Accolade for The Delhi Walla!

Outlook, India’s leading news-weekly, recently featured The Delhi Walla on its pages. The magazine described it as a “picturesque site having reviews of art exhibitions and restaurants, interviews, musings on the city’s history, and imaginative photos.”

“I’m trying to assist both myself and my readers in understanding the vibrancy, laziness, decay, boom and history of this great city,” said Mayank Austen Soofi, the website owner, in the same story.

Interviews - Zohra Segal and Tom Alter

[Interviews and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Reflections and musings on Delhi.

Veteran actors Zohra Segal and Tom Alter played leading roles in the play City of Djinns adapted from William Dalrymple’s book of the same name (subtitled A Year in Delhi). Segal played an Anglo-Indian lady while Alter portrayed Dalrymple. The play ran for ten days in April, 2007.

Interview - Zohra Segal

Which passage hit you while reading the book?

At one place the author referred to The Jewel in the Crown (television) series. I was there as Lady Lili Chatterjee.

Your character lived with dogs and cats. How did you handle them?

Thankfully, they existed only in dialogues.

Aspects you like about Delhi?

We lived at Dev Anand's bungalow in Bombay during the 40s. But Delhi is better. I love the change of weather - wearing light clothes in summer, and snuggling into a razai in winter. Besides, Delhi's vegetables are better than Bombay's.

Any memories in particular?

In the 1920s we once visited the sculptors busy carving the stones where the Viceregal Lodge was being built. I never imagined I would later perform, along with Prithviraj Kapoor, in front of President Rajendra Prasad in that monument.

Interview - Tom Alter


You portrayed a foreigner who stayed for a year in Delhi. But haven't you spent your youth here?

Yes, I remember cycling to my girlfriend from Daryaganj to East Patel Nagar in thirty-minutes flat. I preferred the Delhi of the 60s.

Has the city transformed since the book's publication in 1993?

The change is equivalent to the preceding 170 years. Unlike Dalrymple, you no longer have to struggle for a telephone connection. The book captured that shifting moment.

What most affected you during its reading?

The part where the author meets a Sikh man whose two sons were killed in the ‘84 riots. I myself had lost sardar friends. Then there was Mrs Puri, Dalrymple's landlord and a partition refugee. My father was from Sialkot. I know what it was like.

Arty Glimpses – Public History; Personal Stories

An American painter visits an art exhibition.

[Text and pictures by Nitin Mukul; he is an American artist who shifted to Delhi in 2006. His painting is included in the current SAHMAT exhibition, a group show which will travel to various metropolises throughout 2007.]

The exhibition was inaugurated on April 12, 2007, at Indian Women's Press Corps, opposite the Le Meridien hotel, with artworks based on the theme "1857-1947".

Commemorating the 150 years of the 1857 uprising, the IWPC art gallery displayed a diverse range of works by various artists. The theme was to narrate the public history through personal stories. This is the first major show in India for me and it is great to be surrounded by artists I admire here.


To inaugurate the exhibition, the artists were asked to gather around an oil lamp and light a wick, a ceremony often undertaken before the beginning of cultural events in India. While waiting by the lamp, I took this picture of a crew of photographers. World Press Award winning photographer Pablo Bartholomew is at the far left, who also has piece in the show. Ram Rahman, the show's organizer and a photographer himself is fourth from the left. In the background are works (left to right) by Nilima Sheikh and Jehangir Jani.




This is the other side of the lamp lighting ceremony. One artist I know here is Veer Munshi (center; in a plaid shirt). In the background is a piece by Anjum Singh.


On the left - a self portrait by the acclaimed photographer Sunil Gupta.



The distinguished looking gentleman facing the camera in the back is Jehangir Sabavala, one of India's best known artists. To his right are works by Peter Nagy (top) and Sukanya Rahman.



Fashion designer cum gallerist Rohit Gandhi and gallerist Bhavna Khakar inspect the works, perhaps in search of what's next...


My piece in the centre is flanked by works by Gulam Mohammed Sheikh (left) and Anita Dube (right) and Parthiv Shah (far lower right).


