Dirt, Denial and Destiny

Wishful thinking?

Delhi destroyed me. The winter temperatures were considerably milder than Michigan yet I got the chills inside the house. The floors were permanently frozen and the cold air clung to my lungs.

In the afternoons, the sun would attempt to warm up things but that did not help indoors. When I was outdoors, I struggled with breathing. The expected crispiness of the winter air was replaced with suspended dirt and haze that did not budge. The smokiness of the atmosphere numbed the sun’s glare. As I inhaled, I felt tiny particles of toxicity make their way past my nose with trimmed nose hair. And when I did pick my nose to clear things up, I would find completely blackened snot. The newspaper compared Delhi to the most polluted cities in the world and the comparison wasn’t even close. It was a moot (soot) point.

Yet, everyday people went about their business. Exercising, selling vegetables and commuting without any precautions or care. I wondered if this was blatant denial or complete disregard for one’s health. Either way, I struggled to make peace with it and found myself lost in my home country again; a country that I now found tolerable, only in bits and pieces.

Each time I returned home, I would get thinking and find ample time to self-reflect and write such blogs. Although I have been gone for so long, it is hard to turn my back on this country. This country is destined. You can feel its 1.3 billion people wanting to make things and attain that destiny. I find myself rooting for the home team even if I am now merely a spectator.

Juxtaposition is a word lovingly used by observers who visit India. I am beginning to hate it. Despite maddening inflation, we still managed to get home from a train station with less than 20c. A fully fledged meal cost me less than 2 dollars. Yet, it was entirely possible to spend $6 on a cappuccino in a pretentious coffee shop or $30 on a lunch in a place with horrendous décor that pretending to be decadent. The airport was world class but the way there was littered and clumsy.

This was less juxtaposition and more diversity, coupled with choice. We chose to walk a crowded street in broad daylight hoping to romanticize the experience. The others chose it to be right time to harass my wife. We escaped but the damage was done. Crowds that I was comfortable had morphed into monstrosities of volume. But in this volume of devils, there were also many honest people who were struggling to find their identities in Modi’s India. My wife and I stood in line with folks whose villages didn’t have a registered postal code where they could pick up their ‘Aadhar cards’. 1.3 billion fingerprints and retina scans were being collected in a database forced by the government with vague reasoning. It appeared to be a wasteful re-sampling exercise, an explicit consensus that would generate tremendous data for the government. I chose paranoia while the population was making peace with inevitability.

It is easy to make this country sound glorious or pick every folly and make it sound terrible. How can that be a good thing? Shouldn’t there be some universal truths that tip the balance one way or the other? If there was a blue clear sky above Delhi, I wanted to see it and not just believe it. If this was a country I could return to, I wanted to know it and not fool myself. If this indeed was home, I wanted to find it and not justify it over the inconsistencies.

Within those rhetoric questions lies a current bitter sweet truth only time can change. Until then, denial will have to do.