Delhi has a smell about it, especially first thing in the morning. I actually kinda like it. It's like incense and sweet wood and smoke. The locals tell me it's the pollution, but it's not like a lot of polluted cities I've visited, although Delhi is certainly not clean. It smells like something exotic and young and strange, something still trying to figure out what it is, even though it's been here since the beginning of the world.
Everyone here speaks Hindi (or one of a hundred other local languages), but everybody, and I mean everybody, reads English. Any signage anywhere is in English first and anything else second, or not at all. The general level of English fluency is amazing. It's better than most European countries, even the commie polyglot ones. It's also hard to miss the fact that everybody on Indian TV is a whole lot whiter than people in Indian real life.
People in Delhi drive the way they live. It's a country of 1.4 billion souls, most of whom live in desperate poverty. If you wait for opportunity to come your way, you'll be waiting a long time. You have to take every chance you can, make opportunities, and run with them. When people in Delhi drive, they'll squeeze their car (or motorcycle, bike, pedalcab, rickshaw, tractor and/or camel) into any spot that their car (or etc) can fit into. Everything is jammed together and jumbling around and always trying to find a crack to slip just a little bit further.
India is like a Dickens novel with cell phones and vespas, and if you've read any Dickens, you'll know what I mean. There are lots of desperate poor who have absolutely nothing. There are lots of working poor who have a job, probably serving someone, and are happy to have it. There are some middle class folks with good jobs and some luxuries, and there are a handful of stinking rich people. The gap between each one of these tiers of lifestyle is huge and ever present and everyone is looking all the time to stay afloat where they are.
India is like a Dickens novel with cell phones and vespas, and if you've read any Dickens, you'll know what I mean. There are lots of desperate poor who have absolutely nothing. There are lots of working poor who have a job, probably serving someone, and are happy to have it. There are some middle class folks with good jobs and some luxuries, and there are a handful of stinking rich people. The gap between each one of these tiers of lifestyle is huge and ever present and everyone is looking all the time to stay afloat where they are. 
I don't know if this blog post makes India sound unpleasant, but it's not. It has its problems, some huge ones, but it's also a country in the midst of an incredible transformation. It's not the country it was ten years ago and it's not the country it's going to be ten years from now. I have no idea what India will be to my children but I know it will be unrecognizable compared to the India my parents knew. The people here are building a new society and a new country in a very old place. There is a very real and tangible sense that this is happening and everybody is a part of it.
It's an exciting place to be, beautiful and messy and strange.
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