My piece was made specifically for the show dealing with personal histories in connection to India, and the embrace of secularism. I had this this picture since 2003 when I visited the Muslim ghettoes on the edge of Ahmedabad. At that time Godhra riots and the earthquake were still like fresh wounds to the local residents.

It is actually a puddle on the ground being splashed by raindrops. In the context of India as in the rest of the world, water is a precious resource, and separates hemispheres. The puddle was in Ahmedabad, where my father grew up, so I feel a connection/disconnection to the place, and the water relates to him leaving home to come to the U.S. - across the sea.

Notice the molecule like orange shapes I’ve added in the water. They are like the marigolds put in the water as per the Hindu ritual. But they have mutated into bacteria cells as fundamentalism can mutate the spiritual aspect of religion.

Click here to view the rest of the exhibition.

The McDonaldification of Delhi

Red Fort is under attack.

[Text and picture by Mayank Austen Soofi]

In the heart of New Delhi, not many acres away from the green expanse of the imposing Rashtrapati Bhawan (Presidential Palace), built from the sandstones that were quarried from the deserts of Rajasthan, stand grey, design-less, concrete structures.

Constructed when India was dreamily in love with everything Soviet, these Moscow-style blocks were planted as a tongue-lickout tease to the colonial arrogance of the surrounding monuments, created by the British masters dreaming of an everlasting Rule Britannia.

These drab buildings, housing ministries and offices with Soviet-sounding names, like the Planning Commission of India, belong to a common school of architecture that boast of installations which appears to have been airdropped all over the socialist world: from Sofia to Havana, from Tirana to Pyongang.

That drab commonality was the essence of communism: same color, same uniform, same party posts, and the same gods — the cult of Marxism-Leninism echoing from the flooded rice-fields of Vietnam to the frozen traffic squares of Warsaw.

The romance, and terror, of the communism is now over. But another, and yet similar, process is underway. The space vacated by the uniformity of communism is swiftly being flushed in by the glamour of a new order — a lifestyle equally homogenous and universal, which promises to remove the last stains of individuality and independence, which is determined to bury the final remains of authenticity, uniqueness and variety that makes up the beauty of this world. This is the 21st century communism — the world of Malls, Multiplexes and McDonald's.

The McDonaldization of the World

Making the way through a row of small jewelry stores situated on both sides of the two-lane driveway in Karachi’s decrepit Saddar commercial district, one would soon come across a blue-colored block called Atrium Mall whose front display hoardings familiar enough to make a scared American spy feel at home — KFC and Pizza Hut.

After being searched for a hidden bomb or a Kalashnikov by a uniformed guard, step inside one of the fast-food outlets. Let it be Pizza Hut. It is the same familiar world from then onwards: orange light emanating from tastefully concealed bulbs, and stewards attired in the same recognizable uniform, consisting of red-lined shirt, black trousers, and red baseball caps.

Saddar's steward might be an Ismaili boy hailing from the remote Swat Valley of Pakistan, perhaps handsomer than his counterpart in an outlet of the same chain in Bangkok, but both of them display the same behavioral pattern: a deliberate, labored informal attitude -- shrugging shoulders, looking-into-the-eye strategy and accented American English.

The menu is the same, excluding a pig here and a cow there. There will be the same salad counter, offering the same choices in the same portion in the same rate, in the center of the eatery. You were in Karachi, Pakistan. But it could easily have been a Pizza Hut in Chicago or Kobe.

The Seduction of McDonald's

Children love McDonald's burgers. The food may be fattening and seriously unhealthy, but they are tantalizingly inexpensive. Packaged in the unmistakable aura of the American dream, the cheapest burger in India is priced at merely 20- rupees, equivalent to US $0.5.

No matter what the permutations and combinations of McDonald's menus in different parts of the world, it all comes down to patties mixed in bread crumbs and deep fried. You will not get an authentic Chiken Tikka in Bombay's McDonald's, or a richly-flavored Bouillabaisse stew in Marseilles's, or a fulfilling Haggis in Edinburgh's. It would be the same burgers, having the same flavor, with certain superficial twists to cater to the sensibilities of the local markets.

