OLD DELHI & A GAY PARTY

So my love affair with the old city continues. I've been there at least once a day since I've been here. There's always something exciting happening. Strike that. There's always like a thousand exciting things all happening at once.

This morning I was up and out well before dawn to catch the first Metro train into the city for my bicycle tour of the old city. The Shah Jahan Tour. I couldn't imagine how we would maneuver the tiny lanes around Chandni Chowk, but we began early enough that the neighborhoods were just coming to life. Still, it was pretty death-defying riding bicycles through this area. There were seven of us on the tour.

We made our first stop in the spice market (an area of the old city where huge sacks of spices are brought in and then resold) at a large communal building next to the Fatehpuri Masjid. Loads of spice workers (all men) worked and lived in this building, surrounding a huge courtyard, which had been filled with makeshift housing. As soon as we entered the building, and began climbing the stone stairs through several stories to the roof, we all began coughing and sneezing due to the turmeric and chili peppers in the air.

As soon as we were in the building, one of the dogs sleeping there, followed me. I pet his head and that was all it took to make a lifelong friend. From then on, whenever the guide was telling us things, this dog had his front legs on my leg and his head nuzzled against my waist. The other people on the your were horrified, but I told them its better to make friends with the nice dogs, because you never know when you'll need protection from the mean dogs.

Plus it made up for yesterday. I was walking down the busy Chandni Chowk, packed in between hundreds of people, walking down the sidewalk, so congested that I couldn't see where I was going to see if I was about to fall into an open sewer, when all of a sudden I stepped on a dog, sleeping in the middle of the crowded sidewalk.

The bicycle tour lasted three hours. We stopped for chai near Civil Lines and then stopped for a traditional Mughal breakfast at Karims, the old Muslim restaurant where I had eaten the other day. We had goat. Apparently the goat is cooked for eight hours in many spices and is not served for lunch or dinner. Only breakfast.

While we were riding near the Red Fort, a fellow said to me as I rode by, "You were here two days ago, wearing a green kurta and a dhoti!" Yes I was. This in a city of 14 million. Or as they say here, one crore, 40 lakh.

After the tour, I wasn't ready to go back home, so I walked back toward the old city to explore some more. Thankfully I had my iPhone with the interactive map. I would have been so lost on these twisty alleys, with barely any sunlight. Several times I took wrong turns and ended up down an alley, walking into someone's house. Before long, these two boys saw me and thought I looked so funny that they began running after me and yelling for the other children in the neighborhood to come also. Soon I had a whole contingent of children following me. That was a bit much.

Last night I went out to a gay party in New Delhi. My friend, Jivi, hooked me up with the organizer, who texted me the secret location. I was the oldest one there by a few decades. It was cute. Reminded me of when I first went out to a gay club in the early days of electricity. All the boys wore cologne and their best Jordache jeans. The one fellow who chatted me up refused to believe that I was gay.

You know this is a gay party?

Yes. I do.

Why are you here?

I'm gay.

Ha ha. That's funny. Where are you from?

America.

Are you married?

No.

No? Why not?

Because I'm gay.

You can't be gay.

Why not?

Because of your body and your mustache.

That's when I decided to leave.

P.S.

This tiny stall, about the size of a bathroom back home, had all these live chickens wandering around and a whole bunch in crates. Customers would chose a chicken and the clerk would pick it up and throw it at the guy with the grey shirt, who would ring its neck and then dunk it into boiling water to loosen the feathers and then pull off all the feathers and then pass it to the guy up top, who would chop it into pieces for the customer. I bought a dozen of those eggs. I think they had been laid right there. They all had double yolks. That's what fear will do. 

नमस्ते