yottalopoli

these yottalopoli, tokyo and delhi, doppelganger siblings in unsustainability, the former of scrubbed privilege, incarcerating order, the latter of anarchic filth, screeching hunger.

delhi’s noisier, dirtier, more aggressive, obnoxious, relentless, meaner than i remember it. this bothers and fascinates me less than before, having become more intimate with these attributes, their ubiquity in society. their externalization (muted, sugar-coated in the new world) seems an inevitability among the planet’s urban architectures, at least until we figure out how to modify the soul ... perhaps the central practice of the human, a practice which religion, philosophy and art haven’t had much success in; technology now attempting new forms of the practice through genetic modification.

new delhi train station at midnight looks like hades – heaped wraiths, gustave-doré-scapes of grey and destroyed time. the trains look like death cars. it smells like the marriage of a garbage truck that’s never emptied and a latrine that’s never washed.

if anything looks like the end of the world, delhi does. as if the apocalypse has happened (even the moon looks sick here [looks like sushi rice in tokyo]) ... yet humans – photocopied without governance (the machines hyped, 24/7) – still wandering the destroyed earth bound by chemicals and technological scraps ... sign, sign the signs of ends ... (how could i ever return to europe after this ... that museum mausoleum?)

the delhi metro, like the entire city, is impossible. around the ticket-purchasing counter are thousands of people – no lines, no organization. the few ticket-purchasing machines all have out-of-order signs. if you have a pass you can get right in but you have to go to the counter to get a pass. do i want to push claustrophobically for three hours for a traffic-free ride under the nation’s capital? i return to the honking bumper-rickshaw maelstrom above.

the train from delhi to varanasi is delayed first 2.5 hours, then another 2, and finally departs 6 hours late, at 0230h. there are no announcements, apologies; information’s absent; no one knows anything. i find out eventually from a local on the train that the delay’s due to fog – the drivers are scared of not being able to see water buffalos on the tracks, a potential derailment issue. at some point i begin asking people how far to varanasi. the answers: 2 hours, 3, 4 maybe 6 hours, 5, 7. turns out to be 8. because we’re off-schedule, i’m told (all this from seasoned local travelers) we have to give way to every on-schedule train, making the ordeal 24 hours instead of 12. there are 23 cars – most of them sleeper class:  a comic misnomer, as they’re piled with hundreds of humans compared to mine at the top of privilege with only 12. by the end the washrooms reek so badly even passing them makes me gag. and that’s in ac first class. i’m in a cabin with 3 indians who speak only a few words of english. we occasionally nod and smile and exchange a few snacks as signs of goodwill and survival. finally, rabid with freedom, nearing midnight, i break into the thick madness of one of the world’s oldest cities, death hot in the air, my driver negotiating cows, goats, shit, bipeds, suicide-drivers to deposit me near my ghat, its nighttime wailing sticky on the ganga, the old asian moon nonchalant at the burning bodies on those sacred dirty shores.

 

people ask me where i’m from. canada, i say. where else? good country is the most common response. i suppose so. but we’ll see how good it is in a few years when the world begins invading it for its water and climate and land.