The Invasion of the Malls

Each bazaar in Delhi has its own buzz. Sarojini Nagar Market specializes in stoned jeans and pretty sandals at bargainable prices. South Extension Market has glamorous Saree showrooms. It is a shopping district where hop-scotching from Mehra Jewelers to Ebony Garment Store has to be interrupted by a hurried feeding of oily Aloo-Gobhi and Sweet Mango Lassi in the corner Bangali Sweet Shop.

Connaught Place, the celebrated British-built central shopping district of New Delhi, has its charm of aimless loitering in the white colonial corridors of the family-friendly Inner Circle, and of experiencing a salacious pleasure of being proposed and followed by prostitutes in the seedier Outer Circle. Palika Bazaar happens to be the destination for blue film junkies, and Nehru Place the shopping mecca for pirated software.

Paharganj Main Bazaar, situated opposite the New Delhi Railway Station that offers cheap hostels to western backpackers, is the place to look for small, hippy-friendly Buddha statues and to doodle down authentic Israeli Falafel, besides savoring the pleasure of walking past exotic bakeries displaying German graffiti. And if you have a daring for some wild life, this teeming bazaar also provides discrete services of Nigerian drug peddlers and fat-white Central Asian prostitutes.

But slowly, gradually, this charming world is coming to an end. All across Delhi, including in its teeming suburbs, the landscape is sprouting shopping malls as fast as pimples appear on the smooth cheeks of a 14-year-old nymphet. You can buy Levi Jeans, canned vegetables, factory pickles, children's toys, branded underwear, served over by indifferent uniformed attendants, all under the one roof of these air-conditioned bubbles.

The romance of a bazaar excursion will be lost.

The Multiple Choices of the Multiplex

In New Delhi's greeny Chanakayapuri enclave stands a theatre of the same name. It has several legends attached to it. Richard Attenborough's Gandhi - that went on to won 8 Oscars — had its world premiere on its screen in 1982. Many middle-aged couples claim to have started their courting in its dark corners. Unfortunately, this single-screen auditorium with a capacity of a thousand seats is now breathing its last days. It is getting ready for the new owners who have declared their plans of implanting a multiplex on its ruins.

The ancient Plaza and Rivoli theaters of Connaught Place, built during the days when India was still ruled by Buckingham Palace, have already been taken over by an aggressively hip multiplex company. These theaters now screen more then one film at any single day. Regal, another film-house in the same district — once patronized by Lord Mountbatten, India's last British Governor General, and Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister — too appears to be jerking out its dying spasms.

It is more likely that in the not-very-distant years Delhi, like other cities in India, like many cities throughout the world, will have no single screen theatre left. We will then not go to watch a film, but only to enjoy the experience. If you will not get the ticket of this film, you will buy for that film. The film itself will not matter. The ambience will be the decider. And what is ambience in a multiplex auditorium but simple expectations of sound-proof walls, cushioned chairs, wide arm-rests and ample leg space!

In a multiplex of choices, choices will be the last thing to scout for.

A World Gone With The Wind

So, after few years, on weekend evenings, different locales in the planet will savor the same experience. Bhaskar and Renu in Delhi; or Roland and Sethe in New Orleans; or Zheng Jindong and Jiang Li in Shanghai will go to the same-shaped malls, look into each other's eyes while drinking Mocha coffee in the similarly-designed Starbucks lounges, pay for exactly-the-same-tasting Roasted Chicken Breast Sandwiches in the Subway counters, watch Mission Impossible:7 in the corner seats of the in-house multiplex (Auditorium 3), shop Tommy Hilfiger and Nike in the flood-lit, glass-walled showrooms, and say hey-hi to the same-looking, similarly-dressed, similarly bar-coded and branded friends, flying up or down the escalators.

The old world is to disappear.

Welcome to a shining new world. Welcome to a new communist order where everyone will be same, and every place will be familiar.

Djinn Spotting in Delhi!

Author William Dalrymple's classic portrait of Delhi has been adapted for the theatre.

