One more day in Delhi, Lodhi Gardens

A Muslim refugee camp in Old Delhi, during the Partition era.

The Partition. I mentioned it before. The Partition, the seismic moment in Indian history. I talked to Leon about it, and I wanted to ask Sheila too, but somehow in a subtle way, like I couldn't just grab her by the shoulders. Shout, HOW ABOUT THAT PARTITION. I hope you know what I'm talking about. The nation arbitrarily torn into two parts. The mass exodus of Hindus from what was now called Pakistan, and Muslims from India. It is hard to imagine now but Pakistan used to be as Indian as India itself. Even today (like so many world conflicts) the differences between the two nations people are insignificant, the similarities enormous. As a a friend of mine said to me: "Whenever I went and lived overseas, most of my friends were Pakistani. Once you're overseas, you realize pretty fast fast that Pakistanis and Indians are the same people, there's no point in denying it, you have so much in common..."

Do you know that I don't know a single Pakistani? They are, so I hear, very common in the UK. And pretty much non-existent in the US.

And the Partition was a tragedy, a tragedy of epic proportions. Around 12.5 million people displaced and on the move. No one is quite sure how many people died in the inevitable fighting, but estimates range from a 100,000 to a million. The division of land between the two states was often arbitrary or poorly thought out: Partition is one of the reasons why Kashmir is such a mess today - combine a majority Hindu population in the Jammu region and a majority Muslim one in the Kashmir valley? You're going to have problems. Anyhow. Fighting on the streets, friends lost forever. Even the language got messed about. (Leon, remembering the day when he learned to speak Hindustani up in Mussorie, instead of Hindi). Another irony: some of the oldest archaeological sites in India are in Pakistan, in the Punjab. Gandhi was against the Partition. No one seemed to listen to him.



That evening, Sheila and I set off for one last walk around Lodhi Gardens. My favorite place in India.

(When I first came here: I went to one of the more secluded tombs, and was all alone (so rare) in India. It was my last few hours in India, I was headed to the airport right after. And I watched the green parrots and thought to myself, "When will I see this again, when?"
And reassured myself, "It will be soon, must be soon. Within two years, which is all I have left of school."
And do you know - I did it).

I asked her about the Partition.

"Ah, I remember," she said, as we begin our loop around Lodhi Garden. The sky is pink and birds coming down, the sun so distinctly Indian, a sun that can be found nowhere else. "My sister and I went to the Woodstock School every day, you know - we lived in Landour. There was a sweet old man who used to sell lovely bangles and jewelry, on the way to school. We loved to buy those beautiful things, and sometimes our mother would get them for us. He was a Muslim man - I guess we knew that. It wasn't anything important, then. He was very kind, a lovely person.



Partition happened, and the fighting happened, you know all that. My mother, terrified. She tried to shield us from the worst of it, and she mostly managed. But - we went to school one day, I suppose, and the little man wasn't there. And my mother - she told my sister that he had moved, had gone away.

Of course, he had been killed, murdered by the Hindus. We found out about it all at school. It hit my sister the hardest. She cried for days and days, couldn't understand at all."

Like anyone could.

"I remember the violence, too, in the eighties, with Indira Ghandi and all. Your grandfather, too. Living in Berlin, right after the war. And the Great Depression. He saw things, too

Baldev, too. He's from Peshewar. His father, my father in law - he was a popular dentist there. So they didn't let him leave after Partition. They wanted him around. That kept them relatively safe, even not being religious. He never spoke Hindi, as a child. Just learned Urdu."

She though for a moment. Green parrots in the trees, and an ex-pat couple jogging bouncily around the trails perimeter, and the air going pinker and more divine by the moment. The tombs glow this time of night, as if backlit, and the remnant of blue tile on their fronts become intensely colored.

"Have you ever seen violence? Real violence?"

No, I said, no, not at all, not like you and my grandparents, not the world you four occupied.


"Well, that's good. It's the real world, maybe. But you don't have to experience so much, not just yet. Maybe Cambodia will be like that. "

She ran into a friend of hers, a very old looking Indian woman with the particular carriage of one who has led a life of stone cold bad-assery. We exchanged greetings, and continued our stroll. I love it when this happens because then Sheila always tells me all about the person we just met. She didn't fail me.

"That woman - her husband was diplomat to the pope. She had me over for lunch one day, and told me a story, a wonderful story. She had an audience with the Pope, and the Vatican naturally requested she wear a hat, and gloves, and stockings, something like that. Of course, she wondered. How would she do that with a sari? It would look absolutely strange. She was no push-over. She covered her head with her dupatta, and put her hands in her dress instead of wearing gloves. "This is appropriate for Indian dress," she explained to the Pope, when she appeared.

Well, he certainly wasn't going to argue with her.

Her family - her one son - he shaved his head in college. Some philosophical thing. And her husband, his father. Well, he refused to talk to him for 8 years, because of this silly thing. She finally broke down the wall, she did it. "This is stupid," she said, to both of them. And it did work. She's like that. The husband is dead now, I think.

The son - he was a lawyer, or something - he loved Mussorie, he wanted to retire there like everyone does. He made a lot of money, so he bought a nice place there, when he was middle-aged. And what do you know. Maybe his second night there, he died. All alone, his family all back in Delhi. He just had a heart attack, unexpected and sudden. He was quite young.

I guess the moral is, you might as well live as you please, now. There's no use in waiting."

(How many times have I heard that from family and older mentors, that particular advice. My grandfather, regarding his bourbon at 6:00 PM, sitting in the leather chair I know so well. "You might as well. You could get hit by the beer truck tomorrow. You might as well." )



We went back to the house for dinner. Baldev had finally come down - I suspect a big grudgingly - from Mussorie, and it was good to see him again, him and his curious electric-blue eyes. Like my grandparents and like Sheila, he carries the same aura of sheer gravitas about him.

"I know I'm not a Hindu," Sheila said, "not really. But, there was this one time." (Pouring me yet another drink).

I said I'd go to this temple, if Rajeev got well. And he did, so I went with my friend. I was dutiful about it. We got to the airport - they assigned us this nice young soldier, to accompany us. We couldn't get a jeep up there, the roads were out, so we needed to walk. He looked at me in my salwar and said, "Mrs. Lal, can you make it?" And I said, "Well, I'm from Mussorie. I guess I can try."

I got up there, and the shrine is in this cave, it's quite popular. It's like re-entering the womb, it's really slippery. That's the idea. You crawl through corriders, and caves. You can't go out the same way you came in. In the central area - it costs a lot of money to do puja there, or stay there a while. I ran into this group of people, Gujaratis I think, and they had paid a lot of money to do this puja. So they let me into their group: "Ah, you're my sister, you're like my sister." And I go, "Uh, okay, I' m your sister." So I get to see this - very expensive puja, i get to stay in there for a while.

