Hub and hum ... children play at Jantar Mantar. Photo: ReutersIt's Saturday at the Friday mosque and my eyes are fixed on heaven. A promise of breeze in this soupy weather at the top of the southern minaret of Jama Masjid, as it is properly known, is irresistible. The city is on the cusp of the rainy season; the newspapers are predicting the date. I have the red face to prove it is close.
The ruling Congress party has postponed the monsoon session of parliament (the opposition claims it is stalling because of an overdue anti-corruption bill) but this weather pattern will not be dictated to.
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This vision of the fifth Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan - a mosque that houses 25,000 worshippers with domes of inlaid white marble - sits above Old Delhi's marketplace of Chandni Chowk.Under the arches of the giant pavilion, birds have nested in a chandelier. The sensible locals sit in the cool in that glorious state of time-pass; the disease of busyness is not here today.
I need a male escort for safety and a cloak for modesty to climb the 100 or so sandstone steps winding up to the minaret. The thermometer shows 33 degrees (and 90 per cent humidity, at a guess); next to it are world clocks, now rusted and frozen in time.
At the top, the wind billows my cloak and the city's heritage is an outline in the haze; there's the Red Fort, Yamuna River and the Sikh temple of Gurudwara Shish Ganj. Beyond are the orderly roads of New Delhi, the legacy of British rule. Below is the street for any type of musical horn or bell one might need, essential in a city of 16 million people (21 million counting the satellite towns) and traffic jams.
If this country's history - of Mughal empires, the British Raj, Indian rebellion and Partition in 1947 - is not overwhelming enough, consider the modern numbers in a country with pumping metropolises and a turbocharged economy. About 20 million mobile phones are bought every month and the Australian population equivalent starts school here annually.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's inaugural budget speech 20 years ago, opening Indian markets to foreign investment, marked the start of prosperity for some. Middle-class households number 31.4 million, according to a report released in February by the country's National Council for Advanced Economic Research. This represents only 13.1 per cent of the country's population of 1.1 billion but they own 52 per cent of airconditioners - a status symbol of the aspirational - and 49 per cent of all cars.
The antiquated and the modern take on a weird synchronicity on the road to Agra and the Taj Mahal, another of Shah Jahan's creations. I pass people travelling in new cars; on horse and buggy and elephant; then a disrobed muni, or Jain monk, running on the potholed road. From the Digambar sect, his nakedness represents freedom from the bonds of life.
Back in Chandni Chowk there's still room for tradition. There are enough crackers, sparklers and catherine wheels for the Hindu festival of lights, Divali, to light up the subcontinent. At Kinari Bazaar, there are supplies for big weddings: grooms' turbans, brides' veils, tinsel and garlands to adorn a house.
It's here, within laneways so narrow that 21st-century machinery won't fit, that my guide, Badam Yadav, describes his city; at the same time we dodge workers groaning under a handcart of sandbags as they negotiate a tight corner into the bowels of the chowk.
"We are one of the fastest-growing economies in the world," he says. "Money is not the issue. But there is so much pressure on infrastructure, and change can't happen in a day, especially when there are so many people."
Around the corner and inside a Sikh temple, behind the hall of worshippers and musicians, the community kitchen, where anyone can lend a hand, is in overdrive. The floor is slippery with spilled dhal from cauldrons being stirred with long sticks. At a marble slab, women have stopped by to knead and roll chapatti beneath that verse for many religions: "Guru Nanak Sahib is the head of this place, the unseen host at every meal, the silent listener."
When I ask a Delhiite if he considers his country to be religious, he looks at me with such a quizzical expression that no words are required. He enlightens me anyway.
"How could we not be? We live in mythology with so many gods and goddesses," he says.
In this city, changing social mores can be played out on ancient and extraordinary stages. Gay pride and the two-year anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality will be celebrated this afternoon at Jantar Mantar, an observatory of giant instruments for measuring celestial objects. But this morning it's visited by local families, picnicking beneath palms or clambering across the geometric forms that could be mistaken for modern sculpture.
The design talents of Maharajah Jai Singh II extended to observatories at Varanasi and Ujjain and within his palace compound at Jaipur.
Three centuries earlier, measurements of constellations, stars and planets were used for the ephemerides, books of tables giving the calculated positions of celestial objects over time that astrologers needed to make decisions about community and court life, according to Professor Barry Perlus of Cornell University in the US, who is involved in a multimedia project of the observatories.