[Text and picture by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Aladdin's lamp is out of the trunk. Those who relish William Dalrymple's City of Djinns can re-live the book in open-air performances in which djinns are being summoned from the ruins. More than fifty actors, including real-life snake charmers, calligraphers, hijras and qawwals are strutting their stuff at the Indira Gandhi National Center for Arts – with the Maati Ghar monument, a synthesis of Mughal and modern architecture, as an apt backdrop.

Doubting Thomases may wonder at the wisdom of transforming a city's portrait into a two-hour play, but Dalrymple has given his blessings to this ambitious Dreamtheatre production. Rudra Deep Chakrabarty, the young, curly-haired director, has claimed to recreate the book's most evocative moments. "I have given the narrative its real sound and music, its characters their true lingo and accent." His confidence springs from a cast that boasts of veteran actors Tom Alter and Zohra Segal. As the play's Dalrymple, Alter has never before met the author and has denied copying his mannerisms. Segal, descendant of a Mughal general, is exercising the ultimate revenge by playing an Anglo-Indian lady.

So, has the djinns appeared? Go and find out.

“City of Djinns” is to run till April 26 at Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), Janpath road, New Delhi; 9899798510.

Profile - Street Child Vicky Roy's Street Images

The Delhi walla's pretension in writing makes me want to lodge a bullet in his balls - Blogger Nimpipi, the woodchuck chucks
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Contact mayankaustensoofi@gmail.com for ad enquiries.

A runaway artist who made it big in the streets of Delhi.

[Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The Purushottam Express was ready to chug away from West Bengal's Purulia Junction when he boarded the train to escape his restricted world of schoolteachers and six siblings. That was nine years back. Vicky Roy, now 20, has had his first photo exhibition, “Street Dreams…”, in March 2007 that peers into the black and white lives of Delhi’s street children.

"I know them." said Vicky, surveying his 25 penetrating portraits of the city’s smarter kids - swimming in the India Gate pond, lying under the IIT flyover, reading newspapers at traffic lights, showering in the railway wash line, and sleeping in the night shelter. "All my subjects want to be something in life. Besides begging they also study to realize their dreams."

Vicky was luckier. He was working in an Ajmeri Gate dhaba, not long after his arrival in Delhi, when he was picked by Salaam Balak Trust for its residential programme. His fascination with photography started during a workshop there. Later he trained with British photographer Dixie Benjamin at Triveni Kala Sangam. Vicky’s break came when he obtained work as photographer Anay Mann's assistant after finishing school. A loan enabled him to buy Nikon F-80, a possession he caringly wraps in fluffy towels when not hunting for the perfect shot.

Anay Mann's guidance honed the young man's skills. "It is for me to decide the shutter speed and exposure setting. Camera only clicks." Vicky's confidence is not misplaced. "Street Dreams..." with its theme of child rights, was appreciated for its insightful perspective, honest portrayal and technical brilliance. “The images are so well captured. You feel sad and want to do something for these kids,” Lakshmi Mathur, a visitor, remarked.

But Vicky himself is now bidding farewell to street life, aspiring to be a fashion photographer. “It is more colourful and subjects will be under my control.” This ambitious journey from roadsides to ramps is the stuff street dreams are made of.

Held at Experimental Art Gallery of India Habitat Center, "Street Dreams…" was presented jointly by Salaam Balak Trust, British High Commission and UK’s Department for International Development.


Vicky and his favroite photograph



Vicky and friend - I



Vicky and friend - II



Vicky the photographer



Click at Street Dreams in Delhi to see Vicky Roy's pictures.

Photo Exhibition - Street Dreams in Delhi

Intelligent and incisive portraits of the city's street children

Street Dreams, a photo exhibition by Vicky Roy on the issue of child rights, was held at Experimental Art Gallery, India Habitat Centre in March, 2007.

Vicky Roy, formerly a Delhi street kid and a victim of child abuse, was rehabilitated by Salaam Balak Trust, which helped him to become a professional photographer.