I was going out, and I passed by this very tall woman, over six feet tall, and dressed all in white. I remember her sari was very long, and I couldn't see her feet. She looked almost lost - she was going the wrong way, and you shouldn't do that. But you're not supposed to correct others in temples. They're places of worship, in the end, you do do what you want to do. She had the most beautiful face, as I recall. I thought it was strange - you don't see lots of over six foot tall women in India. I told my mother about it - she was a hardcore Hindu - and she laughed at me. "Oh, Sheilie - that was obviously the Dara. You saw her, it was her. "

"Well, the Dara is very beautiful, then," I said. Another friend of mine - they say it was a hallucination, that I wanted to see her. So I willed myself into "seeing" something. They're probably right. But it makes a good story, doesn't it?"



I took some photographs of them for my grandparents. I got the two of them connected on Skype. (They are both remarkably technologically savvy). That's the power of technology: get two couples who have known each other forever and live on opposite sides of the world, talking on video phone for the first time in years. Cynics about technology and its supposed evils might want to stop and consider that.

I was headed to the airport early that morning: off to Bagdogra. We all said goodbye in the rather manful fashion of our respective families. I reassured them I'd be back (I would). They assented (they would). I said goodbye to the dog, and was sent off with a Ferro Rocher chocolate, and then went to bed early.

Landour, The Four Shops, The Language School

I ate this thali and I went up the hill to Landour again. I wanted to check out the Language School. The Landour Language School is world famous, and is used heavily by the American Fulbright progam. Instruction is conducted in Hindi, Pashto, and Urdu. Classes are either one-on-one or conducted in at most three person groups. I have dreams of coming up here to learn Hindi and finish off a book sometime in the near future. Still - it's intimidating. Talking to people at the Four Shops can fill a fairly average person with profound insecurity. So many young genius-types finishing up dissertations on Pashto poetry, research on the growth of business in Hyderabad, researching ancient Mughal art. Degrees from Harvard and Yale and Oxford. Me? Uh. I write about stuff I ate a lot. I can say "good food!" in Hindi if I'm feeling sharp.

I soon began talking to a small and extremely intense French woman. She was a photojournalist for some of the major news sources and had, of late, covered the Indian tsunami, Pakistani flooding, and a variety of assorted combat zones. For some reason, she took a shine to me. I asked her why she was at the school.

"I need to learn enough Hindi to yell DON'T SHOOT, mostly," she said.

We talked about travel, about my impending journalism career. To my relief, she seemed positive about it, or at leas t my odds of continued survival. As well as my idea of taking classes at the school.

"Your breed....no, you're not the typical American. That's a good thing. Everything about you is quick, fast. It's your physiology. Sim, rapid eye movements. You seem very creative. You'll do well."

"I feel like I'm not smart enough to be with these people," I said, making a vague gesture towards the school.

"No, everyone's smart,in different ways. You know how to survive, and that's most important. Especially for a journalist - the quality of your work, okay, but the ability to survive, that's important. My paper sent us all up for military survival camp, recently. You should try it. You learn good things, useful things - if a gun is loaded, how to deal with political unrest, land mines, stuff like that. I didn't do chemical warfare though. Not this time."

"You seem like you've made it as a journalist. It's really nice to hear all this from someone like you."

"You say, "made it." That depends on how you define made it. I don't have two houses, or a ton of money, so to many people I haven't made it. But I'd rather be out here and seeing this huge world, I'd rather have that then two houses. So it's how you define "made it."

Isn't it always?



She had to go off to class. I followed her and snuck around the school's interior for a bit. Looked lovely. Chatted with a few students who all had glowing things to say. It isn't even that expensive. Maybe I can someday convince a company to pay for it. Yeah, that'll be the day.

I went for a walk since that's what you do in Mussorie. Landour really is a little-known and profoundly interesting UN of sorts. An Indian kid and an American kid from the Woodstock School, wandering up the hill behind me and arguing about video games. Bengali film stars (Hello, Victor Banerjee!).

There were three young guys sitting at the Tip Top Tea Shop, drinking chai and finishing off their lunches. They looked American - something about the plaid shirts - and one way or another, we got to talking.

"We're from Yale, all of us. I'm from Georgia, he's from Vermont, he's from Conneticut."
Turns out one of the guys was the brother of a girl who attended Simon's Rock at the same time I did, the 300 person and very esoteric "early college" in the Berkshires.


The four shops.

There's a tiny fraternity of Americans who travel and go abroad, who are comfortable there. I have stopped being amazed by the network, and by how interconnected we all seem to be. Almost every time I meet an American overseas, they know someone I know or are related to someone I know. In the most far-flung and small places, we share buoyant stories about the personality of So and So, or the time That Girl got wasted at a party and what she did after, or the particular qualities of restaurants and bars we both know and have frequented, and so on and so on. This is comforting, of course, but is also terrifically disconcerting. I think of it in terms of numbers. The USA has over 250 million people. India has over a billion. Why do we find each other? Why are we so interconnected?

The answer, I think, lies in privilege. There are billions of people in the world, but only a vanishingly small number have the means to both receive a fancy education, finish the fancy education, and then find one's self with enough money and free-time to amble off into the wilds for a bona-fide and old school adventure. There are very few of us indeed, and we are the luckiest of the earth. No, I've stopped being shocked by how interconnected we all are. We are part of the same small and terrifically exclusive club, and we only grow aware of this gradually, and with some amount of embarrassment. We cannot pretend we live in a meritocracy. We are beneficiaries of an accident of birth. In the Karmic view, perhaps we were good and just people in our previous lives. But I am no Hindu.


The lovely old church next to the Four Shops.

And what were they doing up here? One of the guys was in fact a relative of Stephen Alter, one of the big-time writers who resides up here, and they were residing at his place. "We're doing fishing outfitting, up here in Uttarkhand. Trout and the local fish. Totally untapped market. Of course, the monsoon isn't helping."

We had a very pleasant chat about nothing in particular. People we mutually knew. Places we'd been. Hipsters. Always, talking about hipsters. There was one brilliant revelation:

"I've always thought...you know, you could really sell these bhidis to hipsters."

"They're cheap, they're foreign, and they taste awful. Hipsters would lap them up."

"Yeah. They cost - what, a penny to make? You could get a shipload to the USA. Sell em' for three bucks a pack."

"You'd be rich."

"Of course, they mostly use child labor to make them. They're really tiny. Need tiny little hands."

"Yeah, I hadn't considered that angle. Well. Kids need jobs too."

