New Delhi greeted the deplaning passengers at Indira Gandhi International Airport with a wall of heat and the pungent scent of pollution in the air. I arrived with seven out of eight of my fellow Indiana law students (our one unfortunate comrade wasn't booked on the connecting flight and would meet us the following day). It had been a chaotic and exhausting trip to New Delhi. In fact it was a miracle all of us plus our luggage actually arrived together. Weather delays caused us to narrowly make our connection – with only 5 minutes before our connection was scheduled to take off, we sprinted off the plane from Indianapolis, managed to catch the shuttle from one concourse to the other, and then ran to the opposite end to make it just before they shut the doors. As we left the cool airport into the heat, we noticed an Indian man holding a “Welcome Indiana University” sign. He and three other drivers were there to pick us up and transport us to our accommodations in the Anand Niketan district near Delhi University. One would think the chaos was over after arrival, but there was still one more obstacle between me and a soft pillow – New Delhi’s traffic.
My first impression of the city can really be summed up in that whirlwind night ride from the airport to the guesthouse. Three observations were the most discernible:
1. The polluted haze hovering over the city looked heavier than any I’d ever seen before. Obviously, that shouldn’t a big surprise in the largest city in the country with the world’s second largest population. But seeing the city lights sheltered by the smog, illuminating the ground and the sky with a dense gold glow; inhaling the acrid air; and almost feeling it building up over every inch of exposed skin amounted to a level of pollution I found particularly noteworthy.
2. Where there’s smog that thick, there must be some serious traffic issues . . . . But again, it’s to be expected India. Anyone would anticipate roads jammed bumper-to-bumper with cars, right? I also expected to see standard traffic laws regarded as mere suggestions in India. While scooting along the highway and analyzing those expectations, I was reminded that it’s one thing to hypothesize and quite another to be in the thick of it.
In the endless caravan along New Delhi’s roads, cars seem to leave a following distance of less than 2 feet. It looks impossible to change lanes but it’s accomplished by casually driving over the lane divider while honking and flashing your lights until you get your way. Shockingly, it takes almost no time at all to make the switch, and somehow it’s done without ever once checking over your shoulder to see what’s in your blindspot (I have yet to see a driver do this). I guess the assumption is, Why bother? There will always be someone there in a city this crowded!
3. Construction, slums, apartments, slums, businesses, slums. Repeat. This was the general scene looking out the window as the driver whizzed through the city from the airport to the guesthouse. Reruns of the same spectacle have been played ever since. It’s ironic that amid so much foreign investment, such dynamic economic growth, and what looks like enough construction projects in Delhi to employ a multitude, extreme poverty is still able to thrive so pervasively. Once I've spent more time exploring the city, I imagine I'll have more comments on this subject.
After a weekend of settling into the guesthouse, catching up on sleep, and setting up cell phones, the real purpose of this trip started Monday. I'm working for a small boutique law firm, Koura & Co. for three weeks, and then I'll switch to Novus Pro, a legal services company that specializes in document review and analysis for law firms and corporations. The internship has barely started but I'm enjoying the projects and eager to start exploring the city.
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