After I left Kerala I spent a few days in New Delhi. Luckily for my lack of planning and thin wallet my cousin works in the US Foreign Service so I was able to stay a few days with him on the embassy. As soon as I got into his house I grabbed one of the first hot showers in a couple weeks and went straight to the dinner table then the bed. My first day in Delhi I decided to make my way to a step well in the middle of the city. It wasn't long into my trip when the rain began to pour. I was half way to the step well when I found myself in the middle of a massive protest. A street had been barricaded and people had set up booths and podiums everywhere. Rain had washed away a bit of the crowd but the rest stayed still like rocks in a stream. In front of the main stage a multi color patchwork quilt of umbrellas, tarps, plastic sheets, anything remotely waterproof was laid out. Under each section the quilt stood many men and women holding up their roof. The blue color of the tarps reflecting down onto the solemn faces of those that had come to make their points heard. It seemed to me as if the causes that brought people here were as varied as the rain protection people stood listening under. Signs calling for the resignation and imprisonment of a police officer who had raped a woman in Punjab, teachers from across India calling for education reform, people from the rural areas wanting to halt the rising prices of their goods, a group there on the behalf of 102 deaf and mute girls who were being housed in a facility that was little more than a prison. Every cause had hundreds of supporters rallied around them. Each supporter was more driven to facilitate change than the last and each had some emotional stakes in their matter. It was tough to be there because each cause seemed worthy of attention. But each was being drowned out by all the others. It was clear to me that nothing would come of this protest. There were simply too many voices in the same place seeking to be heard. When the rain began to let up I pulled out my camera. Every step I took I was greeted by a new person asking if I was a reporter, desperately trying to take their story to the public. After a while of wandering I returned to the embassy. I was telling my cousin Casey and his wife Becca about it. Casey laughed and told me that those happen all the time. I thought there was no way for that to be true. The next four days as I would journey through Delhi I would come across more large protests near government offices. Each having large crowds and making loud demands. Each largely being ignored by the people going about their daily lives.
I chose to take my time easy in Delhi. Sleeping in, enjoying the comforts of the embassy, warm showers, a pool to swim in. I would go out for a few hours each day. Most of those days I would find myself sitting somewhere with a cool Kingfisher watching the city of twenty five million people swirl around me in a dusty, colorful mix of rickshaws, cows, clothing and cars. One night my cousin and I went out for a drink. We made our way to a bar called the Piano Man. I stepped off the Indian street and into what could have been a nice jazz bar in New Orleans. Two floors and a spiral staircase separating the two. On the bottom tables centered around microphones and a piano, on the second a bar and nice view of the stage below. Both floors left so little shoulder space we had to make our way through the kitchen to get from one floor to another. I ordered a Mint Julep on the balcony and made my way to the spiral stair case to rest half way in between the two floors and watch the show. A women stood with every eye in the room on her and a man sat in front of a keyboard to her left. The owner of the bar stepped forward asking for complete silence for the next song. He asked for the bars to stop serving and waited until the folks on the second floor slowed their chatter to the volume of a door mouse. He returned the microphone to the woman. She stood silent for a moment that stretched for an eternity as she looked around the room with her amber brown eyes. A soft and faint melody began to come through the speakers as the keyboard keys gave way to the mans fingers. I could place the tune. She began to whisper softly. "Raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens..." Slowly she raised her voice into Julie Andrew's beautiful song of favorites. It seemed as everyone was waiting to exhale for the end of the song. And when it came the place erupted in applause. The next few songs brought with them noticeably less chatter from the crowd upstairs. After a couple melodies she began to speak to the crowd. Explaining why they chose the next song, the weight of it in our world today, a call for help of sorts. Or more precisely a call for love. Her soft voice and barely noticeable Delhi dialect grew into a powerful chorus that still seemed as if she was singling a lullaby as she began to sing Marvin Gaye's What's Going On. The rooms seemed to shrink. The world outside of that moment disappeared as she called to mothers and brothers in a plea for love. I could feel the music in my chest but there was no bass. Soon I noticed that same pressure behind my eyes as she entered the second verse and it felt as it I was on the verge of tears. I could have drowned in the moment. As her voice carried the last few words into the air around us the room started to come back. I became aware of everyone around me again and I turned to my cousin and we exchanged the best explanations of a speechless moment as we could.
It wasn't long after that I left Delhi. I took off yesterday evening from a bus stop. A twelve hour trip to Dharamshala. It wasn't until the last couple hours when I woke up did I notice we were deep in the hills. One could almost be forgiven for mistaking the area for the Blue Ridge Mountains not far from my home. Until you realize it is no ridge but a sea of hills jetting up and down. In the background steep mountains overshadowed all of them. After about thirty minutes of driving though the hills on an empty stomach I became acutely aware of just how empty my stomach was. With nothing to weight it down I could feel each turn in the road. It became a race between reaching Dharamshala and my rapidly failing stomach capacity. I kept track of how far we were. At twelve kilometers out my arms began to twinge. At eight my legs began to feel numb as all my focus shifted to keeping my stomach in check. We pulled off at the bus stop and I have never been so relieved in my life. It seems my home made idli and sambar salsa was safe from being shared with the public.
I spent the day exploring the city. On the suggestion from a kind traveller I met over breakfast I went to the Tibetan museum. Dharamshala is home to the exiled Tibetan government as they continue to try and maintain an autonomous nature though China rules Tibet with little regard for their tradition and customs. Many refugees have made their way to this area of India, the Dalai Lama among them. The museum was closed sadly but I did get to spend some time walking around the temple speaking to monks. Dharamshala is a small area. It's population seems to be equal parts Indian, Tibetan and multiracial backpackers who take up residence for a short time. I have heard some areas described as "backpacker ghettos" and so far that seems fairly accurate. It seems to be a nice place to hunker down for the next few days before I make my way to Kolkata and a plane ride back home.
