What brings you to Delhi? asks the middle-aged guy in T-shirt, shorts, socks and house shoes, whose accent I cannot place, during breakfast at my Nehru Place hotel. Where are you from? I ask. Jordan, he says and adds: You should not have come here. The traffic, the filth, the noise. they don't stop at red lights, they live hundreds of years back in time ... all of a sudden he lightens up: But the women, so beautiful! he smiles.
I'm visiting a former classmate, I say and ask back: And what brings you here? Outsourcing IT, he says but I have cut my stay short, I will be leaving tonight. I'm paying a hundred Dollars for this place here; for this money I would get a really nice place in Dubai, he continues. But not in Switzerland, I feel like adding but decide that this is probably not the right moment.
The internet place near my hotel demands that I show my ID (they copy it), put down my name, address and phone number. Every time I show up. This is the law, the guy in charge says. And this is quite obviously the only place that enforces it ...
I decide to buy a sim card. That however proves to be not as easy as I had thought: I need a passport size photo. Once I have that I'm told that I also need a copy of my passport and my visa. Then I have to fill in a form that wants to know the name of my father, my birth date as well as my age, the address of a contact person in India and and and ...
I have my shoes shined. I should also have my laces replaced, suggests the shoe shiner. I agree, he throws them away. Only now he realises that he has no replacement. He goes to see a colleague but returns empty-handed. He eventually seetles for a far too short pair from his stock.
The most difficult to bear are the begging children ...
The towns and villages on my way to Agra never seem to have been properly built or must have been, some centuries ago, subjected to bomb raids. How come? People simply don't care, I'm told.
Blow Horn is written on the rear of Indian trucks. As if such encouragement were needed ...
I'm visiting a former classmate, I say and ask back: And what brings you here? Outsourcing IT, he says but I have cut my stay short, I will be leaving tonight. I'm paying a hundred Dollars for this place here; for this money I would get a really nice place in Dubai, he continues. But not in Switzerland, I feel like adding but decide that this is probably not the right moment.
The internet place near my hotel demands that I show my ID (they copy it), put down my name, address and phone number. Every time I show up. This is the law, the guy in charge says. And this is quite obviously the only place that enforces it ...
I decide to buy a sim card. That however proves to be not as easy as I had thought: I need a passport size photo. Once I have that I'm told that I also need a copy of my passport and my visa. Then I have to fill in a form that wants to know the name of my father, my birth date as well as my age, the address of a contact person in India and and and ...
I have my shoes shined. I should also have my laces replaced, suggests the shoe shiner. I agree, he throws them away. Only now he realises that he has no replacement. He goes to see a colleague but returns empty-handed. He eventually seetles for a far too short pair from his stock.
The most difficult to bear are the begging children ...
The towns and villages on my way to Agra never seem to have been properly built or must have been, some centuries ago, subjected to bomb raids. How come? People simply don't care, I'm told.
Blow Horn is written on the rear of Indian trucks. As if such encouragement were needed ...
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