There's the large sundial, called a samrat yantra, which measures the position of the sun, but I'm enchanted by the beauty of the slatted ram yantra, measuring altitude (height above the horizon in degrees) and azimuth (angular position relative to north or south) of celestial objects. Perlus says the samrat yantra in Jaipur can still measure local time to within two seconds of accuracy.
Days later, the monsoon announces its arrival in spectacular fashion and the timing couldn't be more fortuitous. I sit out a heavy dumping of rain at Pindi, a restaurant located in the Lodhi Colony area, eating subcontinental comfort food: creamy vegetable dumplings with a sharp, salted lemon soda to finish.
The sky clears enough for the short drive to Humayun's Tomb and its perfumed gardens, symbols of paradise filled with herbs, flowers and waterways.
The second Mughal emperor, Humayun, who ascended the throne in 1530, was particularly star-struck and deeply superstitious to boot.
He always entered a room left foot first and organised his kingdom along astrological lines, with elements divided into departments: fire was in charge of the military, water was for irrigation and the royal cellars. A sound like horses cantering reveals itself to be a group of artisans fashioning blocks of red sandstone for the seemingly endless maintenance at the first mausoleum built for a Mughal emperor.
The tomb is a fine example of Indo-Islamic architecture, described in textbooks as an architectural metaphor for the Indianisation of the Mughals.
It's one of the first structures in India to have a double dome, a complex construction, but it's the lotus-bud-fringed arches and the intricate jali work, or stone lattice, that keeps catching my eye as I circle the outside of the tomb.
Back in modern India during a home visit to suburban Rohini, my hosts Rakesh and Anu Wadhwa serve rajma (red kidney beans) and methi aloo (fenugreek and potato) and the smoothest, sweetest kheer, a rice dessert made with cardamom. I'm a welcome stranger in their two-bedroom apartment.
There is a sense of occasion when Anu closes the door on the male diners and opens a steel trunk full of saris to show the women, including the heavy gold and maroon number she wore on her wedding day.
Hers was an arranged marriage, she says, as she bunches and tucks the metres of pink fabric around me. But she would be happy for her daughter, now at university, to marry for love.
Rakesh, a real estate agent, says their nuclear living arrangement of just two generations, and a growing trend, is the product of circumstance, not design.
"Delhi has changed so much," he says. "Urban society in India is much less conservative today. But both my parents are dead, so what to do? We are born, we live, we die."
Jane Reddy travelled courtesy of Hotel Representation Australia, Jaypee Greens Golf & Spa Resort, Intrepid Travel and AirAsia X.
FAST FACTS
Getting there
AirAsia X has a fare from Melbourne for about $1027, to Kuala Lumpur (8hr), then Delhi (6hr). Services such as baggage and entertainment are extra. Sydney passengers can fly Malaysia Airlines to Delhi via Kuala Lumpur for about $1143. Fares are low-season return including tax. Australians require a visa for a stay of up to six months.
Touring there
Intrepid's day-long urban adventures in Delhi include the Culture Vulture Delhi walking tour ($28), Home Cooked Delhi ($33) and Mughals' Delhi ($59). See www.urbanadventures.com.
Intrepid's three-day Taj Mahal trip costs from $310 a person and includes a Delhi tour, meals, private airconditioned vehicle to Agra and the Taj Mahal, accommodation and local guide. Phone 1300 364 512, see intrepidtravel.com.
Jantar Mantar observatory is on Sansad Marg, Connaught Place. Open 9am-dusk. Entry $US2 ($1.90). See Cornell University's website about India's four observatories at jantarmantar.org.
The 14th edition of Lonely Planet India is available next month, ($49.99); digital chapters cost $4.99 each. See lonelyplanet.com.
Grand prix in style
A year after India's hosting of the Commonwealth Games, there's another race to the finish line on Delhi's outskirts at Jaypee Greens.
The final touches have been applied to the five-star resort in Greater Noida, which will accommodate drivers, crew and their families when the Formula One grand prix debuts here on October 30.
The 170-room hotel, owned by the Jaypee Group, is 12 kilometres from the Buddh International Circuit race track. It overlooks the front nine of a lush 18-hole Greg Norman-designed golf course and has seven restaurants and a Six Senses spa.
The property also has a sports complex of Olympic-sized swimming pool, basketball courts and driving range. Company ambassador and cricketer Sachin Tendulkar has a luxury residence here. An International Cricket Council-approved ground accommodating 130,000 fans will be complete next year.
Nearby, construction is under way on a 165-kilometre expressway from Greater Noida to Agra and the Taj Mahal. Travel time to the monument will be cut from the current five hours on the busy National Highway 2 to two hours.
Rooms cost from $350 a night; see jaypeegreens.com.
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