Cheers to Dilli

I think that if I could find a tent large enough to pitch over this entire city, people would pay admission to see the show. The Delhi theater brings all the deepest, silliest, stupidest, hardest, funniest and most grinding parts of the human condition to the stage.

Saturday a pigeon got trapped in the service porch (open air laundry room) of my apartment. I had a party on Saturday night and the pigeon was a hell of a guest. We ended up catching it in the box that my microwave came in. This was no easy breezy pigeon hunt – with animals over here one never knows if its going to be a normal, fun-lovin’, waddling pigeon of peace or a wiley, dilli-breed, radioactive attack-pigeon.

Anyway, after everyone had their turn peering into the microwave box, we set it free from the front terrace in a triumphant moment of liberation. Cheers to free birds.

...

This morning a man chased two street children away from my taxi window with a sword. A sword. This guy was just walking around town chasing children with a sword. Cheers to child-chasing swordsmen.

People here live like terrible, fucked up things aren’t happening all around them all the time. That same denial is encroaching on my thoughts and observations too -- and I know its because there are no other good ways of dealing with so much affliction on display. And I am not just talking about poor people in the street. Life here, for rich and for poor, is all about self-interest. So far, every attempt I make to counter that with civic-minded golden rule type actions, I open up a Pandora's box of problems, frustrations and other good reasons to stop doing what is right.

India has so much optimistic energy about its future, and rightfully so. But without a serious self-examination of values at the personal and societal level, that bright future will always be tainted.

Some times you gotta tell it like it is and thats not happening here.