"Yeah. You're helping the children!"

They had to shove off down the road, so I sat and got out my sketchbook. Just about lunch time.



I was trying to gain weight for my trek in Sikkim. Something about India seems to make me really skinny. I eat my brains out when I'm here, so not sure that it's *lack* of feeding. Thankfully, the Tip Top Tea Shop offers the perfect remedy in the form of twix bar pancakes. Normally the kind of food stuff this snob with a penchant for healthy eating would turn her nose up. But something about the elevation and the need to pack on a few pounds prior to walking 11 miles a day uphill converted me. I devoured these. This man is a pancake artist. Something about the sweet pancake, the crunchy rims on the side from the frying in butter, the oozing, delectable texture of the Twix bar lurking inside, how the cookie core gets all heated up. (This makes me sound like I am writing a dirty book. As does most food writing.

I ate my pancakes and the proprietors father, who had owned the shop before him (Sheila knows him) came up and politely asked me if I would draw a picture of him. So I did. Drawing is a fabulous icebreaker.

Victor Banerjee, the famous Bengali actor, came down here for his usual cup of tea and looked at me with what appeared to be extreme disapproval. Feel somewhat anointed. (I recall sitting next to him once in the internet cafe here and thinking about what a forceful typist he was. Like me, I admit).

I went up to Landour again the next day.

I walked around the hill again in lieu of anything better to do, and (naturally) I ran into Leon again. He had his video camera and was taping the trails. As always, he was more then happy to chat. I followed him for a while, a bit puppy-like I guess. "Ah, hey! Look over there," he said. He pointed at an old and falling apart house behind a gate, one I'd walked by a few times before and had never taken much notice of.



"Okay, come over here. You can't go inside here, not anymore, but back when I was a boy - this is Peace Cottage. This is where we lived. It was a missionaries retreat for a long time. They'd send the old bird nuns up here to recuperate or go on vacation." The fog was moving in, and we could barely see the white structure beyond. It was diplidated and looked very old. I think the mist and the wet here ages things terribly quickly, and moves quickly when it comes to returning things to the earth, again.

I peered through the gate - which wouldn't open - and thought of the scorpion cup and of the Partition. It was hard to imagine, this little white washed cottage with a mildew problem, living through all of this. But I could try.

"The one thing I want to photograph. Okay. It's a false horizon. It only occurs in two places in the world - here, and somewhere in Switzerland. It's when there's literally a second horizon, and the sun even goes down behind it. I saw it once here, in my junior year. It was like - like God had driven a golden spike into the center of the world. I thought, "Oh my god, someone has to get a photo of this." So that's my mission. Of course, it's nature photography. What do you do? You stake out. And you wait.

"I'll get it someday, I'm certain of it. Because, what does a good nature photographer spend most of his time doing?"

"Waiting," I said.

"That's right. You wait."

We walked for a few minutes more. He pointed out some ferns to me that were going yellow. "That's not good. It means they're going to die soon, and my pictures won't be as good - not like I remembered it. They're dying earlier and earlier these days."


Smoke on th' valley.

We ran into some friends of his - some California boys with Indian family who were studying at the Language School. And so I asked him more about his life. He'd been an accountant before, and then his wife had passed, and then he'd given his house to his son and came here. But, the in-between. He was happy to oblige.

"Well. After I left India, graduated, went to San Jose State for college. I played in a country western band in St. Helena. I taught music for a long time at San Jose state. Then I fell afoul of the administration, so I gave them the one fingered salute, and I went to Montana. I've done a lot of things in my life. I got married. I was a pumpkin, and she was a mouse. I was playing a Halloween party. That's how I met my wife. "

He had mentioned his late wife the first time I had met him. But there hadn't been details.

"We were going to come back here, for a Woodstock School reunion. To see the hills again. Then she got lung cancer, so we put it off for the next year. The year afte that, we wanted to go again, and then she was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. One more year, and she seemed better, and we started planning again. Then, breast cancer. We decided we couldn't plan any trips together, because they caused cancer. She always had a good sense of humor, like that."

"She didn't see the following year."



We turned a corner and there they were, the snows. The sun was just thinking about going down, and the rain had washed away the clouds and the haze. I took as many pictures as I could.

"My parents were missionaries, you know, and so I grew up an atheist in revolt."

(The sun going through the pine-trees. If there be paradise on earth).

I had my epiphany, as I remember. Before then I thought believing in God was a pretty silly thing. Then I'm out here, one night at Woodstock - i'm looking at the mountains, up at the stars, millions upon millions of them. And thinking, "Okay. Someone had to do this."

"Take that as you will."

"I agree," I said. And really meant it. This, the final allure and danger of the Himalaya. That it can turn you from a jaded and constantly irritated skeptic into an agape nature lover. Staring out at the view for days on end and gawping, and making comments about how astounding it all is.

It does make you wonder, why humanity is so specifically programmed. That mountain ranges and marvelous vistas move us on such a primal, elemental state. The mountains, especially. Down in lowland Bengal or in Florida, in the Cambodian river delta or in the Australian desert - wherever there are no mountains, people keep pictures of them on their wall and dream of going someday. Indian Buddhists placed Mt. Meru, the center of the world, in the Himalaya. It is only befitting.

Leon, too. A striking person. Another theme of this trip. Running into people whose spouses have passed, who have encountered an aspect of life I am too young to approach or know. A succession of them, all traveling after the deaths of their spouses, walking with no particular destination and talking to me because I am lucky. The references dropped in conversation are subtle and sad and make one consider the future, far-impending and far off This too myself in forty years or so, maybe, creaking and sleeping on budget-basement beds, thinking always of the person I have left irrevocably and inert behind me. Better then slipping into depression and inertia in a house full of mementos that gradually gather dust and cat piss. Better to go wandering again.

Walking to Landour

We decided to spend the day going up. Upwards to Landour, at least. That's the only real way to get there. Thankfully, Mussorie isn't exactly a big place, and there's just enough sign-posts to keep you on the right track. And what a lovely, atmospheric walk. Sure, it's steep, but there's plenty to see. Small shops selling ornate wooden canes, vegetable sellers, men urging pissed-off donkeys up hills, wave after wave of private school brats in identical uniforms. The mist rolling down the mountain, walking through little pockets of cloud. The wildflowers here look like a kid's drawing: a single hill putting up flowers in red and orange and pink and purple, all the colors you'd want, right below yet another stand of tall and lovely pines. You can stop for chai whenever you get tired. We were talking to each other, too, and things went even faster.



