India 2009

Reflections on a trip to New Delhi, February 2009.

Cities wearing boots of time have a certain way of marching over memories, leaving them in millions of pieces. Instead what you are left with sharp edged broken fragments. My recent trip to Delhi, a city where I spent my childhood and youth, was one of those bittersweet journeys.

Wherever I turned, I saw strange buildings — ugly in their newness, intruding by their presence. The roads, once wide and open, now clogged with humanity, cars of all sizes and dust… the ever pervasive dust of a city that was been reinventing itself from the dawn of time. The city, which is desperately trying (and failing) to prepare itself for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, is in a state of perpetual motion, never stopping as it runs away from its past, that earned the city its nickname the city of Djinns.

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