A Stationary Tale

Smog Attack, announces the Hindustan Times. It's the worst since 1989, but high levels of "particulate matter" will ease today before returning at the week-end. We breakfast on the roof terrace and, for the first time, see the sun and feel its warmth. For breakfast, S has a "half fried egg" and I try the porridge, a glutinous and rather gritty substance which weighs heavily in the stomach.

Main Bazaar Road

A mainly station(ary) day. After breakfast, S takes time out with her book and stays at The Star (View). I walk to New Delhi Station to re-book our "waitlisted" ticket for Pathankhot tomorrow evening. I know from previous experience what this entails, and go armed with pen,  passports (2), cash, and patience. The latter is not shared by my neighbour in the queue, which I join at number 254. My neighbour is an NRI (non-resident Indian) from Birmingham, who is making his first ever visit to his homeland with his wife and two young children. Mr NRI is underwhelmed by much of what he finds. This being my third visit, he says I must be "desensitised". He does not like the queue, which snakes VERY slowly round a labyrinth of seats. Every half hour or so, he re-counts the number of people ahead of us and revises his estimate (@ 20 persons per 25 mins) of when we will be seen. The pace slackens at 1 pm when half the staff leave for lunch. Mr NRI goes to buy water for us both, and magazines to read. The Indian is full of stories of India's "super-rich" - the Diwali parties with "1 lakh cakes" (i.e. costing Rs. 100,000, or about £1200 each) , and the doting grandfather who imported real snow to Delhi to create a "winter wonderland" for his granddaughter's eighth birthday. Mr NRI says Indian Railways needs "one good man at the top" to speed things up. Maybe he sees a job for himself. He leaves me to keep his place while he seeks out supervisors with complains and suggestions, e.g. a ticket system, Tesco deli-style. After over 3 hours, we reach the head of the queue and I am able to book confirmed tickets for my two previously "waitlisted" journeys. My ticket walla is charming. I tell him my great-great-uncle William was the IR engine driver who drove the Prince and Princess of Wales on their Indian tour, at which he smiles sypathetically and offers me a cup of chai.

Measuring up

A late afternoon wander along Main Bazaar Road, where S finds a tailor to make up her jacket and skirt. We take tea on a rooftop terrace. S orders iced tea, but then thinks better of it in case the ice is suspect. Back via the hotel to the Ramakrishna Temple, just in time for evenings prayers. We leave our shoes and squat on opposite sides (women to the left). It's bells (plus drums and gong) and smells, with a slow and sinuous display from the priest who wafts incense, candles and a white fly whisk in front of the life-size image of the guru accompanied by gravelly chanting which some of the congregation join in. The Ramakrishna sect is a sort of Anglican-Hinduism - dignified, controlled, seemly and rather middle-class. This impression is confimed afterwards when we are buttonholed  in the temple shop by an earnest young man who proclaims the virtues of compassion, moderation and quiet reflection.... until he abruptly halts in mid-monologue and says ".... I must be boring you." Which, of course, we vigorously deny but say we need to go and eat.

Time for a beer

Which we do, in another rooftop restaurant. Unusually, we are offered beer, but strictly on condition that it was billed as "masala tea", delivered in a teapot, drunk from tea mugs, and with sugar bowl placed strategically on the table lest anyone should suspect anything fishy, or beery. We also meet Michael, from Germany, a food technologist taking "time out". He has been trekking in Nepal and entered India via Varanasi, which he utterly hated. It may not have helped that he stayed in a guest house next to one of the burning ghats, from which the smoke and incineration smells wafted across the restaurant while eating. He is more relaxed in Delhi but has some forthright views on Indian society, a bit like Mr NRI, in fact.

Travellers' Tales, Richard & Michael