Vicky (not the photographer) waiting for some money



Bharat near New Delhi railway station



(Details unknown)



Deepak resting after an injury on his right cheek



Nandu enjoying the newspaper, before selling



Sunil, Vijay, and Lucky enjoying a bath at India Gate



Children at a Shelter Home run by Salaam Balak Trust




A special story on Mr. Roy will soon follow in The Delhi Walla.

Exposed – Haute Couture Delhi

A Delhi-based fashion designer, not fond of the city, reveals the murky secrets of the fashion industry.

[The author, a well-known fashion designer, does not wish to disclose his identity.]

Fashion in Delhi? What fashion? People don’t have clothes to wear in this city, and you’re talking haute couture? Hot what, 99% of Delhiites would ask if you mentioned the term to them. Remember, a Big Mac is still a novelty here, even though Vorsprung durch Technik is starting to sound familiar.

I have never been to a page 3 party, or any of the squillions of parties the swish set in this city are supposed to throw in honour of one another, that are too risqué for page 3 coverage. But I know this: regardless of your social status, economic status, mode of commuting, caste and favourite food, if you suddenly start calling yourself a fashion designer in this city, most people around you will take you seriously and invite you to all their parties.

Ask any of the street side tailors in Sangam Vihar: one I know worked for a week at an export house, then quit and went back to his 6 sq ft shop, put up a sign saying Ex Fasion Disigner, and his business has quadrupled. Or you could visit Punjabi Bagh, pick out a house at random, ask to see the Auntie when the underpaid servant opens the door, and ask her what she does other than watch Saas Bahu soaps, the reply has got to be: “Oh I am a fashion designer ji. Part time for now, but when my husband ji gives more money, or saas ji dies, I will go full time.”

Alternatively, you could go to the half yearly drama called the Fashion Week and see it for yourself all under one roof. Folks who couldn’t spell fashion if the other option were to hang by their balls from the Eiffel Tower are couturiers to folks who are convinced that they cannot possibly go on wearing saris with no sequins on them, because their husbands have now got too much money besides three Honda cars. Bugger the people who don’t have clothes to wear. And never mind how the money happened – can you run an auto parts business in Karol Bagh without giving gaali?

So, quite clearly, Delhi now takes fashion very seriously indeed. Never mind what the British bitches say at every Fashion Week – those firangis never could understand our best-in-all-things land, could they? Never mind that Fashion Weeks across the world, according to a friend who’s followed it all for over a decade, feel like nice West End musicals, and the ones in Delhi are just about Bhojpuri nautanki. Everything has its takers, I suppose.

And what is it all about? Well, where do I begin? Okay, some shopkeepers in Old Delhi decided to sell colourful riffraff so people from places like Uttar Pradesh could come and buy those things and go back to their villages there and sell them to local people who were engaged in making weird clothes for the likes of the Moguls since the year 1550.

Then one day a Punjabi auntie, while chomping on paranthas in that overrated lane in Chandni Chowk, decided to buy some of the colourful riffraff, stuck it with superglue to a sari and dazzled everyone at the next kitty party in Greater Kailash. Mrs. Chadha got so jealous she immediately ordered the maid to investigate. Next thing we knew Mrs. Chadha and her whole family were fashion designers, thanks to lots of superglue. And they made enough money to buy a store (by this time, sadly demolished/sealed), run it like the blazes and marry both the daughters off at farmhouse venues.

For the most part, most Indian designers are still doing precisely this. That is to say, since they are too busy posing for pictures for the media, sleeping with one another, or getting raided by the (you-supply-the-name-as-they-all-do-it-to-fashion-designers) department of the Indian Government, their workers are busy doing it for them.

Which brings us to the workers...was a lovelier breed of blood suckers ever created? Nay, I think not. Even the cops and the government put together are nothing compared to how this lot can pull your balls (or bosom, if you’re an auntie ji designer). Hailing from that most blessed of Indian states whose name begins with a B, they have over the years realized that the big designer cannot do shit about anything if they all say we don’t want to work today, we want more pay, or simply It’s Friday.

