billrider2013

Arriving In Delhi
I left my London host’s place fairly early. It was a beautiful day and I decided to spend some time in the West End before heading out to Gatwick to catch the plane to Delhi.

I went into Fortnum Mason for a Welsh Rarebit. I really must get their recipe. Or made be I shouldn’t, because if I managed to make one just like theirs, I would be eating Welsh Rarebits every day.

After a bit of wandering around, I caught the train to airport.

The Flight
The plane turned out to be an A380. I thought it would be a smaller plane. Anyway is was packed. The airlines are very good at maximising their seat utilisation these days.

It was possible to use the internet on the plane. I saw this before on my flight to Iceland from New York last year. It still amazes me. I recall how I loved being on the plane during business trips with Caltex and Foreign Affairs before the days of laptops and the internet. It was not possible to be contacted.

During the flight I communicated with my Balmain host who was in Dubai and scheduled to catch a plane to Sydney an hour after I was scheduled to arrive.

Short Layover

It was a short layover in Dubai and I had to change terminals for the connecting flight to Delhi. The internet in the airport was a pain to use and I was not able to contact my Balmain host. I was later to learn that he could not get the internet in the airport to work at all. That is the way of technology. It worked and 40K feet, but didn’t work in one of the most modern buildings in the world.

The flight from Dubai was relatively short.

Taste of Indian Bureaucracy

India is famous for a number of things. One is mindless bureaucracy. I experienced this first hand when I visited in early 1985 when I was working for Foreign Affairs.

It would appear that things have changed little in the intervening period.
As you get off the plane you are confronted by an official who checks if you have a passport.
I then joined the queue for the holders of ‘e visas’. Given that this was an automated system I though the processing would be relatively fast. It was taking 10 to 15 minutes to processes each person.

When I reached the end of the queue, I handed over the printed receipt for the visa. I noticed a young girl at the next desk showing her receipt on her mobile phone. She was not going to be going anywhere fast.

I am not sure what the bloke was doing on the other side of the desk. Whatever it was, it wasn’t as simple was scanning the visa receipt and matching the details with my passport and my face. There was a lot of typing and writing.

He then took my photo and asked me to put my fingers and thumb on a finger print machine. Where and why they are stored is anyone’s guess.

Finally my passport was stamped.

As I continued on I was asked to show my passport two more times. The first bloke did not check if I had a visa. That could have been reasonable as a check to ensure the bloke at the desk was doing his job properly.

I asked the second bloke who wanted to check my passport, “why are you doing this, you can see that I have just come from the immigration desk and someone else has looked at my passport since then”? His response was “it is Indian process”. I just walked off.

Taxis into the City

I had arranged with my hotel to be picked up at the airport. My driver met me outside the departure gate. The ‘taxis’ was a metal box on four wheels.

Remembering Arriving in Delhi in February 1985

As we headed into the city, I recalled the last time I was met at the airport in Delhi in 1985.
My Foreign Affairs colleague and I had flown in to Delhi from Bombay (now known as Mumbai). We were met by the Attaché in the High Commissioner’s car. The High Commission was out of town in Pakistan.

It was a weekend and the Attaché told us that, if we were interested, we could go with him to a wedding. The wedding was of a member of the High Commission’s gardening staff to a girl from his village. He told us that they were from the lower Castes. We told him that we were interested.
We dropped our luggage off at the hotel and headed directly to the wedding. The Attache told us that there would be other members of the High Commission staff at the wedding as it was good for staff morale for the Australian based staff to be seen at these events. He also told us the staff had collected some money to be given to the couple.

At this point I need to note that my colleague was 25, female, very attractive and she was wearing a ‘light dress’.

When the car stopped we were met by a number of Indian gentlemen. These turned out to be relatives of the bridegroom. It was to later transpire that because we had arrived in the High Commissioner’s car, it was assumed that we must have been very important and as such, we were the honoured guests.

We were escorted to a large tent which was crowded with other quests including Australian and Indian staff from the High Commission. The Attaché introduced us to several people including an Indian woman who said she was the High Commissioner’s Protocol Advisor. She told us that we would “shortly offered food”. She said that we should accept it, but try not to eat it”.

We chatted away to the other guests holding the plates of foods. A various times the Protocol Advisor approached us from behind. As we turned to her she swapped our plates for another one will less food on it. I am sure the Indian guests noticed, but nothing was said.

While talking to the Australian staff, we were told that this was traditional ‘arranged marriage’ and the bride was meeting the groom for the first time. The ceremony was quite complicated with a number of stages and it was officiated by a number of priests. We were told that some of the stages had been completed and it was now time for us the ‘honoured guests’ to now participate, including handing over the cash that the High Commission staff had collected.

The ceremony was taking place under a canopy and there was a small fire burning. The Bride and Groom were sitting on cushions.
The first thing I noticed was how distraught the Bride was – she was howling with tears pouring down her face.

The other thing I noticed was how that Groom was looking at my colleague. As noted before she was young, very attractive and wearing a ‘light dress’. It was hot and the fire was making us hotter, everyone was sweating. He seemed to be fixated by my colleague.

After a couple of minutes, the ceremony appeared to stop and major argument erupted, behind us. We were later told that the dispute related to the how much one of the priests was demanding to be paid. It appeared that some of ‘gods messengers’ want more that others.

The dispute was resolved and the ceremony continued.

My colleague was clearly concerned as to how upset the Bride was. She told me that this “was terrible and it had to be stopped”.

I can’t recalled the full conversation, but it went along the lines that: I said it probably wasn’t for us to decide on that. She responded, that she didn’t care what I thought, it was just wrong what was happening to the girl………… As we had our little discussion the ceremony continued.

Finally, it came to the point where we were to hand over the cash gift. My colleague took the envelope and thrust it towards the couple with a clear look of displeasure. The transfixed Groom took the money and my colleague stormed off.

Back to October 2015

The ride into the city from the airport was slow. This wasn’t due to lots of animals on the road. It is my recollection that this was an issue in 1985. This time it was the volume of traffic.
There are lines on the road delineating lanes, but no one takes any notice of them.

Check out the Flickr link for a video.

At one point we stopped to get LNG fuel for the taxis. The driver paid over 400 rupees. I don’t know how many trips to the airport he can do on that, but my fare was 500 rupees.

In the Hotel

It took nearly two hours to get to the hotel in the Main Bazar. The location is infamous for a bombing that took place in October 2005. Check out the link below.
The hotel is very basis, but all that I need.

Walk to Connaught Place

Next day I walked into Connaught Place. It is the main Business and Shopping area of New Delhi. The fabric of the place does not have appeared to have changed much since 1985. What is notable, however is the number of international brand shops there are now. All major city shopping areas are looking the same.

Watching the Rugby

In the evening I found a bar that was showing the Rugby World Cup game between Australia and Wales. I was that only one watching this try less, but tight encounter.
It looks as though it will be a Wallabies v All Blacks final on the 31st.

Flickr Link
https://flic.kr/s/aHskmpnbKm

Link to Information on Main Bazar Bombing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Delhi_bombings

Link to Information on Connaught Place
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connaught_Place,_New_Delhi