mungbean in india
 

Category Archives: City Life

Challenges

So I’ve hardly posted anything here since the start of the year… partly due to being unbelievably busy at work for the last 3-4 months, and when you spend most of your day writing documentation, going home and writing more stuff doesn’t really appeal. Plus I’ve been in India for 3½ years now, and I think I’ve probably reached the point where I’ve already said most of the things I wanted to say about the country, and reported most of my observations about how […]

A New Broom Sweeps Clean?

So here we are on the verge of 2014, and quite a historic day in Delhi.  A new Chief Minister and his cabinet were sworn in today, after their party did well in the state elections here earlier in December. It’s historic for a number of reasons… firstly the party, the Aam Aadmi Party (Common Man Party), was only officially launched a couple of weeks before the elections.  Even so, they managed to take 28 of the 70 seats on […]

Heat

At the risk of being repetitive, I’m going to bang on about the weather again.  Because it’s now very, very hot. Today it was 45 degrees celsius when I took the photo above, and reportedly it reached 46 in Delhi at some point.  Slightly trumping the previous hottest temperature I had ever experienced, which was 44 in Athens (Greece) and Brindisi (Italy) when back-packing around Europe in the late 80’s.  My memory of Athens was that elderly people were dropping […]

The New Normal

  I’ve been living in Delhi for 3 months now, and everything seems to have become “normal” quite quickly, at least compared with when I first arrived in India over 2 years ago.  Some things have normalised remarkably fast; some of them less so.   An example of the former would be the daily commute to and from work on the metro, which has changed  from: being an empowering novelty—Independence!  Efficient, clean, reliable public transport at last! (Are you listening, […]

Here Comes the Summer

  Right then, here comes the Summer.  The ultimate test.  Maybe. When I arrived in Delhi in January 2013 it was surprisingly cold.  Even for seasoned Dilliwalas it was something to talk about… supposedly the coldest winter for 40 years. As the Times of India commented back in January: For nine straight days since December 31, the capital hasn’t seen temperatures rise above 16 degrees Celsius and the minimum has remained below 6 degrees. Taking these two temperature limits as cutoff, […]

Noisy Holi

Today was Holi, the Hindu “festival of colours”.  Given that I’d already been targetted by local kids with water-bombs and supersoakers last night, I decided to stay home, relax and enjoy my day off.  Maybe do some studying.   In the end it was way too noisy.  Starting from very early.  Which was unexpected, as I live in a really peaceful neighbourhood. So this put me in a pretty weird mood for the rest of the day.  (Or maybe I […]

Small Things #8

Around 5pm, on a busy main road in Naraina. A small, wiry woman–a daily wage labourer–walks briskly along the road after work with her three children.  All of them are animated and chatting over the noise of the traffic. It’s clear that she’s a daily wage labourer because as she walks she has a full-size pickaxe perfectly balanced on her head, hands-free, and with the handle pointing directly forwards.  

Small Things #7

Delhi, February. About 7.30am, and I’m just heading out the door to go to work.   I hear the hoot of a train from the nearby track. Only it sounds different: three rising tones rather than two. Or the more common long, single, plaintive note. I think to myself how it sounded like a trombone. I carry on walking past the park and hear it again.  Odd. As I turn the corner, in front of me is a man in […]

Small Things #5

About 8.30am, and I’m walking to work down a residential side-street.  A woman comes out of her house with a large bowl of food scraps.  She goes to the corner of the street and calls something out. A huge black and white friesian cow comes waddling up to her, and she puts the bowl down on the ground in front of it. As it starts eating, she touches the cow on its rump, mutters something, and blesses herself.

Small Things #4

Saturday lunchtime. It’s about 25 degrees.  A boy of around 7 years old nonchalantly wanders about in bare feet, daydreaming and singing to himself, outside a shop on a busy road. He’s wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and a fluorescent, lime green, knitted balaclava.