An Indian Winter and an Ancient City

An Indian winter to me, has always been an idea too bizarre to contemplate.  So completely removed was it from my world of experience, fable-like in the world of Chennai summers and Kerala monsoons. The only winters I have known are completely wrong-timed, unpredictable Australian winters, the surreal, fascinating ones from books and beautiful, white ones of Hollywood movies. So when I landed in Delhi last week for a very short visit, I was stepping into a world I had not even ventured to envisage. And I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it either, because my experience with winters have been far from pleasant and I by nature find it hard to be happy unless I have the sun beaming down at me.  But I had, for a moment, forgotten that India is a magic land of surprises that never ceases to amaze, a Pandora’s Box of commonplace miracles that will turn the strongest cynic into a believer. And my first experience of Delhi winter certainly did not disappoint.

Winter is languid in Delhi, settled languidly like the morning fog, on life that did not fight or drive it away. Here  I saw none of the blazer protected and boot strengthened rush from an air conditioned room to another that I had known in Australia; the presumptuous, unrelenting crusade to defeat weather and to ignore its ancient claim. In Delhi, life seemed stir to the pulse of winter, slowing down to its rhythm and moving to its directions. And the people, certainly not cut out for the cold, simply took it in their stride and tried to make the best they can of it with, of course with the Indian twist. So my memories of Delhi winter are of auto drivers in glittery sweaters of all shades, aunties out in the streets at 8*C in cotton sarees, chowkidars huddled around bonfires every 10 metres on streets and many such quaint sights.

Winter in Australia had been lonely. Walking down streets among bundled up figures, too focused on their destinations and too determined not be bothered by the cold to even pause to remark on the hardness of it all, had left me feeling quite forlorn and cold. Quite like the tiny fish in a huge shoal that did not know how to swim. In Delhi, winter was cold, but there was a certain sense of commonness about the experience and an equanimity that breathed some warmth to the heart. My most memorable experience in Delhi is a walk I took with my friends. It was late evening and very cold. We were returning after dinner and couldn’t find an auto and had no choice but to walk down the long street to the main road. I was almost shivering in minutes and was sure that I will not make it till the end of the street when my friend pointed out bonfires along the length of the street where people were huddled. As we walked, we stopped at the bonfires and warmed ourselves in the space the people seated around it, who otherwise paid no attention to our presence, made for us. It was a wonderfully uplifting feeling just standing there, feeling blessed.

Of course three days are too short a time to get to know a place and this could well be musings of an over imaginative mind. You can’t read a city in such a short while but like that odd stranger whose soul you saw when you casually glanced into his eyes, some places can give you a whiff of its ancient secrets in moments. For me, my encounter with the capital city was something like that.  In Delhi, history is a living breathing entity, a person who walks with you as you visit bazaars and malls on the metro and  on rickshaws, through a kaleidoscope of time.  I simply couldn’t escape its long spidery fingers there. I constantly felt like the ghosts of old Mughal rulers rode with me as I travelled on roads where Mercs and Nanos battled, past ancient ruins half hidden by sky scrapers, past ‘lost’ monuments being discovered for the Commonwealth Games, political headquarters and ghettos, faces, voices, smells and flavours, all under the languid grace of a very Indian winter.

Like all journeys, mine too ended back home, in Chennai. Here as I comfortably settled back to my morning filter coffee and the soothing blarings of suprabadham from the neighboring temple, I let my musings about places and history wander to Chennai. I have often joined friends in complaining about the lack of historic places in Chennai, gone on Chennai -Discovery journeys that began and ended in the Marina beach. Though no place in the world can ever make me grow disillusioned with Chennai (because after all, Chennai is home), after returning home from Delhi, I began to ponder over where her history hid and what her voice sounded like. That was when I began to realise that in Chennai, history did not have a separate identity. It is an indistinguishable a part of the amalgam of present, completely blended into the rhythm of everyday life. In Mylapore agraharams slokas are still recited, in the Central Station life is chaotically alive, in the Sathome church Sundays are social, at the Schmidt Memorial at Eliot’s beach children play hide and seek, the Armenian church is hidden behind road side stalls, the walls of Fort St.George are buried beneath the humdrum of activity and in the Marina politics and love share space. None of these are historic sites or mere tourist spots but sturdy landmarks in the landscape of the life of the city. In Delhi history was the ghost of a Mughal ruler who walked with me; here history is the man I meet on the road.

Like I said, India is a Pandora’s Box of commonplace miracles. A life time isn't enough to experience all its surprises. And though I have never been a cynic, every time I see more of it, I become a stauncher believer.