Diwali flower market

Old Delhi naan shop

I wonder if I would be as friendly as the shopkeepers of old Delhi were camera-wielding farangis to poke their heads through my door for a quick geezer. This naan shop, like so many in old Delhi, opened entirely onto the street, an extension of it. In the post-dusk light it shone like a beacon as we weaved through the tight lanes.

Mother and child in a crowd

Sexology's star couple

For a country quite adept at breeding, India is very shy about the concept of S**. It's the invisible and unspoken element. Most advertising that references s** uses western models - as though western women have s** but Indian women are born as doting mothers. But for all the silence, there are a lot of self-appointed 's**ologists' who ply their trade in the markets and main streets. I wonder whether the couple pictured here volunteered to be the manifestation of successful s**ology, or whether their image was just nicked from the web. Either way, the Tom-Cruise-and-Katy-Holmes of Sexology say to me: "after three consultations, you, Mister, are guaranteed bad hair and male lipstick."

Ways to beat the rain and look vaguely spiritual...

The Jama Masjid playground

Waiting for the sun to set and the eating to begin - Jama Masjid

The balloon man of Shahjahanabad

Not a big demand for balloons last night. We saw him again a few hours later and his glumness - unsuited to his profession - had not lifted.

Dear leader

A senior politician from Andhra Pradesh died tragically in a helicopter crash last week. In the feverish aftermath media reported (insert bucket of salt) that more than fifty people had been so grief sticken that they committed suicide. More still reportedly died of grief related heart-attacks. The politician in question was - by most accounts - a good fella, but this demonstrates the seriousness with which some people take politics here. Eish.

The roads in Delhi....

.... are made by hand. The use of mechanical road making devices is banned to protect jobs. But they're not bad roads. And if you look closely you can see fingerprints of human toil all over them.

Glorious puddles outside my house when it rains....

This man has balls

If game theory were a mandatory part of driver training

Driving home tonight, the traffic ground to a halt (again) near the ringroad intersection where all the muth*$&$^&*# drivers try to push in front of eachother - another traffic mess of rubics-cube-esque complexity. The lights were out because it had been raining all day, and the cops were off taking care of more lucrative problems, and so we all just sat there and waited for the mess to sort itself out for an hour. Imagine a hundred children in a playground being given a single knotted piece of string and being told that the one to undo the knot got a lifetime of lollies. Well such was the approach to undoing the traffic knot - a car melee.

I wonder sometimes if the mandatory teaching of game theory in Indian driving schools might help. Everyone would identify this as a collective action problem. All drivers are seeking the payoff of a quick ride home. But they also know that if they can successfully circumvent the traffic order, their payoff will be bigger - they'll get home even earlier. The bit they miss is that if everybody tries to circumvent, everybody loses! No payoff! We all get home later than if everyone patiently let things flow. So, a collective action problem solvable only by the creation of a higher order authority (the absent traffic cop) and enforcable penalties for circumventers (a whack with the long stick some cops carry around).

But I digress. For the time being, the ringroad disaster is my chance to ringfriends.

Dancing, head-banging and santooring in Delhi

I love this big city. Tonight it dished up a heavy metal concert in aid of the environment (bogans for climate change?) and a stunning display of contemporary dance by young Indian choreographers.

I had wondered whether there was room for boundary-pushing forms of dance in a country with such a rich traditional dance heritage and ubiquitous bollywood. But there were no light bulb changing moves tonight. In their place, three contemporary dance pieces which hinted at tradition but were freed from it as well. The soundtracks were sparse, and for long periods silence was the only companion. The dancers were brilliant. Some detail on the performance is at www.gatidance.com.

And as for the metal concert, well that too spoke to an India moving way ahead of the world's perception of it. India, the cultural superpower is coming to a city near you.

Earlier in the week I went to a performance by Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma, the legendary player of the Santoor, a folk instrument from Kashmir. Words can't describe how beautiful his music was, accompanied by tabla. And the rapturous applause from a large and surprisingly youthful audience spoke to the ongoing popularity of Indian classical music. But I think that nomenclature is somewhat misleading - it's more like jazz than western classical, free and dynamic and full of improvisation. Magic.

Monsoon II - a colonial construct

A newspaper this week carried an opinion piece arguing that India's famous monsoon was a colonial construct designed by the British to instill a sense of nationhood amongst restive Indians. The notion of a single, benevolent and nation-nourishing cloud was at odds with the reality of India's patchy and inconsistent rainfall - or so he argued. The storm last week in Delhi fitted my mental image of 'the monsoon.' And colonial constructs aside I'd like to maintain that name because it sounds so much more exotic . . . . A bit like 'the outback' or 'the far east' or 'El nino.'

Ethical fashion sans bono

On Thursday I lined a catwalk in a swanky nightclub to watch India's "First Ever Ethical Fashion Show." Spotlights swirled, cameras flashed, ladies strutted and pouted, and some very serious looking lads with high cheekbones walked in a straight line. Sadly, Bono did not make a live video cross, and there was no mention of whales or rainforests, but the room was chock full of very glamorous and, no doubt, very ethical people. I'm not clear on the technicalities of how quite the garments were ethical, but the peasant farmers/ garment workers in the accompanying video did look unusually cheery. And there was no polyester in sight. Everybody left feeling lighter and more virtuous as their late model Bentleys weaved into the late night Delhi traffic.

Monsoon

It's mid afternoon in monsoonal delhi, and the air is alive. The sky is darkening as the wind gusts teasingly at dust covered trees. Birds of prey ride the wild currents as though they were rollercoasters, soaring high then plumetting to earth. And then it strikes, first as ominously big dollops of water, then as a fountain. Trees bend double and shake with the fury of childish tantrums. The wind and the rain become one as they send unsuspecting shoppers scurrying for cover. Everything and everyone stops and admires the unhinged power of nature. Later, the sky turns grey-green, the rain becomes less penetrating, and to the unaccustomed eye it is as if winter has descended. All is still and magic. The traffic consequences are another story!

Khan Market