Sunset reflections

My second post today! -- trying, and failing, to make up for a month of very poor blogging. The events of this afternoon were too lovely not to write about, though, so here I am again.

Early in the afternoon I stepped out on to the hectic Main Bazaar of Paharganj, which leads straight from Tooti Chowk to the New Delhi Railway Station. A huge pile of sewage-smelling mud is the first sight greeting someone who might be exiting Tooti Chowk and entering the Main Bazaar by the tiny alleyway that connects the two. A sewer runs directly under the poorly-laid concrete of the Main Bazaar (hey, it explains a lot about the way Main Bazaar functions), and there's been serious construction on it all winter. When I came to visit for a few days in December, the huge pile of mud and exposed sewage pipes was located closer to the railway station end of the bazaar. Now it's directly outside Tooti Chowk, and in its wake is a huge bump that runs the length of the bazaar as if it were a fault line.

I suppose that's not particularly lovely, but to me, it was a relief to walk out into the Main Bazaar in the afternoon sunlight and know *for sure* that I was in India. There's nothing like it. The harsh bazaar feels safe to me: there's comfort in the bejewelled middle class Indian tourists and the countless men hawking their goods (sleeping bags! underwear! fake anything! incense! God!), not to mention the healthy dose of foreign faces that crowd Paharganj. It's a sight to behold, and it's one that sucks my energy right out of me, spraying it on to the big wide world outside. Imagine how much I would hear, see, touch, and learn if walking down the streets of Boston required that much mental effort.

So I walked down Main Bazaar and swung a right at the New Delhi Railway Station. Then I followed a long, wide street down south to Connaught Place, a huge complex of shops and buildings that--despite having spent so much time in them--I can never manage to navigate. I met my co-worker and friend, L., in the parking lot in between H-block and G-block; we commenced a long search for a Cafe Coffee Day that would have a table for us. This proved to be next to impossible on a Saturday afternoon: every single table at the four places we tried was occupied by young Indian couples holding hands and looking into each others' eyes. Finally (finally!) a table opened up just as we were about to leave, and we sipped frothy cappucinos with the lingering canoodlers.

L. took me to visit the outlet of Salaam Baalak where I'll start work on Monday morning. It's right behind a row of bangle shops next to the Hanuman Mandir (which, for some reason, is called the Ganesh Mandir) just outside of Connaught Place. There were a couple of kids there when we showed up, so we played and read with them for a while before catching a rickshaw to Khan Market and to the errands that lay waiting there.

I'm not surprised by it anymore, that there would just be three unsupervised children hanging out at a SBT contact point with no supervision and no activities in sight. "You can see why these kids get into drugs at the age of eight or nine," L. said, "when there's nothing to do and no one to look after them." One of the girls' names was Madhu ("sweet" or "honey"), so I sang her a Sanskrit verse about sweetness. It held her attention for about a minute, before she was back to singing me some Hindi songs she had learned. Completely adorable.

I can tell that a lot of the work ahead will be babysitting: being a "didi" (older sister) to a whole bunch of kids. I don't mind that at all. It sounds like a cliche to say so, but I think it will be a real learning experience for me. And for a teaching and tutoring fix, I'll be working with a couple of older boys who have requested an English teacher. One, A., really wants to work on grammar. (Now *that* is a blessing.) The other wants to learn more English so that he can be a tour guide for SBT. And then there is the work of finding teachers for myself: one for Sanskrit, and one for Hindi.

Right now, though, I want to stop and listen to the sounds of Tooti Chowk at sunset. On one side of my hotel are the rhythmic clanging of drums and bells as a hub of women crouch in the tiny little temple next door, singing hymns at the tops of their voices. On the other side is the call to maghreb prayer from the madrasa/mosque below, ringing out in the clear voice of a young man training to be a muezzin. Last, there's the bubble and quiver of my new electric kettle -- which I'm very much not allowed to keep in my hotel room -- calling me to a cup of tea. I'm going to go answer it.