Delhi's dark side

I realise that, up until now, I haven't written anything about Delhi. I flew in to the city, arriving about 3am, so I plead fatigue, jet-lag and general acclimatisation in my defence.

I think I was also culture-shocked beyond what I could have imagined by this city. I'd been warned by various friends who'd visited that it was a difficult city to start in. I thought I'd be fine, having been to India twice before. I knew what to expect and I knew how to handle it. In reality, I didn't have a clue.

The word I find, after consulting my internal thesaurus, that comes closest to describing it is 'brutal'. I mean this in every sense of the word. I felt the city itself was hard and uncaring, never mind the people.

The traffic had a ceaseless, rawness to it with endlessly blasting horns, aggressive manoeuvres and blind disregard for others. The grey air was dust- and exhaust-choked and breathing in that foul miasma you just couldn't avoid sometimes brought me close to panic.

The houses, most made of brutal concrete, were taking part in a relay of creation and disintegration. New structures rose, grey and harsh, with steel reinforcements poking out the top into the polluted air above, as if trying to pierce and scratch it away. Others were breathing their last breath, crumbling into decay and dust. Others were in a halfway state, paint carelessly slapped on and splashed around to conceal an inner state of terminal decay, or peeling and blotched with mould. Many had corners soaked and stained in the foul-smelling result of years of use as outside, impromptu public latrines.

Every building seemed to be a shop, all selling everything and nothing you could ever need. Huge signs obliterated all pretence at decoration. Each shop and house was hooked up to the life- and light-giving drip of electricity. The city's hapazard life-blood was administered through a networks of cables draped, looped, dangling, crawling and entwined like ancient vines across the walls and streets.

These same streets were all but swallowed up with years' accumulations of litter, stray dogs, cows and beggars. Plastic bags seeping putrid liquid from their decomposing contents, rippled with flies, these interspersed with mounds and smears of excrement from all forms of life, in all stages of freshness and decay.

Hollow, dull-eyed beggars clad in begrimed flags of ancient sun-bleached clothes, stretched out withered, black-nailed claws and mouthed for food or money, the sound of their pleas having long ago died on their cracked lips. Some had no arms, some no legs, some no eyes. All dragged and hauled themselves about using whichever limbs remained or arranged their stumps and bodies onto trolleys with wheels and propelled themselves by planting their bare hands or sticks into whatever disgusting things had been left on the street.

Weaving themselves through this grotesque tapestry, stray dogs snuffled through the dust, trotted, scratched incessantly or slept, occasionally rousing themselves to cock a leg or crouch wherever the mood took them.

Cows seemed to be the only calm beings visible. Moving slowly and unflinchingly through several lanes of traffic, like lumpen islands, bobbing in a fast-moving stream of humanity, they came to rest on rubbish heaps, pavements, in the middle of the road or on traffic islands. There they lay, their liquid eyes oblivious to the bedlam that swirled around them, chewing on abandoned husks of whatever they could find and flicking away the ceaseless ballet of flies that danced around them.

But it was also the people who were brutal. Those I encountered during my three days there were hard-nosed, cruel and pushy. Or they were simply uninterested.Or they were too interested in an unsavoury, ugly way that made my skin crawl, my heart race and my panic reflexes set in.

One such occasion was when walking through a livestock market. Right in the centre of Old Delhi, it spread its tangy, acidic, urine-soaked footprint below the city's main mosque. I thought I had to pass through the market to get to the mosque which I wanted to visit (later I found another route, too late). So I squelched through a foul, foetid soup of piss and shit-drenched straw, mud and litter, towards the mosque. It was only one long straight street, at the end of which I could see the mosque, but it was a walk of forever.

Men with crumpled, tired faces, filthy shirts and piercing eyes crouched in the filth that surrounded their clutches of ragged, patchy goats, sheep or cattle. Every step I took released a blizzard of flies that battered themselves wildly against my bare arms and face, while the mire beneath my feet sucked at my flip-flops, flicking it's acrid filth up the back of my trousers.