Trust me, no Delhi designer ever says Thank God It’s Friday. Forget wages and work, the workers are instruments of plagiarism, strikes and riots in these poor social butterflies’ tiny workshops. Going with popular tradition in this city, many designers pretend to have outrageous foreign accents and would have you believe they speak no Hindi at all. Just go and see them at work some time: I am still shocked! Judging by that, you’d think nobody who knows how to plead like that with a tailor could possibly be a bitchy socialite the same evening.

So if it’s all that phony, who buys their crap anyway? Well, Non Resident Indians, mostly. After all, when you’re done with selling auto parts in Delhi, and you’ve gone all the way to Jackson Heights/Southall to do something worse, and you’ve still managed to save up enough to actually go in a taxi to the Dolce & Gabbana store, what do you do? Nah – screw D&G! You go to Delhi drinking airline Scotch all the way, loaded with business cards of all the leading designers, collected two months before from people around the block who have done it before, make appointments over the phone in a phony accent, and show up.

You never see a grubby obviously-hard-at-work designer. Well, neither would you at Lagerfeld. But here you never see a designer who can make a fashion illustration either. Most designer’s studios are shops where they have a selection of clothes with their label on them, clothes procured over the years from illiterate embroiderers who cannot imitate a British accent. They are shops, a la Mrs. Chadha’s, once of Greater Kailash, now of Aurangzeb Road. Still, to keep up with the Joneses, and with the Chudanis back in Jakarta or Johannesburg, you end up paying what you’d have paid for a nice Laura Ashley back home to someone who is the city’s couture king’s first assistant, and hence thought himself privileged enough to stare at your crotch throughout the meeting.

So why would anyone with half a mind on them do it? The women I do not claim to know why. And the men? Clearly, not the partying –gosh! I hear even the booze is fake, not just the jewels, and clearly, not the taken-away-in-imminent-raid money, nor the love of the workers, nor the clients’ boobs saying Bebe all day long.

I think they do it because it’s convenient, supposedly classy in Delhi echelons, pays rent and bills yet gives them time to sit home and engage in all kinds of bollocks while you’re probably going to your sorry little Nehru Place office in bus number 423 (with about 7000 people who stink yet wear neckties), and because they can say things like 106 people work for me, I have three chauffeurs and don’t have to bother with getting married or having kids – the only truth universally acknowledged about the fashion industry is that any man working in it of his own accord must be gay – and no questions asked. No, not even in Delhi.

Photo Essay: Easter in Delhi – Hindi People Vs. English People

Even Easter Sunday could not bridge the city's social divide.

[Report and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The Sunday was not sunny and so the overcast sky blew in cool wind and good mood. Lepers and hawkers gathered outside the iron gates of the Sacred Heart Cathedral at Central Delhi. Ms. Esther was selling posters of Mother Theresa and Pope Ratzinger. Mr. Joseph, showing off his bandaged feet, was asking for money.

Pious people came alone, in pairs, in families, and in groups to attend the Easter service. According to the 2001 census, there are 24, 080, 016 Christians in India, constituting 2.3 percent of the total population. Out of these, 130,319 live in Delhi, making up 0.9 percent of the city’s inhabitants.

An African gentleman, blooming in floral robes, stood beside a makeshift stall selling ten rupee copies of The Guide to the Churches of Delhi. A matronly lady, in a light blue saree, requested for monetary aid in helping her cope with a cancerous ailment. An ebony-skinned young woman in pink saree flashed a smile before disappearing inside for the sermon where the voice of the priest boomed from the tall ceiling as fans whirred lazily.

During the breaks in discourse, a couple of young men and women sang hymns on an electronic keyboard. Ladies in sarees and gentlemen in half-sleeved shirts continued sitting straight with folded palms and half-closed eyes. In fact the congregation appeared to be weighed down with mass melancholia. A middle-aged gentleman kneeled against the statue of Maa Mary and remained still in that position.

An unsmiling woman lighted candles in a corner. A mother on the right-side pew murmured prayers while her children chirped. An old man sitting in a corner looked lonely. A boy in blue jeans, standing near the entrance, yawned occasionally. Three Malayali ladies, sitting together, looked sad. Suddenly, a white family, with a little girl carrying a white doll, stood up and left.

