the six of us young journalists as we begin our new job at a national newspaper in Delhi. I think these words fail to persuade my five colleagues, all of whom were American and under the age of thirty. We had spent the last 48 hours without any internet access, or promise of an Indian SIM card. Worse: this morning our cook had made us pasta for breakfast.

“Is cricket a bit like baseball?” asks Malena, a wide-eyed Nigerian American possessed of the kind of boundless, foundationless enthusiasm that makes her presence essential at such times. The Editor-in-Chief does not grace her question with an answer. He slowly tips his head towards his assistant and says, “We must teach them.”

The Editor is possessed of the attributes that all editors have, and no doubt are born with – calmless, ruthlessness, and an time-bomb scorn which doesn’t detonate until the bemused reciprocant is firmly outside the door. His bulk (which I would imagine has been acquired over a number of years) produces the sweaty validation of his power, which manifests itself in that other common editorial trait: the ability to believe that newsrooms are non-hierarchical, whilst at the same time planting himself firmly at the top. He delivers all the appropriate lines. “All newsrooms are democracies,” he says, effortlessly paraphrasing Evelyn Waugh, “up to a point.” He grins. His assistants to the left and right do not, but slip off their sandals and examine their toes with their fingers. At the appropriate time, they are primed for laughter. The Chief’s comments are always accompanied by a shaking of the head.

“Why you taking three days for orientation?” he demands of us, as if we had organised our own schedule. Human Resources had planned a very American itinerary that included an insight into the business, a trip to the plant, and a review of the paper’s history, which, conducted in our own branded polo shirts, would in New York be dubbed “brand awareness”. It would also include (spicy vegetarian) hamburgers for lunch and an all-day drip-feed of coffee. Right on schedule, a man enters with a tray dotted with small cups of milky, sweet tea.

“You are wasting your time with this ‘orientation’,” says the Editor, waving his glasses. The assistant editors sit forward nervously. He leans back in his chair. He is clearly not going to make any changes himself. Before him is spread the day’s rival newspapers, completely uncreased and bleach-white. “But what is to be done?” he asks, gesturing toward them.

Human Resources had given us a briefing the day before, in which they explained that they were on a recruitment drive. “Our job is to look for the talent,” the head of department explained, twirling the corner of a ringmaster moustache. The newspaper had been visiting university campuses recruiting reporters. I thought of the fact that, even with a masters degree in journalism, I had been offering my free services in drooling submission to one British national newspaper for two years without whisper of a contract. Like my American colleagues, I had come to India for a job because there were none at home. And these people knew it. They had beaten us at cricket for years. Now they were bowling effortlessly at new wickets.

“We do not need to teach her the rules of cricket,” laughs one of the assistants, pointing my way, “she is British.” I had just admitted to one of my colleagues in the lift that I thought cricket was an elitist sport I’d deliberately evaded understanding. Now, on demand I look up, smile, and titter gently. It was either join the friendly head-shaking or become its victim. “Did you know,” said the other assitant editor, contributing his rupees’ worth, “that the Americans actually played cricket before the Indians did?” The others nod knowingly. “The Australians and the Americans, they all played before we became the best.”

India’s world cricket game is increasingly being played in her favour. We sat in the office that day, not as peace corps visitors offering benevolent biceps to dig a well but as potential immigrants looking for jobs that were too scarce back home. The tables had most certainly turned.

Yesterday, the very same newspaper published a piece on its comment pages that followed the life of one Californian woman. She was, it reported, part of a growing number of American former homeowners who were forced to live in their cars. Her house had been repossessed; now she was left to drive around all day on overpriced tanks of gas until the parking lots opened, at which time she would drive in, pet her dog on the head, and reach into the glove box for the pot of yogurt that constituted her evening meal. She kept her gym membership open because it was the only place she could go for a shower.

The Editor leans back on his chair and surveys his young, non-Indian interns. Today is Eid ul-Fitr, the last day of Ramadan. All over the city, people are celebrating in the streets, making their way to feasts and dancing. It also happens to be the public holiday marking Gandhi’s birthday, and there are lavish displays of government charity, including education programmes, public ceremonies, and even free health checks for citizens. The tortoise is catching up with the hare.

“We’ll organise a match,” said the Editor, standing to suggest that his short time was now at the most limited of premiums. When all is said and done, it’s all cricket.

Wednesday 1st October 2008

The tuktuk tips us out sideways on to the street like a wheelbarrow. Sucked into the current of people streaming through the labyrinthine corridors of Chandni Chowk market, we have no choice but to be borne along with them.

