Am I Crazy or Adventurous? A Lesson in Praying

Tonight, I am scared.  Panicked, actually.  My heart is beating in my throat and my ears are starting to close down.  Survival adrenaline surges into my eyes.  Keep alert. Breathe. Keep up.  Breathe.  Breathe.  Keep moving.

We are on a narrow stone road in a marketplace maze in old Delhi where the Muslim community has lived and shopped for the last 700 hundred years. The winding medieval neighborhood has remained almost unscathed except for the intrusion of thousands of live electrical wires above our heads.

The crush of people is claustrophobic, shoulder to shoulder, fronts pressed into backs, we move forward in a slow swarm. I can’t see where we are going.  This is the way people get crushed in riots and soccer stadiums. Breathe.  Keep going.  Breathe.

Motorcycles squeeze between and around us.  Screaming.  A little girl, no older than 4 or 5 is screaming.  She is being dragged in the opposite direction from her mother who holds her hand tightly.  The little girl ’s puffy princess skirt is caught in the gears of the motorcycle.  The crowd yells for the motorcycle to stop.  The girl is a fish caught on a line, helpless to escape  More screams.  I lose my balance and tip to the left.  My leg hits the searing hot exhaust pipe of a different motorcycle.  Finally, a man wrenches free the little girl’s skirt and she returns to the safety of her mother’s wing.  Her mom smacks her head, a presumed warning to stay closer next time.

My hand stays on Robinson’s shoulder so no one can separate us.  Harry is behind me, I think.   I’m too nervous to turnaround to check. He is a foot taller and I trust he can see my hear.

Robinson has warned us that this place is holy,  but as you would experience with every throng, our fellow pilgrims may not be. We are to expect pickpockets and purse slashers.  I’m more worried about being crushed or lost.  I am acutely aware that my arm is the only thing keeping me from wafting down the wrong alleyway in this labyrinth.  We are in an Indo-Muslim ghetto where few speak English and my only second language is bad Spanish.

Robinson, like Cher and Madonna, has one name. He showed me his driver’s license. It’s true, I checked because I wouldn’t put it past him.  He is a self-described motormouth, poet, scholar, farmer, teacher, artist, and author and quite sure of himself, arrogant, but in a charming way.  Then again, I’m a recovering narcissist’s assistant and some of my best friends are showboaters and grandstanders.  I have a penchant for bombast.

His incessant rat-a-tat-tat of names and dates is impossible to follow.  We are Americans with almost no understanding of the world beyond  European history and it shows.   Our Indian cultural knowledge encompasses curry, samosas, a half-read copy of the novel, Shanataram, and multiple viewings of Slumdog Millionaire.  Plus a few conversations friends in the film and tech world. Not exactly well-versed. We nod like mute schoolchildren.

Suddenly, roses.  We are surrounded with the pervasive scent of sweet deeply aromatic roses.  Deep red rose petals in massive bins spill out of the storefronts around us as if there is an insatiable supply and demand for intoxicating red blooms.  We have somehow come up to the deepest well of roses the world has ever known.  Baskets and bushels and trays, on the street and in the bins are all for sale, all for us to offer to the tomb of the most important Sufi saint in Delhi, and perhaps in India, Hazrat Nizzamuddin Aulia.

We are here for a Thursday night qawwali, a trance-inducing musical ceremony that begins sometime between 7 PM and 10 PM.   The crowds are double, Robinson says, because it’s a holiday called Diwali, the equivalent of our Christmas and people are on vacation.

We pass through another tunnel of roses before the crowd eases and we spill into a dark courtyard.  An archway leads to another courtyard steps below us, more crowded than where we just came.  Robinson turns to us and says, “I don’t feel safe taking you in there.  If it were just Harry, I would do it but…” his voice trails off and the implications are clear.  My head is covered but in this country (and the world), women take their chances in large crowds of men.  No question, 80 percent of the pilgrims are men.  The other 20 percent are banded together in their own girl posse surrounding the tomb.  Women aren’t allowed in (again).

Robinson takes us up above the swelling crowds to a rooftop overlooking the shrine. The raga is beginning.  We can’t see the musicians but we can hear the thump of tablas and drums.  A holy chant lifts from somewhere in the crowd below, passing us on its way to heaven.

“So,” Robinson says, “Are you ready to eat?”

We descend the steps.  The crowds have left the narrow streets but I’m still nervous. Eating on the streets of Delhi is its own adventure.  I could turn back.  There’s no award given at the end of the night for sampling street food that I know of.   Are my nerves telling me to walk, eat or pray?