23/ A love letter to Delhi

The privilege of anonymity

It’s 6 PM, Feb 12, 2024.

I land in Delhi. Armed with a 50L hiking backpack and a laptop bag, I dive into the metro to get to a friend’s place. I get swept away by the crowd, all of us moving together as a wave. Instead of getting annoyed, I chuckle to myself. Though I’m in a different city, the feeling is familiar - of anonymity. Of freedom.

I get into an auto and let the wind whip my hair all over my face. See, there’s something about cities I love— it’s the possibility and space to become someone new. The city is big enough for all of us, and for none of our limits to collide with each other. Even if they did, I suspect it will birth something exciting.

The auto whisks me in time and space to a bright wintery Delhi morning at the Lodhi Art district. Ever since I painted a mural for the school, I’ve been in endless appreciation for the kind of beauty they add. I went mural hunting and found almost all of them.

Here’s a tweet with all pictures of all the murals I found.

Murals of Lodhi

You either love Delhi as an insider or expect surprise when you say you love Delhi as an outsider.

‘Delhi is unsafe’, ‘Delhi is crowded’, ‘Delhi’s air is a smoker’s embrace’, they all say.

I loved it anyway.

I see Delhi as a testament to love, playing host to Humayun’s tomb and the very sunder Sunder nursery. Romance and romanticism blows through every leaf in Lodhi gardens. Delhi is a place to fall in love.

1) Humayun' Tomb 2) Sunder Nursery

Delhi surprised me in the best of ways. The first thing that caught my eye was the total lack of fast fashion brands and franchise food places. After being accustomed to a storm of them in Bangalore, I welcomed the originality it lent the city.

The second is the familiarity and warmth in the way people talk to each other. ‘Apun’ is in the air. One evening, I made my way to a golgappe stall and had it in my usual silent fashion, opening my mouth only to say ‘ek plate’ and ‘kitna’. Two girls were having it with me, and after what seemed like a harrowing phone call between one of them and her boyfriend, she started bullying the golgappe wala (in the friendliest of ways) to buy his wife flowers, and asked him if he loved his wife. They were classes and worlds apart, but they spoke with a familiarity that doesn’t even exist between me and my extended family. It was both heartwarming and a huge culture shock to my South Indian sensibilities.

Delhi is the unlikeliest of cities to love on a visit. Cities are loveable when you make it your home, when you allow the chance for them to grow on you. But I’ve always been a huge fan of falling in love with cities at first sight. They have always been the easiest for me to romanticise - the character, the energy, the centuries of evolving - all of these amalgamate into a powerful feeling when you step inside. I feel my insignificance more deeply in a metro than when I’m staring at the sky or the ocean; there are thousands of vivid lives passing by alongside my own, and it is humbling. We may not be together, and yet we are not alone.

For all the disadvantages of living in a crowded metro, I only see the privilege of anonymity. A tier-2 city tracks you with inbuilt, judging eyes but the metro does not give a damn. Identities are ever-expanding and fleeting. Constraints are friendly. I love that I can go from a coding footballer to a writing rollerskater in the span of a day. Pollution, traffic, overcrowding and crime - are prices I would happily pay for the anonymity, which is freedom in disguise.