Everywhere is the sound of taxi horns, babies crying, dosas sizzling, and people peddling belts, shavers, pens, saris, babies’ clothes, sandals, beads, bindis. The air smells of hot fat and spice and urine and frankincense: as soon as one smell leaves our nostrils another rises to take its place. The tiny streets are covered in a grey-blue hue. Yellow light bounces out of the shops from sari glitter, the flash of chapatti pans, and tinsel. We turn our heads quickly enough to catch a glance at five women sitting on the floor of a shop, huge bright taffetas spread below them, choosing a bridal trousseau. Another glance at dogs ailing in the gutters (“In India, they’re either pregnant, or they’re dying,” quips my friend Neilesh). We jump out the way just in time to avoid being pulled under the wheels of a rickshaw, only a few inches narrower than the lane it is trying to navigate, ploughing its cargo of three young women through the mucky splendour of the streets. Everything is profane, and everything is sacred.

And yet nothing is ominous: Indian markets are not like African bazaars, with their dried up heads and grimacing skulls. Neither are they full of the hanging slimy corpses of poultry and small mammals, or the ground up tusks of exotic creatures like those in China. Everything here glitters, shines, sparkles; smells of the past and of hopes pressed to the ears of the gods.

Chandni Chowk is a slum, filled with treasures in tiny ramshackle niches. There are businesses that have been here for decades, carving their quiet reputation as the bookseller who sells this item best, or the tailor who is superior for that. A shopper’s method in the carnage is known only to them. The entire bazaar has the sensibility of a department store – every five minutes of our walk the theme of the shops seamlessly changes; from shoes to saris to ribbons to paper to calendars to electronics. And all dotted with dosas and lime soda stands, like shop cafes less strategically placed. Of course there are no arrows to departments, and heaven help you if you stop for a moment to orientate yourself. There are people of all kinds: mothers, babies. Tall men, tiny men, old men, boys. Each have their own errand and I feel guilt at the indulgence of simply watching. Here is human life, everyone armed with their own purpose as they elbow their way through the throng.

Last Saturday, in one such market in Delhi, two black-clad motorcycle riders, as much part of the mêlée as any other, dropped a square package in the road. A young boy, one of the many sitting among the buckets and boxes, ran to pick it up and return it. It exploded in his face, killing him instantly, and injuring dozens of passers by. Such bombs have been planted around markets and open spaces in India over the last five months, with increasing intensity. Most have been claimed by Islamic Mujaheleen, who want the rights of Muslims to be asserted fairly in Congress. And they have succeeded in terrifying Indians as they go about their way of life. They have only highlighted the fact that in a country known for its gordion knot of bureaucracy, there is one of the lowest police to civilian ratios in the world. India is a country that thrived on chaos and chance happenings, that amazed Western visitors with its ability to run adequately without digital precision, safety first, and a mechanised mindset. Now its beautiful spontaneity is being threatened by a new brand of chaos. It cannot be discovered, contained, or understood. It is not ‘Indian Mind’ and no one understands how to make it stop. It leaves the Congress Party government with two choices: either turn into a surveillance state, or let another party do it instead.

From the mayhem of the street, the new Delhi Metro springs up, as if to guide us with its steely, sterilised hand to the safety of an underground passage. The metro system here is perhaps the best I’ve ever seen. Its enormous shiny caverns run trains that are on time, never overcrowded, cheap (10p or so a ride) and, best of all, narrated by a plummy Brit who must have modelled her received pronunciation on the Queen’s Speech. It’s a symbol of India’s emergence as a first-world democracy, and is due to be finished in time for the city’s hosting of 2010 Commonweath Games. The tiny plastic token, which scans each passenger through the gates on the way in, and slots them to their exit, is the ultimate ticketless ticket, and the metro’s three lines link New Delhi Railway Station and the main bus station with the rest of the city.

But there is another feature to the Delhi Metro that indicates the direction in which India is headed. Before even reaching the gates, passengers walk through airport-style security: metal detectors, and x-rays for bags. If a commuter is unfortnate enough to bleep on their way through the arch (and it’s telling that many of Delhi’s commuters do not carry enough on their person to be detected), they will be whisked behind a screen and frisked. What happens in the market - chaotic, mad, India – cannot be surveilled, but that is old India. Here in subterrania, the enclosed is carefully scrutinised.

Or will be, one day. The female officer who was allotted to me gestured behind a screen emblazoned with an advertisement for Delhi’s miaow FM. Cocking her head sideways, and giggling like the new shopgirl on bra-fitting day, she touched me barely close enough to detect a kalashnikov rammed up my tunic. Protocol, it seems, is just that.