Mallory left yesterday morning, which left me with two more days in Delhi on my own. On my list a number of sights to see: temples, graves, government buildings, parks, and a street food tour…

And in the end, I guess, I won’t really do much of it. I just don’t have the energy for more sights anymore. I want to hang out. I want to find a piece of quiet, beautiful India to hang out two more days.

Not that what I have seen so far isn’t beautiful… it is! But it is also very demanding. India is in your face!

I went to an area called Hauz Khas, a bit south of the centre. My friend Rajiv, whom I spend some time in Melbourne with, had recommended it in a mail.

He made it sound somewhat alternative, bohemian, cool… a side of India I had not yet seen so far.

Oscillating between the Radisson pool, Varanasi craziness and the slum, I was lacking something in between. Kind of normal, middle-class life in India. If it existed.

I didn’t not really know where everything was and so just walked around, a nice, more quiet and residential neighborhood with treelined streets, some nice, modern buildings, clearly better-off, behind higher fences. Some embassies…

 

Then, in the middle of a park, the Hauz Khas village. An assembly of buildings, all full of bars, restaurants and shops, colored, with graffiti and street art, and lots of young people.

In the park, an artificial lake, or rather an old water reservoir, and the ruins of Haus Khas, which comprises an Islamic seminary, a mosque, a tomb and pavilions .

It can be traced back to the 13th century when it was part of the city of Siri. The name Hauz Khas means simply ‘royal tank’, in Farsi.

The little park was full with little historic pavilions and the tomb, and crawling with young people, obviously students from an art school, as everybody was drawing something, making skits of the monuments or taking photos.

That’s what I had been looking for: more quiet, maybe a bit bohemian, but normal life, like you find it in many cities of the world.

I felt like after the slum walk I needed some uplifting vision of India, something that spelled progress, promise, a better future…. and found it in that park and in the cafés and small offices, where young people on their Apple laptops were designing the future…. (what a cliché…)

I simply sat among them, on the grass, took out my iPad and read my book, in the sun. The temples and sights can wait.