Leaves burning

I know I haven't been posting regularly: I'm dividing my blogging energies, such as they are, between here and www.passtheroti.com ... the latter is a collective left alternative to the suffocating self-satisfaction of desi communities in the West. See if you can guess which one I am.

Autumn is definitely arriving in Dehi -- the morning was fresh, and hung with a light haze from the piles of fallen leaves burning. From childhood in Islamabad, I always remember the smell of burning leaves as a sure sign of the seasons changing. It's not an unpleasant aroma as the many and varied smells of India go, and almost provides a counterpoise to deisel exhaust fumes, open sewage canals (nullahs) and stale urine. And yet what a disaster for the environment! Our Ecology Club at ISI (my first attempts at activism) was complaining about this.

For my work, I've been travelling out to different parts of the city -- mostly to the solidly middle-class (real middle class, not the elite South Delhi equivalent) neighbourhoods of western Delhi, accessible by the Metro: Karol Bagh, Moti Nagar, Rajouri Garden, etc. If you want to see what gentrification really looks like in Delhi, look at places like that. Old, sweet houses of the miniture garden city variety are becoming increasingly connected into networks that link new mega-mall type outlets and the spanking new housing developments farther out... the metro helps, but it's mostly cars. The current transformation of consumer tastes doesn't result aesthetically in the 'post-material' kinds of quiet coffeeshops with jazz and wireless access wherein I want to spend my afternoons. It's loud, it's garish and it's here to stay.

Other than, just trying to get over a cough and hoping to plan trips out of Delhi in the next two weeks, to meet with the industrialists in Punjab and the north. Jaipur can wait another couple of months -- it's not cool enough yet!