Chandni Chowk

The only word I can think of for Chandni Chowk is psychedelic. There is a constant, shoulder to shoulder stream of cars, motorcycles, motorized rickshaws, pedal powered rickshaws, and people of all shades in clothes that are either dazzling with color and sequins, or shabby, or could have come off the streets in Oakland, or out of the desert in Afghanistan or Egypt with Peter O'Toole. Bright turbans and full black beards for young Sikhs, or faded head wraps and long grey beards for old men who look like Hindu holy men. Shiny leather shoes and Nike knock-off  crosstrainers move along with barefeet or flipflops. Some women look western, some have their head covered, some their face, others are wearing a full burqa. Amid the people on foot are very adept and strong fixed gear bicycle rickshaw drivers hauling people who don't want to fight the swell. They swerve in and out of traffic, avoid pedestrians, stop on a dime, jump off to push if the slope is too steep and they have lost what little momentum they have managed to accumulate. Some of the tiny streets are so narrow that only foot traffic or bicycle rickshaws are allowed. Most carry passengers, but some have modified the rig to carry freight like lumber, plumbing, burlap and plastic bags of wholesale cinnamon, cardoman, tumeric, cloves, nutmeg, and every other ingredient possibly needed for a good curry or sweet dessert.

Chandni Chowk is a modernized (chopped up) area of havelis (huge walled estates owned by the wealthy in the days of Shah Jahan) just across the road from the Red Fort. What used to be gardens and peaceful manors, is now a noisy, bustling series of narrow streets with tiny retail stores on street level with apartments on floors 2, 3, and sometimes 4. Usually, each tiny artery has a specialty: jewelry, spices, electronics, shoes, saris, opticians, beads, you name it, there is a small street in Chandni Chowk with dozens of shopkeepers eager for your business.

My driver, Saleem, took me up a dark and narrow stairwell on spice street. We had to wait to go up while a train of men of all ages and builds carried 25 kilo bags of spices on their head or shoulders out to waiting trucks. The air in this area is so thick with the smells of the spices that both of us were sneezing as we climbed the stairs. These stairs have been climbed everyday since about 1650. On the roof, across the open space of the haveli, was a building in which (according to Saleem) Shah Jahan kept a harem of 150 women. On lower roofs were women sorting through large piles of spices looking for bad seeds, young men lying around talking or sleeping, children playing, clothes being washed and hung.