All Because a Flight Was On Time!!

A few nights ago I returned to Delhi from the West of the country on a flight that reached on time in the late evening to the hazy and muggy and Category I, II and III fail Palam airport 10-28 runway just before smog became fog became white-out became headlines for next mornings paper. Here it is important to point out that for the past few months my late evening flights back to Delhi have been increasingly emerging as close to midnight arrivals, thus leading to situations at home the sort of which I do not need to explain to people who have been married for 21 years and returning home regularly to their own same spouse. On this one occasion, said spouse was also travelling with me, and said plane also landed on time, actually 10 minutes ahead of time, and so instead of going straight home, we decided to go walk-about in the old city to tuck into some decent nosh for a change.



On the way we touch base courtesy the most amazing instrument I have recently discovered, the cell-phone, with some Dutch friends of ours, always ready to go for interesting evenings with your fine author, true and trusted servant. Somehow, it is now almost impolite to go out for a meal, any sort of meal, without a few cellphones on the table. Especially the kind of meal and journey we are about to embark on. Something that I hope has all of you salivating wildly as you proceed towards Starbucks or whatever.



You know, the red meat and the illegal booze called lal-pari and the dark brown with green chillies floating kind of slow-fire daals all served with real piping hot naans? Topped of with quiet moments amongst noisy clangs from handis and pateelaas and big serving spoons, dripping oil back into the broth and making sure that all we get in our plates is gravy, meat, masalas . . .the kind of food that Delhi is famous for, though my personal favourite is Radio off Crawford Market in Bombay, while Lahore and Karachi and Peshawar kind of food is something I never get to hear about at chowk, so can only presume that people in Pakistan are missing something with this constant harping on Kashmir? That one, that kind of food, you know?



So there we are, my wife and I, close to midnight by the time we are getting to the part where we ask for some fresh curds and another last naan or roti to wipe up the plates and to soothe the intestines with. Elder bade miya bossman head dude honcho a la supreme at _______ (name with-held by request, but if you email me, I will tell you surely), just behind Jama Masjid, him with the eagle eyes and the forbidding look as he commands the galley from his perch behind the cash counter next to the smaller tandoor, lets go a volley of what is surely not cordial greetings for Makar Sankranti or Lodhi as the fires burn outside into which people are tossing revris, the impertinent youth who has dared to place on our table a cold and obviously under-cooked tandoori roti is roundly chastised for not making the last morsel the most memorable, and we are told, commanded, to please wait a few more seconds only while he himself chooses straight from the inner-most depths of the red hot earthen baked charcoal grille (ha! tandoor!!) what will very obviously be best described as "kadak".



"Kahan se aaye aapke dost hamare watan mein, aur kaisa lug raahaa hai?", plunking the rotis down and making himself comfortable next to us on a chair dragged almost automatically from the next table with the practised ease of a traditional host, seeking pardon on behalf of a junior with grace, implying permission to join us as well as welcoming us as guests and at the same time signifying territorial rights, all in the same split second. South Asian, desi, Indo sub-continental, economical with gestures when we want to be, extravagant otherwise. Wonderful, isn't it, what many mistake for rudeness is actually the most civilised way of expressing so many emotions? "Muaf kar deejeyegaa, na layak ladkaa hai, ghar jaane kee jaldee hotee hai, isi liye . . ."



(Where are you friends from, and how do they like our realm? Do forgive this callow youth his hurry to get home . . .) Friends in this case have been in India for over 5 years and are absolutely organised.



As is very often also the custom in our parts, the asking of highly personal questions can be taken amiss. Or it can be seen in the larger context of what it is all about, our heritage, our background and simply, our way of making people comfortable. We do not know him, his accountant will collect an impersonal swipe of a credit card as the only memory of our visit and we will exchange more than just superficial conversation, which may flow just anywhere. All in absolute civility, makes many of us wonder, sometimes, where we went wrong? As nations you and I cannot tolerate claims on barren mountains?



The conversation veers from children, or the lack of as in the case of our Dutch friends, to some homilies on why God made all of us, to procreate but with caution, but not with so much caution either. From there it is but a short step to the lament that it is over-population that is at the route of every misery this nation faces which brings us in very rapid order to the unified agreement from Hindu, Muslim and Christian gathered at the same table that surely there is one God over there up there somewhere who had designed rabbit meat to be tasty thus encouraging high breeding rates which could not be the reason for humans to breed with the same frequency, right?



