Thoughts about Delhi 2

It's wonderful to be in a city which takes cognizance of India's diversity as much as Delhi does. This city has changed so much, from the provincial but accidental darbar seat of India to a truly multicultural, even cosmopolitan city. I have sensed it before, but this time I can really tell. Maybe Delhi has become more this way since my last visit and maybe the contrast with Chennai--and my life--is just that stark.
Chennai, on the other hand, feels more and more provincial. Determinedly monolingual, monocultural, insular, even xenophobic... at the risk of being inundated by hate-mail and worse, I have to write this. Chennai doesn't feel like India.
This is the India I grew up in. Delhi still has traces of it. A continental national vision that has slowly, steadily made a melange of its determinedly North Indian cultural base. Nehru's India is still alive in Delhi--physically and now, culturally.
I want to say I feel like a foreign tourist because Chennai doesn't seem to belong to this country at all. But more, I feel like an exile coming home.
Bombay also used to feel like another world. And I used to say when I worked here twenty years ago that I stayed and worked in Delhi but lived in Bombay. I would compare Delhi to Aurangzeb's darbar where I was like a visiting mansabdar with a very small mansab. Shivaji.
Now both Delhi and I have changed, I come from elsewhere, and this feels so delightful.

Last night, I was at the DIAF concert featuring Bhai Baldeep Singh singing Gurbani in Dhrupad style for the first hour and then Aruna Sairam singing Bhakti music in eight languages in the second. Aruna Sairam and I come from the same India: where all these languages and all this music is ours to enjoy and cherish. I also really enjoyed the first part, and relished the idea that I could access and learn about something new so easily here.

On another note, though, in a continuation of my earlier reactions to Delhi experiences, I heard the DIAF organizer say this was India's largest arts festival and thought: really? One whole month, Margazhi, dedicated to the performing arts and now spilling past the month on either side... that's surely a good contender for the title.
I could also understand why Carnatic performers enjoy their 'season' concerts so much. It must be so nice to just sing and not be in explanation/translation mode.