Laura, Eric, and I dawdled for a while at this lovely overlook, down into the valley and Mussorie town proper. Some small girls from the area were hanging out in the shelter with us. Eric's a photographer, and he has an absolutely brilliant method of getting to know people abroad.

He's got a donkey hand puppet. Turns out a donkey hand puppet is a fantastic ice breaker, even with adults. He can even crack a smile from endlessly jaded teenagers, which is no mean feat. And kids, needless to say, find the donkey puppet absolutely hilarious. "I had a white seal puppet for a while, in Africa," Eric told me. "But the African kids were scared of it, they had no idea what a seal was. I figured I'd get a donkey. It's a little more...universal."



A rain storm suddenly burst - not a surprise in the midst of the Weirdest Monsoon Ever - and we dashed to the covered entry-way to one of the hillside homes. A man with an umbrella and head phones took refuge with it. "It's strange weather, isn't it?" he said, and we began conversing. The Eternal Icebreaker, the crappiness of the monsoon.

Leon had moved to Landour with his missionary parents in the 1940's, taking up residence in the Peace Cottage, a gentle stroll from where Sheila and Baldev have their own spread. He attended the Woodstock School in the 40's and 50's, working on a video project. He was trying to map all of Landour's trails, on video, document the area where he spent his childhood and formative years. A video record of his memories. He liked to talk, and if you were williing to let him monologue some, you'd be happy you listened.

"What was life in Landour like, back in the 40s?" I asked. This would have been Sheila's Landour too, after all, her origin point and Leon's alike.

"I spoke Hindustani, for one thing. It's a mix of Hindi and Urdu - this was before partition. I'm having to relearn all my words. But there's one word I still remember. "Scorpion". We had a lot of them in these days, up here. Still do. I found one the other day, and I got my groundskeeper to take care of it. The Hindu word for scorpion - I hadn't said it in years and years - well, it just came out. When you need it. "

"But we had a lot more of them back in the 40's and 50's, a lot more. Less development. Less people. We collected 6 lakh scorpions at our house one year. We'd dump them all in a tin-can. One day, a friend came to see my mother, and she walked into the kitchen. She saw the cup and asked, "What is THAT?"

My mother replied pleasantly, "Oh, that? It's our scorpion cup."

We put the legs of our beds in water, to stop the scorpions from crawling up them at night. It didn't always work. I remember being six years old or so, lying in bed. I wake up and I see a scorpion on the wall, a few feet from my face. I start screaming, "MMOOOOMMMM!"

My father took the scorpion away.


I think they call that right there Ambience.

People who have lived through Partition almost always seem willing to talk about it - the Indian urge to purge, to talk it out, to get it out there. To argue. Living through Partition was terrible but more terrible still would be not-talking about, is what's implied, and By God you're going to listen. And I asked him, "What was the Partition like?"

"Well, we moved here in 1947, when i was six years old. My parents were missionaries. This was back before Landour was a quiet, gentle place - this was during partition. The Muslims and the Hindus were fighting in the streets, and I remember seeing dead bodies on the ground."

It was hard to fathom: this gentle hill station being subject to the same time as savage violence as the rest of India. But history and climate do not produce exceptionalism: people are cruel and easily excitable anywhere.



"You'd hear stories. Conversations overheard. Two Muslims walking down the street somewhere near here. One says to the other, walking by a home: "There's a lot of Hindus hiding in this house. Should we kill them?"

His friend shrugs his shoulders. "Ah, naah. Let's go to the next one." As casual as that.

When we first got here, we didn't leave the house of three months. But I remember - one day, my dad coms to me and he asks, "Well, want to see the fighting?" Of course I did. I came with him to the town. There's nothing more bloodthirsty then an eight year old. Nothing in the world."


This makes it look much more creepy and horrifying-alien-movie like then it actually is up there. I assure you that there are no fog monsters waiting to slurp up your eyeballs out there, or if they are, they are very good at hiding.

The rain was beginning to die down a little, and a couple of locals tentatively restarted their walk up the impossibly steep hill, throwing their backs into it. "I suppose we should be going," Laura said. "We should catch up with our friends for lunch, up at the four shops."

"There's that new restaurant up there. The Roorkee Manor. There's this incredibly wealthy guy, from Woodstock. He made a fortune in iT, and he came back up here. He's a decent guy, but he's kind of misguided. He tried to buy the Four Shops, and he said, "I'll take them off your hands. I'll give you any amount of rupees you want. All but one of the owners refused to sell, of course. He was so pissed off he decided to buy that place up the hill, the Manor, and run them out of business. Everyone says the food is really good, but a lot of us are boycotting. You can't mess with the Four Shop

I made a mental note to avoid the Roorkee. Who doesn't love striking a blow in the face of big-time billionaires with ego problems? And we bid Leon farewell.

We walked up to the Four Shops, or the Char Dukaan. Char Dukaan being, shockingly enough, the Hindi for "four shops." And that's really all it is. All it has been. I've seen photos from the 60's and 70's that show the shops looking approximately the same. They have added an internet cafe with a very wonky internet connection. Other then that? You sit down, order tea and cheese toast or pancakes, and you watch the world go by. I'm a Tip Top Tea Shop partisan myself. One: I like to reward adorable alliterations whenever possible. Two: they have fantastic food and the owner likes to come out and chat with me about minutiae. You can't tell the difference between the tea and the coffee, but that's pretty much the deal in India.

We thought we were going to eat there, but, no. A language school student sitting in the cafe flagged us down. "Hey, you're with that group from Delhi, right?"

Yes, we were. "They're up the hill at the Roorkee," he said. "They told us to wait for you."

"How'd you know it was us?" Laura asked.

"They mentioned boots. Red cowboy boots." What I was wearing, of course. I guess they're a trademark.

Laura, Eric, and I shot each other somewhat embarrassed looks - The Corporate Maw! But we had to meet them anyway.

I was irritated to find that the Roorkee was absolutely lovely. The owner has taken an old Raj-era mansion and transformed it into a smart yet homy little hotel, with lots of wood and exposed stone accents. It wouldn't look entirely out of place in Aspen. The prices, needless to say, aren't in the "budget" range. 100 bucks a night for a hotel room is probably not going to get the Language School crew (except for the professionals) in the door.

The restaurant, as we discovered, was entirely reasonably priced. I was further irritated when the food turned out to be good. Flipping the bird to the specter of capitalism and big-bidnes was proving harder then I'd thought. The menu is a combination of Indian standards and Western food. A good call in this startlingly diverse little hill station. That's thanks to the internationally famous language school, of course.



