We sing under the rain

By Orpha Faramelli and Hadrien Loquillard

Today was a rainy day, it’s Sunday. We had to visit Daryaganj Sunday Book Market in order to have a first impression of local markets.

The market is located in Old Delhi, near the famous Red Fort. According to the website, it’s an outside market, where the books lie on the sidewalks.

We left the apartment in the morning to go to the metro station. But on our way there, due to the weather conditions and the market type we strongly believed that it wasn’t a good day to go there.

But even if it was raining we were determined to go there.

We went outside of the Chandhi Chowk metro station and we saw a crowded hall. People were waiting, because the monsoon was striking Old Delhi. Anyway, after 1h30 of metro, we decided to pursue our quest of visiting the market.

We started to walk under the rain, and in 5 minutes we were wet. Some of the street shops were selling umbrellas; the sellers were very friendly with us asking us if we wanted one. But since we were completely wet, we declined their offers.

In order to find more quickly our way we decided to ask where the market is. We try to ask in Hindi: “Kahan hai Daryaganj?” But it wasn’t working; we don’t have a good Hindi accent yet. We finally found an English speaker, who told us that the market was close but might be closed.

We went in the indicated street, and there was nothing, only people trying to find a shelter. At this moment we saw under an umbrella a guy who looked like a European. We started to speak to him, he is a French scriptwriter, and he is travelling in India since 2 months. He was visiting Old Delhi because he is leaving the next day.

In this conditions, we choose to stay together (he had an umbrella). We saw at the end of the street the Red Fort and we took its direction. We arrived in the front gate of the monument, and people told us that everything is outside so we decided not to go in.

After 1h30, under the rain it’s begun to be hard for us, we started to be cold, and smell of the street was awful, we were walking between pee and floating plastic bags… We wanted to go home but the French guy recommends us a restaurant “Karim’s”. We noticed that the restaurant is very famous, the locals indicated us the way and we could talk a little bit with them. One of them tried to say: “Bonjour” and “ça va”.

During lunch time the French gave us some advices for the rest of our trip. Where to eat, what we should visit…

Our trip together end up in the metro station, it was so cold. We were dreaming of a hot shower, but the showers when we arrived were not working.

This day wasn’t planned to be like this, but in India each day is an adventure. And it won’t the last.

31/08/2014