Wilbur and Orville Wrong

Fate it is said is fond of lemons. Naturally, when I had to go back to Calcutta, lemons, as they usually aren’t, were definitely not on my mind. But a street side lemonade definitely was. As I, tagging my cousin along, walked out of the airport (which was described earlier) and into a darling angel’s thankfully air-conditioned car, I couldn’t help but notice that like many things in Calcutta, time was also available in flavours. Three in particular: Slow, Slower, and Slowest.

Yes, it is crowded. Yes, if you are new to the city people take you where they want to go, but unlike those in Bombay, people in Calcutta go slower and take the more scenic route. The difference is the same as sitting in a rally-race car whistling down a mountain road, clutching your heart and going down on the same road looking around holding your breath so the scenery doesn’t take it away. This is also the reason why people are here in droves – because Calcutta doesn’t thrust life down your gullet, it feeds it to you in bite sized morsels – easy to chew.

Calcutta is safe. You do not hear of explosions on Independence days or terrorist attacks on parliaments. The only time Calcutta comes into news is when a dominatrix tries to snatch what can only be seen as scraps of power from dhoti-clad old men, who are in a permanent state of quandary as to what to hold on to tighter – the semblances of power or their already loose dhotis – all the while wondering which of the two would be more embarrassing to lose.

Despite the minor administrative quirks of communism battling with democracy while anarchy watches on, everything ambles around pretty efficiently and does it at prices that would make parsimony reconsider changing its name to prodigality. Food here will surprise you with abundance, stun you with variety, spoil you with taste, and will make you want to search for the nearest can so you can restart the eating binge that stopped a moment ago.

However, a note of caution needs to be sounded. In Calcutta the 21st century is still waiting for its luggage to arrive. As a result, hand over a credit card at a food joint and you can expect it to be promptly cut into two and popped into two leaf cups brimming with Jhal Moori to serve as spoons. The 21st century meanwhile is forlornly standing at the luggage belt at the airport probably without the knowledge that the belt it is power by two men on bicycles who are presently striking work.

This then clearly shows why everything is so cheap in Calcutta. While the whole world is tossing its burgers with robotic arms and marketing spiced nuts which are untouched by hand (as opposed to what, I wouldn’t care to know), Calcutta accomplishes everything the old fashioned way.  Naturally, if you like your Jhal Moori or for that matter your burger with some coriander or curry leaf, you do not get stared at by vacant expressions that are so forthcoming from the till attendants these days. You do not even get talked to by managers of the stores who superciliously tell you that everything here is made by machines and adding curry leaf would mean flying down a service engineer from Cupertino, who has never heard of or seen a curry leaf, to effect the changes and may the flight tickets be billed to you?

In Calcutta, if you want curry leaf in your burger, you simply get it. Every time a menu needs to be changed, you need not throw out the existing machines, all you need to do is pop in your torso through the kitchen door and simply ask the workers to do it this way. This is the place where dignity of labour means being able to holler to a 9 year old boy, sitting in the front room, to fetch the coffee that you left on your dressing table two feet away because you are too busy catching up on that days edition of the soap. Calcutta in other words, is life as it should be.

Calcutta is the place where lazy corpulent souls would want to go to when they die. It is the place where the penurious and the prosperous can both lounge in their relative luxuries. In Calcutta time will be of essence only when you are adding essence to a cake. Calcutta is where everything is and will be. Where you can walk around to get things done. Where you can walk someone else around to get your things done.  In other words – in fact in one word, Calcutta is Perfect.

After having my senses and body submitted to the lavish laziness of life that is Calcutta, going to Delhi was the perfect slap to break the reverie.

Where you tumble out of the aircraft onto the luggage belt in Calcutta, the Delhi airport is solicitous in the extreme. Solicitous in exactly the same way as a pool of Piranhas would be to someone wanting a painless death. In Delhi, you tumble out of the aircraft into bad weather. Before the significance of the omen hits you, you are promptly pushed into the bus which is bent on ridding you of any DVT that you might have developed by promptly giving you Varicose Veins.  Three days of standing in the crowded bus later you will, by the work of some miracle, find yourself still alive and standing at the pleasantly air-conditioned lobby around the luggage belts.

This exercise, as the airport so decently understands, is bound to make anyone hungry. And precisely for this reason, there are numerous food stalls soon as you exit the arrivals lobby.  Like the rest of the airport (including the Bus), the food court is extremely concerned about your DVT and proceeds to affirm that the best way to cure DVT is indeed by developing a few varicose veins. It does this by thoughtfully providing no place to sit. The purchase of food (available in 7 cuisines with tastes ranging from ‘cactus’ to cow dung’) will try to alleviate the situation and make it easier for you to stand by considerably lightening your wallet.

The Departures terminal, like its Arrivals counterpart is a host most solicitous. There are food courts and this time the taste is a harbinger of things to come, of all the pleasant sensations that you would experience on such a halcyon time as leaving Delhi. There are joyful escalator rides for those of you on the verge of extinction from hunger. There are again the same escalator rides down to the boarding gates. Pleasant times then until of course the airport decides to play Dr.Atkins.

Once you are fully loaded with food and carbohydrates, the airport forces you to care for your heart and health by the simple expedient of providing you two flavours of exit: Superhuman and Inhuman. Here you are free to choose between a 30 foot drop to right along side the boarding gates and the 1000 odd steep steps that culminate into the shopping area from where you just have to hurdle over the rows of chairs that are filled with semi-somnolent passengers awaiting their planes which are most probably figuring out the where the airport is from withing the smog that constantly provides protective cover to the city to reach the escalator that takes you to the boarding gates.

Once you are in the boarding area, another welcome awaits you. The economy seats of the aircraft. If you are not looking forward to being seated in those cramped economy seats as early as possible, you have the choice between the delicious options of standing there (no seats you see) or climbing 3546 steps into the waiting/shopping area.

The Delhi airport is a fitting airport to a city that is the head of the country. A head that you cannot help but feel is completely off the damned rocker.

Agreed that a lot could be said about the city. You could wax eloquent about the Qutub this and the Red that. You could talk about the London-shaming Delhi metro and the Commonwealth the bigwigs made by making a few urchins dance in gaudy clothes. A lot could also be said about what could easily be the most delectable selection of female legs available anywhere on the planet. Especially those that are tastily clad in piquantly brief shorts. But then, it will all be superfluous. It will all be redundant.

Because, if anyone wanted me to write an entry about Delhi. If anyone wanted anyone to write an entry about Delhi, the simplest, shortest, and the most perfect description could only be written in one way and it would read: Never Go There.