I had an epiphany in Australia. Not a major one. I just found that I liked mashed potatoes again. Hadn't eaten them in four years, but all of a sudden, manna of the gods. Anyhow, the Roorkee had a pretty good creamy lamb stew with mash. Very mild and very English in execution. Sometimes, what you want on a cold day. The height of Mussorie and the cool temperatures make the human organism interested in eating things like mash and tea and cheese toast, I suppose. Warms the soul. Though nothing warms you up quite like really good chai.




Those are some mighty fine looking lamb chops. Considering the amount of lamb Indians consume, it's surprising how hard it is to find a decent frenched chop in these parts. Not a problem at the Roorkee. I came back to have these chops the next day and was very sad when they were out. They should have gone out and whacked a lamb just for me. Honestly.



They have a bakery on site here. The profusion of breads that comes out when you order soup is truly memorable. And they do western style desserts. A god-send for those with a sweet tooth and an inability to enjoy traditional Indian sweets. Having no interest in most desserts, I didn't partake, but apparently this cheesecake was very serviceable.

Caught in the rain again. And getting darker, too. Four or five of us stood under an awing with some computer delivery boys, who had come all the way from Delhi. Nothing better to do. We talked. And I had a question, since I had everyone cornered and all. "When do you feel you've really lived somewhere? How long does it take?"

"I used to live in Africa," Lauren said, "and I was teaching school there. Every day, these little kids who lived next door would have dinner with me, whether I liked it or not. I just got used to it. And one day, I had dinner, and I'm sitting with my food, and I realize: the kids aren't there. And I kind of miss them! That's when I knew I'd adapted."

Or maybe it's the shipment, she said. Getting that shipment from overseas - your entire life in some boxes - and thinking (as many of the travel inclined do), "How the hell did I get all this stuff? And why do I have it?" And having no answer, but continuing to cart around puffy jackets and take-out menus because they were in the box and you can't bring yourself to throw them away, you might need them sometime. The rain died down some and we walked to the Four Shops to get a taxi - easier then you'd think out here. I sat under the awning and watched the rain go down and the sun go down with it, and wondered how and when I'd define Living There in Phnom Penh. Impossible to say.

Welcome to Mussorie: Hill Stations, Panthers

When you say Mussorie in the USA, people usually assume you're talking about Missouri, and then you begin mentioning himalayan mountains and panther attacks and lots of Nepali people with donkeys, and everyone gets really confused.

But this is Mussorie, the charismatic Himalaya hill station about six hours north of Delhi. That Mussorie.

Mussorie, unlike most places tourists give's a rat's ass about in India, is not very old. None of the hill stations are, really. It was founded by the British in the earlyish 1800's, slated to be the headquarters of the remarkably ambitious (and Great Game spurred) British Survey of Indian. Sir George Everest - sound familiar? - settled and worked here. Mussorie soon became a place where the British went to escape the horrifying heat of the Indian plains. Women and children would often spend most of their time in the cool and less malarial hill-stations, leaving their hardy menfolk behind to do administrative stuff and drink tons of gin and tonic, though they'd come up occasionally to blow away panthers and smoke cigars.

This separation of families led, naturally, to all manner of scandal, Mussorie becoming something of a sin city for Raj-era ladies and gentlemen of loose morals. A good old story relates that, at the iconic (and sadly closed) Savoy Hotel, a bell was rung around 4:00 AM so everyone could scurry to their own beds. Just imagine all these Victorian slut-bags of both genders, gathering up their bloomers and doing the lady-like scurry of shame down the corridors, the Guwhati staff sniggering to themselves somewhere in the shadows. It is delightful.


It's sorta high up.

The Nehru family used to spend a lot of time here - Nehru's father, Motilal, willfully flouting the "No Dogs or Indians" sign that used to stand on the Mall on a daily basis - and the town has attracted an entirely outsized number of well-known Indians, mostly of an intellectual bent. After Independence in 1947, Mussorie shifted slowly but inexorably into the hands of wealthy Indian families, who promptly turned it into their own resort mountain town. The miracle is that it remains an entirely charming and very low-key place despite its popularity and natural beauty. Maybe it's the horrifying and technicolor vomit inducing drive up from Dehradun. Maybe enough people fall off the cliff to keep visitor numbers down, I can't tell you.


Local veg stand. Mmm, I see bitter melon.

Mussorie's another place that's sort of been in the family. Sheila was born in Mussorie and went to the famous Woodstock American school there - she's a child of the hill stations, spent her early years more accustomed to mist and woolen sweaters then the heat and sweat we usually associate with Madre India. They bought a place here from a semi crazy Austrian Jewish lady psychologist back in the 70's , and have been spending most of their free time in Mussorie ever since. Their house has a rose garden - roses go like gangbusters here - and a fantastic view of the Snows when the weather is good. It's hard to ask for more.

Of course, Mussorie proper refers to the main town, the touristy bit, the one with the big main drag and the Swensens and all the convenient ATMS. Where Sheila lives, where Ruskin Bond the famous writer lives, where the English School is - that's all up in Landour. Landour's a little village that was probably at one point separate from Mussorie proper, but is now more of a province. It's not hard to find: you just keep on going up. And up. And up.


Lovely old church on the Camel Back road. The man in the picture is wearing the Old Dude in a Hill Station uniform which may be legally required after the age of 65.

Landour is a vortex. No other word for it. Something attracts some of India's more fascinating specimens up here, up to the Four Shops that form the social nucleus of the area. It's the combination of the Language School, the writerly population, the Woodstock school crowd, the locals who have been here forever - something about the mix generates fantastic conversation. I spent a few days in Mussorie just sitting at the Tip Top Tea Shop, drinking buckets of chai and talking to everyone who would talk to me. Turned out to be pretty much everyone.


The Mussorie Mall: so cosmopolitan that it has an honest-to-god revolving restaurant. It's probably operated by indentured child servants with hand cranks somewhere in the bowels of the establishment. I mean, this is India.

But that's where Sheila has her place, that's where I spent all my time last time I was up here, back in 2008. I only spent two days but I immediately fell in love. The height of the place, the air, the cool and mossy scent to it, the people. Indian hill stations and their particular breed of Indian. A resilient people who like smoking pipes and wearing woolens, leading their donkeys up vertical hills, muttering to themselves about that really bad winter 15 years ago and what's going to be on television tonight if they properly adjust their satellite dish. Everyone's got one stashed away somewhere.

