Delhi, New and Old

I walk to a little Dhaba for breakfast of sweet milky coffe and omelette with paratha; there are a few other western travellers and a lot of locals eating at the fomica tables that are open to the street. A constant stream of rickshaws and scooters pass by, then two turbaned men swathed in bright cloth on elephants. I take a cycle-rickshaw to Connaught Place. The wallah in called Surav, and although only 20, he looks forty years old. As we pass chronically overloaded ox-carts and cripples begging in rags, I watch as three well-dressed Indian men scream at their scared cooli because he cannot carry all of their heavy boxes on his head. Surav isn't married and doesn't know if any of his family back in Bihar are still alive; he lives in a shack in Arem Bagh, and he would one day like to become a car driver. As we turn onto one of the radial roads toward Connaught Place I see a roadside stall piled with pyramids of exquisitely coloured spices; behind it, wretched hovels surrounded by pools of human waste, diseased and malnourished children covered in open sores and excrement.
I take one of the shared jeeps to the Red Fort in Old Delhi. While I sit on a wall and smoke a Wills Classic, three young Indian men walk over and shyly ask if they could be photographed with me; they thank me and keep turning to smile and wave as they cross the carpark. I walk down to Old Delhi station, stopping here and there to take photographs of my own; various people say "Hello, Sir" as I pass, and almost everyone looks at me curiously - they are fascinated by my appearance, but I don't feel in the least bit threatened. I have seen no other westerners since leaving the Red Fort. I take an enormous risk sneaking pictures at the station. Photography is strictly forbidden unless you go through the lengthy process of obtaining a permit, and I would probably be arrested if caught, or at the very least heavily fined. When my nerve fails me, I walk through the bazar towards fort and become completely lost in the packed, bustling alleys. After an hour of dead-ends and wrong turns I hail a cycle-rickshaw; I realise I have walked probably a mile in the wrong direction, and it takes the wallah a hard half-hour pedal to drop me back in to the jeep stand.
I have my boots cleaned in Connaught Place by Amerchand who has been doing this since leaving Madhai Pardesh when he was 10.
I drink an expensive Kingfisher Premium in the Standard Coffee House. The tablecloths are linen, the waiters discreet and impeccably dressed; cut glass chandeliers hang from the huge ceiling and the high paneled walls are decorated with enormous paintings and mirrors. The place oozes Raj era elegance and opulence, but loud modern music shatters any illusion that those days are anything other than firmly in the past. I take an auto-rickshaw back to my room in Pahar Ganj, studying the incredible variety of movement screaming,walking, trotting or crawling around the city. Cycle-rickshaws in passenger, cargo, chai dispensing, mobile food-stall and travelling telephone box versions, the latter with two or three mis-matched old domestic phones precariously wired up to the innards of a cell-phone. Auto-rickshaws can be cargo or passenger, while bicycles provide a platform for smaller food-outlets and the carriage of gas canisters and jerrycans of kerosene and petrol. The iconic Ambassador cars are garishly or gracefully embellished according to the drivers taste and market, and sometimes have the same attention lavished on them as Czech Railways 754 diesels merit - net curtains, interior grooming mirrors, homemade sun-visors. Battered Suzuki mini-van taxis made under licence in India by Maruti; beaten-up Leyland buses with crumpled and fading panels, intricately decorated Tata trucks in bright primary colours. Ox-carts piled high with cotton bales and sheets of wood; donkeys with panniers of bricks. Elephants, jeeps, scooters, Enfield Bullets - another icon. Cows, goats, monkeys and pedestrians. It is both alien and fascinating; I am exhausted when I reach my hotel.
I eat at the Metropolis Hotel and chat to two young American travellers over a bottle of Kingfisher; a drunk, middle-aged Australian man staggers to our table and begins to shout at us, something about knowing what happened in Vietnam; we ignore him and watch as he crashes through the door and out into the darkness of the bazar.
I set my alarm and go to bed listening to the endless tooting of traffic horns; I hear the long pre-departure blast of a locomotive from nearby New Delhi station, which is where early tomorrow morning I will catch my first train.