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.