Outside, the people waiting for the English service looked hipper. Two American ladies (from Chicago and Houston respectively), their hands dyed with henna, clicked pictures. The sarees the Indian ladies wore looked expensive. There were many young people, with Mongoloid features (which meant they hailed from the remote provinces of North East India), scattered around in casual summer clothes.

Western diplomats and their families trickled in with their big cars. Some backpacker tourists too chipped in – wearing vests and shorts! Meanwhile a couple of white-robed boyish priests, looking busy, hurried past here and there.

As minutes withered away, some of the waiting people sat down on the stairs while others went to a fast food stall offering samosas and coffee. Finally, when the Hindi service ended, the unglamorous people spilled out and the glamorous ones went in and they all got mixed up - briefly.



Open the Gates



Ms. Esther's Buisness Hour



Lady in Pink



We are Family



Thinking Jesus



The Hindi Congregation



The Sad Women



Hush, Mamma is Praying



The Resurrection of the Christ



At Maa Mary's Feet



Lady, Stand Up Please



The Boom off the Ceiling



The North East Christians



The Hip Crowd Gathers



Waiting for the English Service



The Hindi People Spills Out



Goodbye Easter

Confessions of an American - My Life in a New Delhi Gym

Cultural confusions of a desi gym having non-desi aspirations.

[By James Baer; picture of the "Weightlifter Hanuman" designed by Renu Rani Tyagi]

“What’s different about living in Delhi compared to America?” friends back home keep on asking me. It’s one of those questions that leave one unsure where to begin, and even after a year of living here, I’m still not certain how best to respond. The main reason is that a list of differences can quickly devolve into a catalog of gripes and frustrations, as the mention of the USA reminds me of the ways in which, by comparison, Delhi is still very much the capital of a developing country. Yet I find myself increasingly reluctant to reduce my India experience to a list of complaints, because my initial culture shock has given way to a more relaxed curiosity about what is different here. As much as possible, I try to feel amusement rather than annoyance when things don’t go quite as I might wish or expect.

Saying that India is irreducible to a series of neat observations is as obvious to those of us who live here as it is unsatisfying to my American questioners, but another way in might be to give them one snapshot, describing an activity here that they are familiar with at home. And what could be easier for many of my friends to grasp than that favorite Californian urban-suburban pursuit - going to the gym?

Yes, there are gyms in Delhi, I tell them, even though the work-out culture here isn’t as widespread as it is on the coasts of the U.S. I’ve no doubt that Delhi gyms, like their LA counterparts, range from the grungy to the glitzy. LA’s gym culture is well enough developed that there is a healthy competition for members, and while you can pay a lot there to join a more exclusive joint, a membership at a mid-range gym needn’t cost more than the equivalent of about Rs. 20,000 a year. Or you can join a gym in Delhi that is one-eighth the size of my old LA club, and often much more crowded – and for nearly two and a half times the price. I could probably have found somewhere cheaper than my current gym, but I chose it simply because it’s close to where I live. Ease of access is half the battle for those whose motivation is as underdeveloped as their stamina. But more interesting than the painful price differential are the cultural differences that I noticed – some immediately, some gradually – when I started my thrice-weekly regimen.

First, it has to be said that the clientele at my gym does not represent a cross-section of Delhi society. Gym-goers in Los Angeles by definition must have some disposable income, but the steep membership fees at my Delhi club mean that it caters basically to well-off locals, with a smattering of ex-pats like myself. So the people I chat with briefly on the floor or in the locker room are kids whose parents have money, or young professionals, and very occasionally someone (like me) almost old enough to be one of their parents. Everyone seems to be studying finance, aiming for an MBA, or working in the family business. The crowd is not just young but often conspicuously well dressed, whether in their work-out clothes or in the street clothes they change into afterwards. No old shorts, ratty t-shirts and beat up tennis shoes here. This is also the only gym where I’ve ever seen someone working out in cargo pants and a designer tee-shirt and shoes: even the most stylish work-out clothes seem too infra dig for some people.

