The book
Sunday, August 20, 2006
A sizeable portion of human thought process is about comparative analysis, usually subconscious. This essentially happens when there is a change in state, for example, a new city, a new job, a new diet; and this brings in an automatic tendency to compare the present situation with the past. The outcome of such brooding is usually predictable. The present seems much better when there is an assured and early return to the previous situation; the past is beautiful otherwise.
After graduating from College, I moved to a different city in Southern India, Bangalore. I started hating it a week after I reached there. For the next three years, I continued to hate it. I kept comparing it to the city I grew up in, Delhi. I developed a deeper appreciation of the qualities of Delhi that I was oblivious to when I stayed there. A few years later, I relocated back to Delhi again. The three years in Bangalore had changed everything about the way I looked at the city now. Back in my confort zone, Bangalore didn't seem so bad anymore. An occassional short visit to the city today makes me truly feel there are quite a few areas in which Bangalore is a lot better than Delhi. And I am quite sure I would relapse into my utter distaste for Bangalore if I were to relocate to that city again.
Last week I was on holiday in Jaipur, a short 5 hour drive from Delhi. I was mildly taken aback during the stay there. Living in Delhi can lead you to believing that an overwhelming majority of us Indians are a bunch of rude, ill-mannered, selfish boors with lots of money and little by way of education. In Jaipur I practically found just the opposite. I found people smiling at strangers, shopkeepers giving you lesser denomination currency even when you didn't buy from them, drivers waiting patiently behind you if your car stalls in the middle of the road.
This also flew in the face of all explanations of 'Dilliwaale' being, well 'Dilliwaale'. It obviously wasn't anything to do with the straightforward ones like adverse climate, or the diet, or the terrain. It didn't have much to do with some of the more interesting reasons either, like north indians being genetially programmed to be 'aggressive' after millenia of invasions from the middle east.
Back in Delhi and back among the earthy populace here, I am calm. It would have been different had I not travelled other places earlier in my life. The bottomline, most places suck one way or other. You just make your peace with it, the catch being to imagine some of the things you would miss if you weren't where you are right now. Meanwhile I attempt to celebrate modern Delhi's gift to modern India: the infamous book of Hindi expletives.
posted by Angshuman @ 12:48 AM,
1 Comments:
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At 3:11 PM,
The Chef said...
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One of the best in terms of analysis about Dilli and Dilliwale comes from Gurucharan Das in 'India Unbound'. His wife compares Delhi and Bombay and comes out with this beautiful fact about origin of the two cities and it's effect on citizens. One is a feudal arena and other a commercial center and so one has ... well, read the book.
