The New Delhi

Indira Gandhi International Airport

I was last in New Delhi, India in September, 2006.  It was my first visit to this part of the world.  I was both shocked and exhilarated by the sheer foreignness of the place.  It was chaotic, dirty, loud, crowded and was exactly as I hoped it would be.  Nothing like where I came from.

I loved the people, the food, the craziness and mostly, the cows. 

The cows were everywhere.  They wandered in the street, clogged up traffic and pretty much owned the place.  The disturbing part of New Delhi and Gurgaon was the slums and the overwhelming poverty.   People sleeping on the side of the roads, beggars everywhere, women holding up small babies and asking for money.

When I departed the Delhi airport I was overcome by the smell and smoke.  People were everywhere, yelling, gesturing, and insisting on carrying my bags for a few rupees and fighting off the others who also wanted to get money from the foreigners.  It was exciting and different and just what I wanted to experience.

Five and a half years later I find myself, again, in a foreign place.  But this place is nothing like the New Delhi I visited in 2006.

My first clue that New Delhi was, in fact, new was at the airport.  I have no idea what happened to the old airport but this place felt like a nicer, newer version of Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta.  It is big, open, clean, modern, very orderly and surrounded by immaculate landscaping.  While there are still some crowds, it is really no different from any big airport in the US.

Over the next three days I was faced with a glaring truth.  New Delhi had been transformed.  There are modern highways filled with new, clean cars that mostly stay in their own lanes.  Yes, horns are still the tool of choice for announcing your intentions but it seems much more polite now.  While you still need to trust in your driver’s skill, it isn’t nearly the daring, thrill ride of the past.  Perhaps it was the roads we traveled, but the slum areas seemed less frequent.  I only saw one beggar outside The Red Fort.

Instead of noise, horns, poverty and cows, I was assaulted by billboards advertising everything from expensive jewelry to luxury condominiums.  They love their malls here and those temples to consumerism could just as easily be in southern California as the suburbs of the Indian capital.  The cars are shiny, new Toyotas and Fords.  Everyone has a cell phone.  The pillions on the still ubiquitous (thank goodness) motorbikes are busy making calls and texting as they wind through the traffic.

There is no question that this New Delhi is much improved over the old one.  There are jobs, money, nicer housing and much better infrastructure.  It is hard to argue with that prosperity.

The people and food are still wonderful but I can’t help wondering what became of the cows.

I miss them.