A reunion in Delhi was years on our bucket list. We daydreamed aloud, we planned, we prepared itineraries, we re-planned – depending on what we were doing with our families and for them – but we did not let go of our dream of meeting in the capital.
The three of us had studied there at different times, decades earlier. Now only one of us was living out of Delhi, and it seemed easy to fix a date – and then coordinate in which home to stay and when and where to meet.
So, one set of tickets was bought and the other two arranged their lives around the days of their friend’s visit. Luckily, the globetrotter among us had no high level meetings in Geneva or Washington scheduled for that time of year and was staidly confined between her office and home just a couple of kilometres from her friends.
Phone calls, Skype sessions, FaceTime, e-mails, WhatsApp – anything that could be used – kept the three in touch as the chief organiser in Delhi got a feel of where the visitor would like to go and how and when they should take her. Excel sheets were made and amended and re-made to cover the week of her stay to ensure that she got to see her old school, old college, old haunts – as well as the new sights that had come into existence since she had left.
Although we had spent our growing years in Delhi, we had never done the sightseeing route that tourists followed, so it was decided that we should reserve one day for the Hop-on Hop-off (HOHO) bus and get up close and personal to the Qutb Minar that had been visible from a balcony years earlier, the Lodhi Gardens that we had passed on our way to school: all the places skirted for some reason or the other in our youth and all the places that had come up since then.
There were shopping stops to factor in too: Connaught Place, Janpath, Dilli Haat, malls and bargain basements. There were eating places we just had to try out one more time. We had been there when the first ‘Softy’ ice cream came to Delhi: we had to taste it again. We just had to ‘see it all and do it all’.
And we started out with a bang. On the very first day, we rushed from place to place. We crossed three things from the agenda. We even fulfilled a long held desire to attend the book fair and wander among the stalls – and we browsed to our hearts’ content and dragged ourselves out only because we still had miles to go and more places to see.
We certainly didn’t think we needed to stop and put our feet up. The excitement of meeting had sent an adrenaline rush coursing through us and we were sure it would keep us soaring through the entire week.
Naturally, it didn’t.
By day two, one of us had been felled by a crick in the back, the other had been laid low by a spike in temperature. Side by side, with a soft groan and a little moan, we sprawled on the sofa – and had an age- and health-appropriate re-look at that excel sheet that had accounted for practically every moment of every day.
‘We didn’t think all those sights and sounds were exciting during our youth – why do we want to go there now?’ we asked ourselves. And, sensible at last, the agenda was whittled down. No hopping on and off buses, no malls, no window shopping, no museums, no tombs, no towers...
Instead, we put up our feet, poured out the coffee, leaned back on the cushions and did what we do best. Talked, reminisced, daydreamed aloud...
Cheryl Rao is a freelance journalist based in India.
