A city of Delhi’s particular nature getsvery bothersome at ground level. The traffic and its smells and sounds, thepedestrian and sedentary janta with its smells and sounds, the snarls of Delhimachismo and the squeaks of the put upon, the trash and the dust and theoccasional wet mud; sometimes the mixture just gets a tad too rich.
We all pass in the shade of the trees that supposedly colonnade this city, wehave all—if male—peed against its many monuments. But where in the rush andthe whirl of our lives do we get to enjoy these things for their beauty and notmerely for their utility?
The answer is to rise above it all. Literally. The Drifters knew their stuff. Asthe old song has it:
When this old world starts getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face
I climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space
On the roof, it’s peaceful as can be
And there the world below can’t bother me...
Climb up on the roof of wherever it is you are and cast your eye about. Delhi isstill a city of short buildings. You’ll find yourself with a 360-degree viewof this ancient sprawl. I use the word ancient advisedly. You can see the QutabMinar for miles, its priapic essence unwithered by age.
Even more modestly conceived monuments stand head and shoulders above theconcrete sprawl of the city. From my home, I can see Humayun’s Tomb and myriadother resting places of less famous people, the Bahai Lotus Temple, and a fewscore temples, mosques and gurdwaras beckoning the faithful home.
I see the river and the slums that abut it and the thermal power plants thegovernment has thoughtfully planted along its shore. I see flyovers and cars andjetliners quietly trailing vapour in the post-monsoonally clear empyrean as myvision, free now of its concrete blinkers, follows their arcs. The sky thatseemed so far a mere 30-or-so feet below seems that much nearer, the light ofthe blue sky not, now, a distant presence taken for granted while you scuttleabout your business but, rather, a tangible unity that includes you and bindseverything you see together.
And you see the trees. The green city you have heard rumours of is finallyrevealed. The avenues over which the trees bend their heads and cast their shadedisappear, and you see the traffic below as God must, in the gaps between thetrees. No wonder he is generally thought of as merciful.
You feel merciful as well, really, as the gulmohars, so strangely again inbloom, the umbrella and the owl trees and the neems, the dripping ashokas andthe majestic seemuls and all the rest hide the lesser inhabitants of thatdistant lower world from your view.
The hawkers and the vegetable vendors and the men carting bricks to thebuilder’s flats coming up down the road go about their business under yourgodlike eye as you soak up the freedom of being above it all. Kites fly on theirstrings and Kites fly on their wings and the bustle of the road below seems veryfar away indeed.
Perhaps, blasphemously, that is all that divinity is. A question ofperspective.
This piece appeared in the October issue of Delhi City Limits.
