As an outsider, on a year-long visit to Delhi, I am curious to explore the city, burrow into its secrets and try to remain unfazed by reports that say no month here is without its desperation.
I follow the contours of this city through the Hindu lunisolar calendar, which clubs two months together to smooth discrepancies in the lunar and solar calendars. I find this both whimsical and charming.
In the fiery months of May and June in Delhi, Jyeshta in the Hindu lunisolar calendar, I have little choice but to spin with dust storms that draw out the existing volatility. It feels like swallowing the sun and sand at once. The muggy months of Ashadha (June and July) make an amphibian out of me, forcing me to breathe water in the air; it, however, gladdens mosquitoes who love the sizzle of heat and humidity.
The months of Shravan (July and August), which, according to my readings, once brought gentle rains with visual and lyrical appeal, now bring cannonballs of water. And, long, clammy, tortured days and nights with discordant screeches of crickets. Bhadrapada (August and September) stifles me with sullen, menacing, withholding clouds, snarls of traffic jams and noxious fumes that smell of extinction.
Ashvina (September and October), the months of fall and renewal respectively, pose trick questions to me: how do we hold on to things we love though they are fading and how do you see the world as it is and yet find light. Kartika (October and November) is puffed with sunlight and warmish winds, with bees, butterflies, dragonflies and fruit flies that buzz with giddy effervescence. But with stubble burning in neighbouring states, an acid-tasting blanket of haze dims all loveliness.
Margashirsha (November and December) continue to be smoke-smudged, leaving me with a lot of grey to work with. It takes away the flamboyance of the Delhi winter and leaves me with a thin cackle of static that splutters itself out of breath. Pausha (December and January) comes in snow-chilled and bluster-winded, muffled with smog grey skies and bird songs that turn hoarse. In Magha (January and February), I see the sun, a translucent disc, trying to save itself from lifelessness. And, Falgun (February and March) brings in water-air-earth scents, mustard in bloom and the silk cotton trees that burst into fleshy blooms. Yet the smog prevails.
Can this city that so caught my imagination become habitable again?
“I have sent my children away from this hostile, polluted city, from its extremes of weather and they will never bring their children back here. My life is empty and I will die of a broken heart,” bemoans Kamala Devi, who was born in the city in 1940 and widowed in her twenties.
My heart weeps for her. For Delhi, which has lost its magic and mystique. For the erstwhile poet, who celebrated the city with the words: “I asked my soul, what is Delhi? She replied: The world is the body and Delhi is its life.”
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