Majnu-ka-Tilla, the Tibetan colony north of Old Delhi, continues to be my residence due mainly to its convenience and comparative lack of human congestion and filth. Villagers here are Tibetan, Nepalese, and, to a lesser extent, Indian. India’s diversity astonishes, but the tolerance and harmony with which people live their lives despite sever overcrowding and scarce resources, inspires hope.
I decided that it was time to face the madness of Delhi’s old center head on, to inject myself into the polluted, asphalt veins and be delivered straight to its sooty, 2500 year-old heart.
Also known as ‘Lal Qila’, the Red Fort was only a 60 rupee ride down the highway into the gritty, sun and dust swept chaos of Old Delhi proper. It was a ride that taught me I can tire of my fears—even my fear of being crumpled like a tissue box on a screaming highway in an alien country. Only mild anxiety tightened in my chest as we were barreling through a free-for-all intersection between converging dump-trucks while blaring the circus-sounding horn. We popped out ahead of catastrophe and I was dropped off at the gate of the 2 km wide, sandy-red castle, the construction of which spanned the years 1638 to 1648. I could see that the mote surrounding it was as bone-dry as my throat.
Standing in front of a structure this size, I wasn’t quite awe-struck. And I guess maybe that makes me hard to please. What I did experience was a sort of sympathy for Shah Jahan, the Mughal emperor under whose reign and direction the fort was built. After all, the teeming, uncontained, disease and poverty stricken cesspool of gritty Old Delhi is something that I would want to fortress myself off from as well, had I the sort of power and resources at my disposal as he did.
The ticket to enter was 200 rupees plus 50 more so that I could bring my camera. Past the gate there was a small merchant area (called ‘Chatta Chowk’—literally ‘covered bazaar’) under the extremely high ceilings of the fort. Beyond this was a sort of mammoth courtyard with other impressive structures planted here and there. I’ve come to understand that the Red Fort, being time-worn and probably looted, is a pale corpse compared to its former splendor. But at the time of this writing, reconstruction seems on-going and detailed. One thing that struck me was the stone-work inside some of the structures. The petals of the intricate stone-carved flowers comprising the walls and pillars were gems of transparent orange and green that looked at least semi-precious.
Inside the perimeter is Lahore gate, a large structure with a stairway leading up to a museum displaying war-relics recalling India’s armed struggle for independence from the English. A survey of the weaponry is enough to see that the conflict had one foot in medieval times (spears, arrows, chainmail) with the other foot set in the early industrial revolution (grenades, muskets, primitive shells).
Leaving the Red Fort I found myself surrounded with touts offering all sorts of things I didn’t want at prices bloated especially for tourists.
I was bound for Jama Masjid, India’s largest mosque, seated nearly in the center of Old Delhi. Guided on foot by a small map printed in Lonely Planet, I confronted the raw humanity of Delhi, the odors, grime and clamouring sounds and commotion of which I won’t waste any more words on. It took me about 45 minutes, but I did spend some time lost.
Pyramidal sandstone steps led up to the mind-bogglingly spacious time-warp into ancient India that is this mosque, crowded on all four sides by urban decay.
I got scammed coming in by some aggressive rat selling fake tickets for 200 rupees. Admission is free folks. And don’t wear shorts either. Allah apparently hates human legs and you’ll be made to wear a hot ugly skirt to cover up your shame. And you’ll have to take your shoes off too.
The mosque is of white marble and red sandstone and the inside walls of the thing were busy being prayed to and worshipped. I don’t know the story behind this, but it was confounding to see other humans directing their rituals to a wall.
Outside, Muslims washed in a square pool of green water. I presume there was some significance here as well that my heathen eyes couldn’t detect.
Initially I was camera shy and tried to walk around as if I were an admiring and meek Muslim but I soon grew tired of the charade and, when I began clicking, summoned some attention-starved children who wanted me to take endless pictures of them. Their caregiver was nearby and I eventually gave him an expression that in the west would have meant, “Jesus Christ, put a leash on your children”. The 15 minute Allah spiel he gave me indicated that he didn’t interpret my expression in the way I’d intended. Walking into India’s biggest mosque, maybe I deserved the lecture. I shifted barefoot to barefoot on the hot sandstone praying that Allah silence this man. Eventually I just left.
From my (largely) atheistic and western perspective, the rituals of Tibetan Buddhists in the Dalai Lama’s temple and the Muslims in Jama Masjid seem to be a refined and very patterned insanity, compared with the course and unpredictable madness of the dodgy and frantic commerce comprising secular India.
I keep asking myself, what’s a decent solution? More social reforms? Political reforms? Economic? More self-help books? Something stronger than Prozac? And then one of the ultimate psychological questions of all time: Why do people believe such weird things? Why do we pattern our lives in ways that make us unhappy?
As for the secular state of affairs, I remember Terrance McKenna described commercial society as (and I paraphrase) a race to get higher by climbing on each others shoulders and kicking each other in the teeth. If there’s a path to happiness, surely this isn’t it.
My own opinion, which I seldom voice, is that for the race to survive, we’re going to need to start altering our brains—probably in very radical ways involving surgery, technology, genetic-modification, drugs or some combination. Our neural structures didn’t evolve to live in the world we’ve created; our coping mechanisms are too costly. Religions, careerism, addictions, wars, various sorts of pollution, thing-oriented consumer-fetishism, and Hollywood gossip are all glaring symptoms of our inability to adapt. And we (our brains) continue to create more problems.
Any way, after a jarring and over-priced ride home, exhausted but showered, I meditated for half an hour and went out to the balcony to look. Through a window I could see into a very modest apartment where, lying on a mattress on the floor was a couple playfully talking, occasionally swatting mosquitoes, with their baby between them. At the time I thought, ‘that much is enough for happiness’. Do what needs to be done to enjoy those moments. . .those rare, fleeting moments of gentle sanity.
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