spend any time in this insane town, I’m going to have to pull myself up a few notches on India’s transportation hierarchy,” he asserted. After all, he reminded me, with a touch of the bravado that I found so charming in him, he drove a Honda Nighthawk 750 in New York. A few days later, I heard a honking in the alley andstepped out on the patio to see an ebullient, bareheaded Benjamin revving a silver motorcycle: a Royal Enfield Bullet Machismo, aptly named for restoring his manhood.
In the morning he ran down to Joginder’s house, full of the enthusiasm of the virtuous. He knocked on the aluminum siding door and presented the bicycle. Joginder was not impressed by the offering.
“I am superintendent. I am not for bicycle, sahib. Even sahib should not have been cycling-trykling.” The most Joginder would deign to do was donate the bike elsewhere. He gave it to the Bihari boys who worked at the local grocery, and for years afterward, I’d see them swinging up onto its thick frame, a canvas bag of supplies slung across a shoulder.
It didn’t take long for word to get around Nizamuddin about the generous foreigner who’d made an unexpected donation. Now when Benjamin walked down to the market, the neighborhood boys would gather around him. There was something in his confident amble and the awe he inspired in the Bihari immigrants that called to mind a movie star. He’d sometimes buy the Nizamuddin guys a round of Thums Up—a harsh Indian-made cola that is considered a manly drink in villages and comes in returnable glass bottles. They’d drink it in companionable silence, standing in the street outside the shop, because the shopkeeper insisted that customers return the bottles right away. One of them would light a bidi, and they would pass it between them like a joint.
In the weeks before he left Delhi, Benjamin talked about how much he would miss the camaraderie he’d established with the neighborhood guys. In spite of their limited interactions, he’d developed a wordless attachment with them, the kind that blooms quickly in South Asia. He was especially enamored with the youngest of the shop delivery boys, Arjun, who was newly arrived from the village and didn’t yet have the dead-eyed cynicism of many of Delhi’s older slum dwellers. When he appeared with the day’s milk and bread, Benjamin tipped him excessively. The affection was mutual, so much so that I dreaded ordering things from the shop after Benjamin left. Arjun would peer hopefully over my shoulder from the doorway, as though hoping myhusband would pop out from behind me in the apartment. When he realized it was just me, he’d pocket the few rupees of my comparatively meager tip and turn back down the stairs, his face bereft.
Everyone says that India desensitizes you to human misery. During my first year in Delhi, I eagerly awaited that change, but it was a long time coming. Just driving through the streets, I routinely felt a low-level sadness that exploded into horror, or even nausea, at the sights around me—limbless beggars, children eating garbage, the desperate abusing the desperate.
During Benjamin’s stay, we went to Mumbai and visited the Haji Ali shrine. Attracted by its whitewashed minarets perched on a tiny islet off the coast, we followed a procession of pilgrims across a long causeway, lined on both sides with supplicants asking for alms. It was a veritable nineteenth-century freak show of misery that reminded me of the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds museum. Among the gallery of beggars sat a bloated balloon of a woman, her body expanded wide with elephantiasis, and a man with a hole in his chest, through which, I swear, you could see his left lung. Stacked in front of each of them were piles of coins—when I looked more closely, I realized they weren’t rupees but paisa coins made of tin. Each coin was worth one-hundredth of a rupee; the donations they’d received probably totaled no more than several American
In the morning he ran down to Joginder’s house, full of the enthusiasm of the virtuous. He knocked on the aluminum siding door and presented the bicycle. Joginder was not impressed by the offering.
“I am superintendent. I am not for bicycle, sahib. Even sahib should not have been cycling-trykling.” The most Joginder would deign to do was donate the bike elsewhere. He gave it to the Bihari boys who worked at the local grocery, and for years afterward, I’d see them swinging up onto its thick frame, a canvas bag of supplies slung across a shoulder.
It didn’t take long for word to get around Nizamuddin about the generous foreigner who’d made an unexpected donation. Now when Benjamin walked down to the market, the neighborhood boys would gather around him. There was something in his confident amble and the awe he inspired in the Bihari immigrants that called to mind a movie star. He’d sometimes buy the Nizamuddin guys a round of Thums Up—a harsh Indian-made cola that is considered a manly drink in villages and comes in returnable glass bottles. They’d drink it in companionable silence, standing in the street outside the shop, because the shopkeeper insisted that customers return the bottles right away. One of them would light a bidi, and they would pass it between them like a joint.
In the weeks before he left Delhi, Benjamin talked about how much he would miss the camaraderie he’d established with the neighborhood guys. In spite of their limited interactions, he’d developed a wordless attachment with them, the kind that blooms quickly in South Asia. He was especially enamored with the youngest of the shop delivery boys, Arjun, who was newly arrived from the village and didn’t yet have the dead-eyed cynicism of many of Delhi’s older slum dwellers. When he appeared with the day’s milk and bread, Benjamin tipped him excessively. The affection was mutual, so much so that I dreaded ordering things from the shop after Benjamin left. Arjun would peer hopefully over my shoulder from the doorway, as though hoping myhusband would pop out from behind me in the apartment. When he realized it was just me, he’d pocket the few rupees of my comparatively meager tip and turn back down the stairs, his face bereft.
Everyone says that India desensitizes you to human misery. During my first year in Delhi, I eagerly awaited that change, but it was a long time coming. Just driving through the streets, I routinely felt a low-level sadness that exploded into horror, or even nausea, at the sights around me—limbless beggars, children eating garbage, the desperate abusing the desperate.
During Benjamin’s stay, we went to Mumbai and visited the Haji Ali shrine. Attracted by its whitewashed minarets perched on a tiny islet off the coast, we followed a procession of pilgrims across a long causeway, lined on both sides with supplicants asking for alms. It was a veritable nineteenth-century freak show of misery that reminded me of the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds museum. Among the gallery of beggars sat a bloated balloon of a woman, her body expanded wide with elephantiasis, and a man with a hole in his chest, through which, I swear, you could see his left lung. Stacked in front of each of them were piles of coins—when I looked more closely, I realized they weren’t rupees but paisa coins made of tin. Each coin was worth one-hundredth of a rupee; the donations they’d received probably totaled no more than several American
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