I stayed at the Padmini Nivas hotel for the simple reason that people thought it was pretty swell on TripAdvisor. (TripAdvisor controls and dictates great swaths of my life). Turned out to be a truly lovely hotel right off the Mussorie Mall Road. It's cleverly located directly below the road - you can walk up the stairs and spend five minutes and be at the local Barista outlet, but you can't hear traffic up above. Why people feel the need to constantly honk their goddamn horns every 2.5 seconds in Mussorie, a teeny little hill station with approximately 5 and a half cars, is a total mystery. The place was an old British home wit the trappings you might imagine, and is run by a nice Gujarati family. The view from the front porch, with its twee wicker furniture, is something you will never forget, at least on a clear day when the mist has gone out. The Mall's all right I suppose, if you're into commerce, but Landour, that's usually where I point myself. A good bit of cardiovascular exercise and especially fascinating when it rains. A far lower aggressive beggar to frightened foreigner ratio here then in most regions of India too, which makes pedestrianism that much more rewarding!


India has the absolute best surrealist public art. Always decorated with dogs.

I got into the Padmini at around 3:00 and hadnt had lunch. The kitchen was truncated, and I settled for cheese toast. The cheese toast turned out to be remarkably delicious, featuring what was, a rarity in India, actual cheese and not simulated nightmare dairy product. (When in Mussorie? Order the cheese toast. Everywhere they make it the same and everywhere it is inordinately good. Something in the water, whatever. Don't question it, eat it). I was sitting there eating my cheese toast with a copious amount of ketchup, and fending off a mutant bee as big as a low-level fruit bat, when I noticed a group of foreigners sitting at the table next to me.

So, I started talking to them. It's what I do. I'm a clever and observant journalist, man. Or soul crushingly lonely, somewhere in between. Turned out they were (mostly) a group of teachers from the Delhi International School on a brief weekend jaunt, and they were very friendly, and they were actually willing to talk to me. So I glommed onto them into the amoeba like fashion I have perfected in my time traveling alone. They were fascinating people and I learned a lot from them - they'd all lived in a wide variety of different and strange countries before. Had done what I was doing (so help me God) and had succeeded at it and lived what appeared to be quite happy lives, far away from whatever they grew up doing and knowing. One of their number just so happened to be a foreign journalist - married to one of the teachers - and I very much enjoyed hearing him talk about his life and what he'd done. Somewhat intimidated - oh dear god I picked this, what have I done? - but not really in a bad way.



"Want to go for a walk with us?" one of the teachers, named Peter, asked. Of course I did. Forget my plans of shutting myself up in my little hill-station room and writing such brilliant shit that no one would actually have to read it to deem me Auto-Genius. We ambled up the hill and talked, and I asked them a lot of irritating young whelp type questions about ex-pat life. It was a glorious evening with the clouds coming off the hill, and we ambled up the Camel Back path. There were chocolate stores and places selling hand-crafted woolens (what a souvenir from India). A guy on the corner trying to convince us to take rides on his tiny and weedy looking horses (no thanks, I'll pass on the ringworm, sir). We all paused at a bend in the hill, looking at the endless ridges below us, the terraced fields clinging to the sides of hills. Little villages full of houses, people I'll never meet or know a damn thing about, but can look right into their backyards anyway. "Green stuff," Laura said (I think). "We don't have anything like that in Delhi." Laura from Galicia. Delightful woman. Had taught in Charleston for a while. Viewed from the perspective of a non-Southerner with no understanding of the region's bizarre tribal culture and elaborate social structure, that must have been exotic indeed.



A couple of the Teacher Mafia's friends were staying at a hotel right up the hill, the Kasmanda Palace (which may be owned by the same people as the Nivas, I can't be sure, the website looks the same and confuses me). The hotel was a time capsule, a virtual reality machine. You walk in the door and there's a musty scent, there's a tiger skin with glass eyes and mange up on the wall, there's lots of carpeting in bordello colors and a player piano, and stuff made out of deer antlers and chintzy miniature paintings - welcome to the Raj, chap, we've been a-waiting for you. The place began life as part of a Christ Church complex and then became the summer home of the royal Kasmanda family - Raja included - and man, you can tell. Indians can always, if they so desire, be about fifteen times more English then the actual English, any day, any time, let's rumble on the basis of weak tea, mentally challenged hunting dogs, and a curious inability to frankly discuss sex.

We hung out in their room and drank beer mostly. We got into a discussion regarding weird dreams, sleep walking, and my own affliction, SCREAMING NOCTURNAL NIGHT TERRORS, and that was all good and fun.

Eric told a magnificent story which I will share with the world. Ahem.

"My sister was traveling to a conference somewhere, for work. She had to share a room with a woman she barely knew. Anyhow, that first night, they both shut off the lights and go to bed, early start tomorrow. My sister wakes up in the middle of night to go pee, usual stuff. As she's peeing, she realizes: "Hey, the toilet is kind of jiggly." The toilet is so jiggly that she falls right off it, and the jolt makes her come out of it. She wakes up. She realizes that she has in fact been peeing on the luggage stacked up in the closet.

She walks out of the closet laughing and laughing, and she tells the woman (who has woken up by now, frightened), "Hahah, whaddya know? I accidentally pissed on our luggage." Putting a positive spin on it.

The other woman did not find this even slightly funny and refused to make eye contact with her at the rest of the conference. But it made a good story."

Did it ever.

The skies opened up somewhere in there, and we slid down the concrete road back to the Padmini Nivas in the rain, the lights of Dehradun spread out with incredibly clarity below us. I might slip and fall down the track and break my neck in the most ignominious and stupid of ways, but what a view I would have while doing it. No panthers ate us either. I was happy. Meant more cheese toast in my life, tomorrow morning.

Old Delhi: The Bazaar, Moti Mahal, Lots of Photos

Somewhere in the old delhi bazaar.

Old Delhi is the only place I've been in Asia that really and truly scared me. Old Delhi is the nucleus of Northern India, maybe one of the concentric centers of the earth itself. There's nowhere I've been that comes anywhere near it in terms of the throbbing vitality of it, the terrifying largeness of the people, the activity, the chaos that surrounds it. It's a gross immensity, sort of a vortex - you have to go through it you go to Delhi. It's where the main train station is. It's where Delhi began, and where Delhi was sacked (many times over the years), the seat of Mughal power, the seat of British power, a spiritual touch-point for many people and many generations. But, geography. Old Delhi is generally considered to be defined by the Chandni Chowk, the long street that runs through it, and is made famous by the dual Mughal immensities of the Red Fort and the Jama Masjid.

I remember this very clearly. I'm 19, on my first visit to Delhi. Auntie Sheila has let me use her car and driver for the morning. "You have to see Old Delhi, of course," she tells me, as she packs me into the car that morning. "You have to go walk around the Chandi Chowk." Well, okay, I think, I'll walk around the Chandi Chowk. Having no idea what that entailed.

She set me up. I'm certain of that now. Sheila did it on purpose.


