The Delhi airport is new and shiny, no trace of the cracked cement floors, dust and smell of mothballs that I remembered. There are many men waiting for their luggage, fewer women. Outside the air is biting cold and drivers with signs are bundled up. Glancing across shades of brown and varying headdresses (turban, prayer caps, sweatshirt hoodies) to locate our driver, I realize it is a more diverse crowd than I recollected, and a tamer one too. Things feel very orderly, almost quiet in fact. The car park has automated machines, a solitary flower vendor inside a glass shop, a couple of dogs who look surprisingly well fed and playful. On the road it is even quieter, almost eerily so, as we navigate through empty streets, weaving around police blockades, receiving nods from straight-faced policemen in heavy overcoats. We are near the embassies and government buildings, and its midnight on a Sunday after all, which likely explains the deserted feeling that permeates the landscape of our drive from the airport to our hotel. Still, Drew thinks so far Delhi feels more like East Berlin than what he had anticipated. We pull up to the hotel and guards with flashlights check the trunk, the hood, and peer into our eyes. It is impossible to go through such a procedure without a rising fear creeping up, ever so slightly. Where is the shouting, the honking, the raucous color, the cacophony of sounds and noises? I am sure it is still there, but at Le Meridien, with its rising towers and slick lobby, overly air-conditioned, there is only a sense of containment, of a precariously maintained modernism, a cultivated minimalism notable not for the repose it provides but for what is lacking, what is kept away, at bay.
clarebeardrew 