There was not a woman to be seen. I know, I looked for them. Nor was there a single other foreigner. Stretching up to the hazy mirage of the mosque, man after dark-eyed man stared as my beacon of cleanliness and pallor passed by them.

Then one man started to follow me. At first I thought he was just going in the same direction, but each time I stopped, he lingered on the pretext of looking at an animal here or there. He had wild, dusty hair; small, darting eyes and a mouth that moved constantly, chewing what was probably tobacco, As he opened it to chew, he revealed a red-stained ruin of crooked teeth.

I walked on. Easing through a small bunch of people gathered in the path, I felt a hand brush my behind. I thought it must have been an accident, due to the crowding and paid no attention.

The man carried on following me, getting bolder now, drawing nearer. I felt the touch again, this time with a squeeze when there was no-one else near me. Now I knew it had to be him. I turned round and glared at him, uselessly through my sunglasses. He looked at me briefly, expressionless - no guilt, no emotion in those gimlet eyes - before turning away and moving on.

Now he must have decided this was a sport. How many times, he must have thought, could he grope me without me realising until it was too late? Now he followed me to one side and slightly behind, the best position to make a quick, darting grab. His hand dangled at the ready, like a filthy, useless claw.

I walked on, keeping him in the periphery of my vision. My heart started to pump and I began to sweat, from both the heat and the anxiety. I didn't think he would do anything more serious; there were just too many people about, but all the same it got to me, to have my space invaded and violated so publicly, yet so deliberately secretively.

The next time it was a definite squeeze. I'd had enough. I turned on him and slapped at his arm, shouting loudly, 'Don't touch me, you dirty bastard!' Of course the insult was lost, but spitting it out released my tension and replaced it with a healthy fearless rage. Pointing my finger right in his face I yelled, 'Touch me again and I'll f***ing kill you!'

His face was infuriatingly impassive, as if I'd just asked him the time, and totally without expression. No remorse, no shame, nothing given away. Others raised their heads and looked in our direction, mildly interested to see what the commotion was. But they saw nothing to be alarmed about and soon turned away.

The man now realised he'd reached the end of his luck and walked on ahead. I breathed heavily, my heart returning to normal. I walked the rest of the way with either my hands or my bag behind my back, just in case.

Of course, this was just one man in a city of millions, but the general feeling that constantly ticked at the back of my mind in Delhi and tugged at my nerves, was one of menace and threat.

On another occasion, I was heading back to a Metro station around dusk. Once the sun sets, the light drops rapidly and it was dark before I knew it. I thought I'd take a short-cut to get back quicker, but it was a mistake. It took me down a dark side street, flushed with patches of intermittent, weak yellow light from the few sparsely-placed lampposts that worked.

As if they'd been hiding in the cracks of the night, staring, leering man began to seep out into the road. As I passed, some hissed and called out to get my attention. Others seemed to grab their crotch and murmur probably lewd comments at me as I passed. Yet others stared openly and turned to watch as I walked past. I ignored them all. Thankfully no-one followed me this time.

I realised that, again, women had disappeared with the light and I seemed to be a lone woman alone in this fog of malign words and whispered threats I didn't understand.

No-one approached me but I felt at would only be a matter of time. My heart began to race and I felt a knot of panic begin to tighten in my chest. Each corner I turned revealed no station. Every street was darker than the last and every face, bush or doorway was filled with a cold, whispering menace. In despair of ever seeing the Metro again, I decided to hail a rickshaw. It was better to pay, whatever the price, and go whatever the distance than suffer this fear any longer. Suddenly a sign in the shape of a large 'M' emerged out of the dark, the air around it glowing with dust motes, like a halo of safety and security. The knot inside unravelled and as I approached the light, the dark shapes and darker threats melted back into the Delhi night.

When I finally left the city it was with a heart light with relief to leave it behind and excitement to see what was to follow. Something much better, I hoped.