6

6

Everything about this day has begun in fine Indian fashion except. Dawn is itching to break in spite of my ambien at 3:30 in am.

On the metro into New Delhi, the announcements sound vaguely British, "mind the gap" until I hear, "passengers are advised Not to sit on the floor of the train".

Two older women sit across from me as we head into New Delhi, dressed in colorful saris, one red and gold, the other light yellow and green, laughing and chatting animatedly, while texting.

No other white persons on this train.

How did all this vast invention of peoples and religions and architecture arise here, in the Indus valley, so much before even Egypt or Mesopotamia?
With so little undiscovered, if the collection in the Indian national museum is any indication, so much is left to the imagination and oral history. The uncountable number of god, goddesses, universes, possibilities now extant must only have been passes on through tales and rituals, unlike in Egypt, where we have so much archeological evidence. I don't know if it's a little to say but there is a feeling of continuity between harappan civilization and the present the was missing in Luxor.
So much more could be here but the climate doesn't encourage the preservation of antiquities as the dessert climate in Egypt does.

How did this happen?
How did this come about
Shiva? Vishnu? Parvati?
Or Gautama Buddha for that matter?

Outside again, I'm impressed at how beautiful even Delhi is.

As we drive through the streets in the evening, narrowly avoiding disaster in the velocicycle, I ask the driver, ranjit Singh, if we are still in New Delhi because life seems to have deteriorated markedly, and he says " no, this is not Old Delhi, the traffic in Old Delhi is much worse!"

Once a person has been to NYC and ridden the subway there, this is certainly no worse and it smells much better. People seem to get a lot accomplished while riding cheek by jowl, going through their camera pictures, working on their computers....

I know deb recommended to maintain my "crap detector" on level red, but that's just not me, I guess. A Sikh cab driver convinced me to go with him and we rode all over Delhi for "only 50 rupees!"
Well, we did end up at a store that sells "Indian art", of course, but it was pretty good
quality. I hope you like it! I'm just kidding, but I realize if you don't say yes sometimes, and take the risk, new things might not happen.

Once I admit that that it may be part of my nature to be gullible, maybe I will just relax when life takes an unexpected left turn.

As I write this, swaying on the train back to Huda City Centre, I glance up and meet the eyes of a wizened, sari-clad old woman with the largest red dot in the center of her forehead a the deepest black eyes imaginable. I smile. She doesn't. But it doesn't seem rude.

I am doing my best to understand this cricket match on TV. The bartender is trying to tell me, after I ask him whether he has little book of rules, that it's "pretty simple". I laugh. And then he laughs, too.
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