Cushions for sale amid a churning sea of umbrellas. India makes you realize the shocking number of umbrellas our planet harbors. As I have lost upwards of ten umbrellas in three months, I know that of which I speak.

The little Grey ford came out of the green and luxurious embassy district that Sheila lived in, and we turned onto the highway, and we kept going and going. Delhi turned more and more like the India I was most familar with the, chaotic but mostly-conceivable mess of Bangalore. Something I could handle, parse out. Then we got into the Chandi Chowk district, the outskirts of the Center, then we drove down the Chandi Chowk. There were more people there then I could concieve of in the universe, riding bicycles and autorickshaws and horses (yes), all of them wearing differently colored clothes, all of them leaning on their horns at approximately the same time. On either side of me were Delhi's two defining monuments, of course - the shockingly huge red swell of Shah Jahan's Red Fort, and next door, the big mosque, the mosque, the Jama Masjid. People were funneling into the bazaar to the left of the mosque, shoulder-to-shoulder, carrying sacks of things on their shoulders and leading little kids in school uniforms by the hands - every other man or woman seemed to be wearing the requisite garb of the Ramadan season. "I drop you at the clothes market, okay?" the driver said, and I agreed since I didn't know any better. He impossibly threaded the car through stall after stall of men selling fabrics and knock-off North Face jackets.

He ejected me.


The bazaar (a mere iota of it) as seen from the steps.

I was wearing a sundress. I got out, and walked to the steps of the Jama Masjid (about five or six paces). I stood on the steps and looked down them, down to the bazaar and down to the Jama Masjid. Beggars and street kids were already starting to advance on me. Large and odiferous looking vultures picked at the rubbish pile to my right. There were three or four lepers in mats on the sidewalk nearby, and one of them had a little ribbon of white spittle coming out of his mouth, and someone was playing the American Top 40 hits in my ear from a pirated CD stall. I have never felt so astoundingly out of place. Like I had been emitted from an alien spacecraft or something, halting - like my first steps on a new world, testing the ozone for breathability. Finding it somewhat wanting. "You give me change, madame!" a grubby street urchin at my knee said. So it began.


Your friendly neighborhood goat head store.

I survived of course. And wanted to go back soon as I left. Old Delhi does that to you. It scares the shit out of you then makes you want to come back over and over again. There are few places in the world with such an incredible buildup of history, history overlaid upon history, a bazaar and a neighborhood with more stories and more happenings behind it then just about anywhere else on the planet. Ruskin Bond, in one of his books, tells of a mysterious Black Well lurking in one of the closed old haveli houses of Delhi. There are rumors of antiques stores selling things you couldn't obtain for love or money anywhere else. Things people lost all over the place re-apparating in Old Delhi. Probably people, too. I've met a few people on the road who lost a year or two of their lives in this neighborhood. One guy who spent his early twenties playing the black market round about the Delhi of the late 60's. One woman who spends her life as a photojournalist in conflict areas and, insofar as I could determine, comes to Old Delhi for R&R. Tougher then me.

"How'd you like it?" Sheila asked me when I got back. A little smile on her lips. How did I like it? Any response would involve about ten pages and footnotes.

"It was interesting," I said. "Real interesting."

"Uh huh," Sheila said.


The clothes market.

I got out of the taxi this time, and I walked five paces. And then I saw the stick. A bamboo stick, about the length of my forearm I'd guess. Probably some sort of construction site leaving. I picked it up - it was sturdy and strong. Perhaps it is time for a social experiment, I thought. I picked up the stick.

Northern India is tainted by sexual harassment. It's not an easy place to be as a woman - of any nationality - and it's especially hard if you're by yourself. Single women are fair game in Delhi. Single women are probably slatternly and easy, and you should try your luck, because why the hell not? Walking down the street in non-gentrified Delhi usually involves lewd commentary, being followed, and (if you're really lucky) one or two lightening-fast attempts at groping. Far as I can determine, it doesn't really matter what you wear, especially if you're a foreigner. This is the big stain on Delhi, a national shame. Fact is: women can't move about freely here. You are conspicuous, noticed, and to some extent hunted wherever you go. And it pisses you off more and more and more as every day goes by.

And so, the stick. Maybe it was paranoia. Maybe I just wanted some agency. If someone grabbed me or got in my space, I could whomp them on the head in retaliation. Perhaps teach them an important lesson, or something. At least there was the visual deterrent factor. Right? Right.

I don't know if I should be proud or not about the stick. It's a bit of a moral quandary. Especially if you're into non-violence. (I'm not. At all. Just so you know).

The fact is? It worked. The stick absolutely, 100% worked. My usual North India experience as a blonde foreigner was turned on its head, entirely neutralized. A few men came at me with hands outstretched or tongues out and flapping around, shouting "HALLO YOU VERY SEXY YOU WANT FUCK," usual routine - and immediately stepped back in shock when they saw The Stick. "

"Whoa, whoa! Okay!" they'd say, giving me a very respectable amount of space. They'd go off giggling nervously to their buddies, hahah, look at that. Damn, that felt good.

What makes me feel better about The Stick? The fact that just about every woman I met on the street - and there weren't many, this is Delhi - smiled at me. A solidarity thing. "That's right!" one large Sikh woman said, as we passed each other. "That's right," she said. The schoolgirls giggled and offered me sly thumbs-up signs.

A later post here should be devoted to what Indian women go through on a daily basis when it comes to sexual harassment in India, and especially North India. Horror stories. "I know women who move to Delhi from South India," a friend of mine told me. "They get a good job, and they relocate. And you know what? They all come back. Because they can't go anywhere without getting grabbed, or followed. Something. They can't live free lives."

But about the Bazaar. Here, have some photos.



Much of the bazaars commerce centers around meat, and most of that meat is mutton. Butchers are rife here. I like seeing them. I'm a proud carnivore, but I'm also a realist. This is where supper comes from. Bouncing, adorable, delicious sheep and goats.



Getting nailed by a motorbike is a very very real possibility here. Keep your eyes open. There's really nothing you can do about the ground. I suggest not looking down ever.



Piles of aromatic something-or-another on the street. LIke most of India, Old Delhi is as much an olfactory experience as a visual one.



I don't think the legal department got consulted on this one.



These are piles of vermicelli noodles, commonly used in dessert dishes. Sevian is particularly popular. It's made with condensed milk, dried fruits and nuts, and cardamom, and it is delicious.



Yeah, there's something I like about butchers. Butchers have been considered the lowest of the low in most cultures in human history. India's no exception. More so, considering its deep vegetarian tradition and antique caste system. But the meat loving millions would be in dire straits without them. And I find a certain visual poetry in the whole affair. Maybe I'm blood thirsty. Those are, in case you were unsure, goat heads.



