In Delhi we ended up staying with a friend of a friend, Takahiro, who to me was actually a few more steps removed, but who graciously opened his South Delhi door for us and is now a friend. We spent our third day in Old Delhi where we paraded around the Jama Masjid in floral patterned velcro burqas that were forced on us even though we were perfectly covered up, marveled like good tourists at the super impressive Mughal architecture, and shared a meal with an old adorable granny who insisted that we try all her dishes. We meandered all afternoon through the winding alleyways that fulfilled all their promise of being chaotic bazaars. At the end of it all we squeezed (literally) our way through the worst and most amazing traffic I've ever seen - a tangle of bicycles, cycle-rickshaws and human-pulled wood carts overloaded with canvas sacks of things like dried red chillies or enormous cardboard boxes and a million honking motorcycles - and into an incredibly modern metro system.. It's amazing that India is moving right along with the modern age but losing nothing to history...there are just enough people to have it all going on.
That night Tak took us to a part of town called Nizamuddin, where there is a Sufi shrine to Saint Nizamuddin. The shrine is at the end of a long miniature stone alley bursting with person-sized shops displaying bright green religious accessories and brown baskets of bright pink roses for offering. We offered some roses and sat on the floor in the shrine, chatted with some aunties who within 5 minutes had invited us to stay with them in Bangalore, got blessed by a man with what seemed like a beautiful, large cloth duster, and were given some consecrated sugar-coated crunchies. After a while two men sat down and began singing and chanting and playing the harmonium. It was qawwali, a form of Sufi devotional music. We had thought we weren't going to get to see it because it was Wednesday, and it is performed there every Thursday. Hooray! After the shrine we went to eat delicious kebabs and biriyani at a daytime tire shop turned barbecue restaurant at night. Kebabs and tires, yes!
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