The class difference extends to locker room etiquette, in a way that was initially rather disconcerting. Many a gym member hands his clothes wordlessly to the locker room attendant, who hangs them up or folds and puts them away in their bag; or the member just casts his clothes onto the bench with the assumption that they will be dealt with. Pleases and thank-yous are clearly not required. Some people do chat cordially with the attendant, but it’s the frequent master-servant attitude that is striking, all the more so because it seems to be accepted by both parties as a given. On my way out of the locker room I usually say “Thank you” to the attendant, regardless of whether or not he’s helped me directly that day. In return, I get a smile that’s hard to interpret: is it friendliness, appreciation – or just a certain amusement that I should cluelessly waste my time and his on a superfluous pleasantry?

Of course, the gym should ultimately not be about what you wear or how you behave, but about what you do, and there’s no disputing that everyone seems pretty intent on having a proper work-out. They’re not there just to show off, and from my position at the upper end of the client age scale, I can’t criticize their energy levels. Perhaps they are inspired by the music, which is usually so loud as to make idle conversation impossible. Or maybe it’s the lyrics being pounded into their brains that energize them: the compilations chosen by my gym include a considerable number of rap and other songs with graphic and vulgar descriptions of sex. I haven’t yet figured out whether multiply-repeated lines like “You already know I wanna fuck you” have the advantageous aerobic effect of making the heart beat faster, or whether to those gym members who are also dance club denizens they’re simply too familiar to be noticed.

The impression I have is that elements like those songs are part of a blasé-seeming attitude towards sex cultivated by the gym to appeal to the majority of its clients: we’re hip, westernized and contemporary, it tries to say. Unfortunately, the façade begins to crack when exposed to a native western pair of eyes. Look at the buff trainers, their biceps and pecs nicely outlined by their tight t-shirts. In their masculinity they’re identical to their American counterparts – until you notice that they can’t seem to keep their hands off each other. The easy physical contact which many Indian males have with their friends reaches its apogee at the gym, whose raison d’être is after all the body beautiful. As they pass each other, the trainers touch each other’s hands or chests, or they walk through the workout area together with their arms slung round each other’s shoulders. By contrast, in the men’s locker room there reigns an almost universal painful modesty about nudity, which leads to much contorted divesting and vesting of underwear from beneath towels wrapped tightly around the waist.

All of these goings-on are gazed upon by ultra-defined muscular males in photos that grace the walls of the establishment, including in the locker room a large poster of a male nude, who is presumably meant to rouse us to greater heights of disciplined exercise. All perfectly normal, one might think, and impeccably heterosexual – except that the pictures are predominantly by Herb Ritts, one of the most prominent gay American photographers. Ritts is known for works that slyly subvert heterosexual conventions by depicting hyper-masculine men in a way that is particularly appealing to gay viewers. In other words, his photos are homoerotic, and several of the ones at my gym are prime examples. It’s probably the case that a lot of Americans don’t quite cotton on to this – Ritts shoots models for the Abercrombie and Fitch clothing catalogs, after all – but I’m pretty sure that an American gym would steer nervously clear of displaying his photographs on their walls.

It seems to me that my gym has adapted some of the trappings of American gym culture without completely understanding the subtle, often blurred lines that define heterosexual and homosexual male identities in the west. Transposed to India, these western traits and affectations mix haphazardly with the very different ways in which Indian men relate to one another in terms of physical appearance and contact. The result is that notwithstanding the pounding macho music, the muscular trainers and the atmosphere of serious intent to exercise, through my western eyes my gym seems very gay!

Male sexual anxiety in the USA still often revolves around wanting to have a good-looking body while simultaneously not being mistaken for being gay. In Delhi, it seems to me that appearing gay is literally inconceivable to most men, who focus on a good physique because it is a component of the social, professional and romantic success that, to judge by their behavior, they feel they’re entitled to. “You already know I wanna fuck you,” they may be singing along in their heads – but only to the woman of their dreams. To my western eyes, however, it doesn’t always look that way. It’s just one small example of how life in Delhi is often confusing – but equally amusing.