At such times, looking at the loom of lights shining from the Red Fort, smudged across the sky by what is fast moving into a pea-soup of a white-out fog, the conversation cannot but shift to the problems faced by the mainly Muslim residents of the old city. The sentiments, as would be naive to expect otherwise, are all based on the curious feudal economic structures that prevail in our part of the world. They are all haraami, the law breakers and the law enforcers, the rulers and the rascals, and they are all in cahoots with each other. Do we think that the cops and intelligence people do not know about the great money laundering and narcotics network which flourish and support the terrorist activities, have been doing since time im-memorial? Pakistan, India, this is all rigged, like cricket, everybody knows who is doing what and we are a nation of fools, regardless of which side of the border we are on or where we point to while praying, being made bigger fools by, forgiveness sought from the individuals present, the firangi for whom we are naught but pawns. Thus spracht the patriarch as we prepared to wash our hands and leave, satiated in stomach and suddenly alive in mind.



"We are Dutch, all we came was for the spices as we moved from Zealand to New Zealand", says our friend in weak and unasked for apology, as it is waved away in another multi-movement expressing "pshaw" as well as "please don't worry" by papa-san. The solution, according to the by now highly charged and motivated guruji, would be simply for the Pakistan President to catch the next flight to the same Palam (on a non-fog day, sure), and we will show him what is neighbour and what is guest. We shall bring him to the Red Fort, he can have breakfast, lunch and dinner there, as well as park his cars free of charge. We shall then take him to his ancestral home in nearby Daryaganj or was it Ballimaran, wherever, and we shall have a citizen's reception with mushaira. After this hospitality, let him then go and try to damage our vatan, arre Sirji, our traditions will not permit it, he will have to make peace.



And looking meaningfully at my by then absolutely mystified Dutch friends, "uske baad dikhayenge in Angrez aur Americans ko, ek saath". Blood of my brother, I think. But we are Dutch, they bleat. Adjust maadoo, whispers my Bangalore ki wife.



As we get back to driving towards by now boring South Delhi and its sanitized streets lined with ordinary everyday garbage of the MNC variety, side-stepping the arriving vans carrying next mornings sacrifices of live chicken packed in square inches, lamb on hoof and fish on ice, all being transported for the auction that starts in a few hours just before dawn, we think, what would it be like if the CEO or General or President of Pakistan did make a trip to India?



1) Security would go up. To understand this better, security in Delhi usually means that the cops grab all the shade in the summer days, all the nice sunny spots in gardens in the winter days and all the open fires being stoked by poor people in the cold nights. We would all be frisked a zillion times while relatives of constables would go to the head of the line without any problems.



2) We will have to rename a road after him. From what I can make out, nobody, but nobody, has got a fix on how to spell his name correctly. But there are some new, yet un-named bridges coming up across the Jamuna which could do with a name. especially the new toll bridge constructed 4 months ahead of schedule between Nizamuddin and Kalindi.



3) The flight path will move once again from 28-10 to 27-09 which will make planes of all sorts roar overhead my home every minute. This happened when Clinton came, too, but for some reason did not happen when what's his name came from Russia. Shape of things.



4) Prime Minister Vajpayee's poodles and pups would make babies with President Musharaf's pekinese and pups. Not exactly a product of dogs of war, but close to being a concession to doggerel?



5) The Foreign Press Club would lose most of its reason to exist and would go back to chasing stories on child marriage and caste. Here it is interesting to note that stories on paedophilia by visiting Europeans or child running by Arabs are not picked up by the Western press which seems to monopolise the Foreign Press Club! Not propah!



6) Our Indian politicians would start dressing smartly and maybe even watching their weight. They would also smoke in public, and not be evasive about children or family in the US.



7) The Pakistan Embassy/High Commission in Delhi would finally put up night shelters for those parked there overnight for visas. With any luck we may get to sample the famous kebabs, though I personally think that Pakistani food is all aboud desi chink or Big Macs. Nobody has yet written otherwise, no?



Which brings me close to the end of the article as we enter the colony we live in, throwback to our colonial heritage we imitate our ex-masters by still trying to live in "colonies", never mind the pox on the word. Our food is better than yours. We will win you over, yet. Ever tried a kheema dosa, lately, then? Our raconteurs are better, you have only got Mark Tully. Our strikes, hartals and bandhs are better, can you imagine the diamond industry in Pakistan going on strike? Most of all, our movies and television are better, do you still have a Kaum Banega Crorepati?



Which brings me along with the car load of obvious intellectuals to point # 8. Please ensure that General Musharraf comes on any day that we don't have KBC on the air. Or better still, let us ask him to come on a special edition of KBC?



All because a flight was on time!!