A man selling biryani on the street. There's some kind of conversation going on here. What do you think?



Hanging out by the red sandstone walls of the Jama Masjid. I've never been in . There's always something vaguely wrong about my dress. And it seems wrong somehow. A week after I left, five Taiwanese tourists were shot (non-fatally) by a supposed terrorist group at the Jama Masjid's gates. Whatcha gonna do?



More red sandstone. It's a damn hot day, but the walls are coolish.

I had lunch at Moti Mahal. The Moti Mahal. It's an absolutely iconic restaurant, considered to be one of the pioneers of the tandoori cuisine that has so efficiently and quickly swept the entire planet. It's said that the restaurant's founder, a Peshawari by the name of Kundan Lal Gujral, actually invented both tandoori and butter chicken. (Apparently, the tandoor oven was previously reserved only for bread, instead of meats). The restaurant began in Peshawar and was moved to its current Delhi location in 1947, after the Partition - and has been plugging on with shocking success ever since, drawing the affection of Indira Gandhi, Nehru, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon - in other words, everyone vaguely important who was sent to India on official business has eaten here.

There was no one there, which was somewhat curious. The interior of the restaurant is a bit 1960's mental hospital. But at least they have lots of fans operating on high-speed. I ordered my usual - tandoori chicken, tandoori gobi (cauliflower) and sat back. The owner of the place came over to chat, in lieu of anything better to do. "Did you know that Gordan Ramsey came and cooked here?" he asked me. No, I did not. But so The Ramsey did come to Moti Mahal. Engaged in one of those celebrity cookoff things that are so popular on food networks. Naturally, the Moti Mahal boys won hands down. The owner came over with a few photographs after I expressed interest. "That's us. When we won," he said, pointing to an image of both himself and Ramsey looking pleased with the universe.

The food was, as expected, excellent. Moti is also known for its Mughali style curries. Delhi is particularly known for curries made from mutton "variety" meats - you can order up goat brain curry here if so inclined. There are Moti Mahal outlets all over India now, although a family argument means that this Chandi Chowk branch bills itself as the One and Original Moti Mahal, Hands Down. I'm not prepared to argue.



The tandoori gobi had the interesting addition of sesame seeds up top. I think it does add a certain nutty depth to its flavor. A delicate yogurt marinade and a lot of spices, heavy on the aromatics. Really addictive stuff - and a lot of it. I couldn't finish it all.



And excellent chicken. Not too heavy on the yogurt - actually, I kinda like that. But juicy, excellent meat with a lot of complexity of flavor.



They talked me into ordering roti. However, missi roti are superb. It's a thin crunchy roti prepared with besam or gram flour, seasoned with fenugreek, ginger, nigella, chili powder, ajwain, and sesame. And brushed with an inordinate amount of butter. They are very savory, and incredibly delicious.

After lunch, I was going to go to the Red Fort. Which turned out to be closed.

So I didn't. But I did the next day.

Eating Stuff in the Car in Delhi: Kakori Kebab, Bhel Puri

Delhi, like the rest of India, is a bastion of street food. And the number one Delhi street food is, of course, the almighty kebab. Kebab functions as a catch-all word for a dizzying array of meat products on a stick here in India, but rest assured: whatever it is, it will be incredibly tasty. India being primarily Hindu and Muslim, kebabs are almost always made with mutton or chicken - vegetarian variants with paneer (cheese), potato, and mashed vegetables do exist.

Al Kauser
Off Sarder Patel Marg, near the Assam Bhavan. (Look for the stall with smoke coming off it, and lots of hungry people sitting on their cars. You can't miss it).




Sheila insisted that we try the kakori kebab at Al Kauser one night, and I was of no inclination to defy her. (I am rarely of such an inclination). Sheila, Rajeev, and myself accordingly jumped into the car, wherein Sheila grandly asked the driver to take us to the Kebab Place, and be quick about it. "It's just a stall, of course, but they are simply the most divine kakori kebabs in town. But it's just a stall, really."

(She was looking for an accomplice, in the dark art of Eating In the Car. We both knew it. And I was happy to oblige).

Al Kauser is a bit of a kebab stall institution, beloved by an entire generation of Delhi-ites for its kakori rolls. The kakori kebab roll, for the uninitiated, is made of ultra-finely cut ground lamb, ground to a fine paste and seasoned with garlic, cinnamon, cayenne, cardamon, cumin, and some other tasty aromatics. The result is an incredibly tender kebab that quite literally melts in your mouth, creating a decadently fatty explosion of flavor in one's mouth. As kakori kebabs are delicate things, they are usually served with ultra thin and buttery roomali roti. Traditional condiments are hyperactively spicy cilantro chutney with green chili, and pickled onions. Mix these elements up together and you've got a work of art. Kakori kebab is a foodstuff entirely suited for eating in your car or while standing up - that's the other beauty of them. And did I mention that kakori kebab is cheap?



Al Kauser is best known for its kakori kebab, but they also turn out a popular mutton burra kebab (mutton on the bone with a coating of yogurt and spices). Chicken tikka is on offer for wusses who can't handle mutton, but there's no real reason to bother. (I don't know why people bother with chicken tikka in general). Watching the cooks slap the kakori paste on the table and form it into kebabs at super-human speeds is half the fun. Must not be comfortable to spend all night working in a flaming inferno of a grill stall, but I'm glad they do it. As are a lot of people.

There is something delightful about devouring kakori kebab in the back of a car with a grand dame, dripping cilantro sauce and bits of roomali roti all over the upholstery. Since that is part of the sacred ritual of eating kakori kebab. It must not be abrogated. "God, I do love these!" Sheila commented after we polished off the last batch. She handed me a paper napkin. We both delicately and in a highly lady-like fashion wiped the mutton grease off our mouths. "You have to eat them in the car, darling," she said, as we pulled away. "It can't be done any other way."

Well, I'd concur.



We ended our casual-style dinner at a nearby shopping center, for bhel puri. Sheila has a bhel puri guy there she likes, and the three of us ordered up plates of the good stuff.



A lovely rendition. Plenty of fresh mango and onion, plenty of chutneys. A pleasant overdose of sev and seasonings. Not too dry, not too moist. Crunchier then most. Christ, I love bhel puri.



We adjourned to Haldiram's - one representative of India's ginormous Bengali fast-food chain - to sip on Diet Cokes and watch the locals sink their faces into thalis, samosas, and chaats. Sheila vacillated with the idea of getting some kulfi or some barfi, something like that, but talked herself out of it. "Too fatty," she sighed. "You know that Delhi is in the throes of an obesity epidemic."

Which it is. And we know why.