The train journey started perfectly. We had water and a whole lot of junk food, enough to last us the entire journey and probably more. Three superly excited girls on 2 hours of sleep and with a fun-filled 4 days to look forward to, we did just as was expected of us - brought the coach down with our nonsensical conversation and hysteric bouts of laughter that pursued after every few seconds of conversation. The basic outline of our 2 hour conversation was all of us taking turns to teach each other our respective mother tongues and the sentence that we took up to complete this task was - "I will cut your throat and drink your blood", inspired from the ever famous Bengali dialogue of the character "Manjulika" in the Bollywood movie "Bhool Bhulaiyaa". The three languages being Sindhi, Bengali and Kannad, by the end of the learning session, we had mastered the dialogue in both Bengali and Kannad (I was the one who had to teach the Sindhi, only problem was that I didn't know the language well enough myself and it didn't sound half as funny or scary in my language). Unfortunately our fun was interrupted by a funny, short man who had the middle berth between our lower and upper berths so we didn't have a choice but to shut up and go to berth(bed).
Unable to curb the excitement of our trip that was to follow, 2 of us woke up pretty early and revised our Bengali and Kannad dialogues soon enough to say them to the third girl from our group who slept right through till we reached Delhi. Giggling like little girls we got down on the platform and made our way towards the exit. Two of us who were staying together headed in the direction of the car waiting for us and the third headed towards her car. The following couple of hours included freshening up, eating breakfast, getting to our first destination and waiting for the third to come. Before I move on, the purpose of the trip was basically to make a sort of documentary on the 10 ancient cities which amalgamated to form the present day city of Delhi. The trip was of four days and the day time was to be devoted to video-shooting while the evenings were devoted to having fun.
Day-1
The first day we were to cover the Old Delhi region which included Shahjanabad, Jama Masjid and The Red Fort. The city we were covering was Shahjanabad which was built by Shah Jahan. These areas being predominantly Muslim areas, we were freaked out because of the recent bomb blasts that had taken place in Delhi a couple of days before our trip. Carefully we started walking towards the market street. We couldn't decide as to where to go and all we could do was stand and argue as to what our plan of action should be. Chandni chowk being a majorly congested market area, we were honked at and screamed at to get out of the way a whole lot.
Eventually we decided that nothing was going to come out of us walking around on foot so we hired a cycle rickshaw and luckily found one, the driver of which knew the area very well. He took us around the entire area and showed us everything that we needed to see including the silver street, the paratha street (i begged my friends to go there and actually eat something, but no one agreed), the gold street, the electronics street and so on including just about every type of market that you can possibly imagine! We were so very grateful to the rickshaw driver for making our task so much easier or else we would have been able to take a video of only about half a street! Since we have a habit of complaining no matter what, it was the worst thing sitting in the narrow backseat of the rickshaw. For those who have been unfortunate enough to sit in that seat through crowded markets with non-so-pothole-devoid streets, I am sure they can understand our position. We managed to get through by exchanging seats every once in a while.
It was part scary and part funny to see how much importance a person could get just by having a camera in his hand. We got a whole lot of inquisitive glances and even some very frantic waves from people when we pointed the camera in their direction(some even if we didn't). Overall was a pretty great experience. The streets were overly crowded with people jumping over rickshaws and "thelas" just to get to the other side of the road. The electric wires were so carelessly wound over and around electric poles and hung loosely over shops and houses. There was an amalgamation of old and new houses and one could spend an entire day picking out the old ones from the new ones. There was absolutely no distinction between pedestrian and vehicular pathways. People moved in any direction where they could see an inch of space in which to walk in. All this in paths that were wide avenues that served as processional paths for the king Shah Jahan from the Red Fort till the Lahori and Delhi Gate. It is said that Shah Jahan used to be able to see till the Lahori and Delhi Gate sitting in his fort. Streets that were wide and grand have now been converted into congested markets that provide no space for people to even walk during peak hours.
Even though Chandni Chowk does not portray a perfect well-planned market, it gives us an essence of Indian street and stall markets like no other. Delicious aromas floating around in the air, inviting us to snack at every food stall in sight, no matter how stuffed we already are, shiny objects glittering out of shop windows making us wish we had more money on us to be able to purchase them, colourful clothes draped over shop fronts fluttering in the gentle breeze showing us how great it looks from every angle, people bustling past doing their everyday business or shopping not forgetting to spare a few extra seconds to stare at the people walking around with cameras, while those poor people who are unfamiliar with the area walk, clutching their bags to their chests because they have been given several warnings about pick-pockets. Whether you like it or not, that's a typical Indian market for you that all of us love!
After chandni Chowk the rickshaw headed in the direction of the Yamuna river where we saw the level of the water that was and that is presently. On the way to the banks of the Yamuna we saw the famous Hanuman temple and quite a few other temples. After the river bank we cycle-rickshawed our way to the famous Jama Masjid and Meena Bazaar. After seeing Chandni chowk, Meena Bazaar didn't present too many exciting sights, except that one man incessantly tried to follow our rickshaw which was moving at a snail's pace and eventually ended up getting verbally abused by us. Thankfully people around were too busy to notice and a scene wasn't created. The Jama Masjid was beautiful. It is a mosque made of red sandstone with marble domes. Since we were way too tired and still had the Red Fort to visit, none of us dared to even raise the question of going inside.
Following the Jama Masjid we went to the Red Fort. We left the cycle rickshaw there and gave him a huge amount of money(I am not going to disclose the amount for fear of being mocked by all people reading this), but we were so very grateful to him. We even took his interview! The Red Fort was just as monumental as we had imagined it to be. The Aurangzeb wall was the first structure we saw. Aurangzeb had later constructed this wall in front of the Lal Qila to separate the fort from the streets of the common man. After purchasing tickets and leaving our bags in the cloak room we went inside. We already had studied the fort before we went so we could pretty much point out every structure we saw. I am not going to list out all the structures because it would serve no purpose considering I can't actually show you which structure is which. Overall it was a great monument. It was admirable to see how well every structure had been preserved. The great Mughal arches and inscriptions were all great sights. There was a nice market inside the fort of handicrafts and all Indian crafts where it took all my female will power to not buy anything. Since the camera battery had just about 10 minutes of life remaining, I had to practically run all around the fort to get videos of all the buildings inside. The provided the last straw. I gave up and started to irritate everybody which paid off eventually and we were out of there within 15 minutes. The remaining is a blur.
All I remember was waking up the next morning...
