If I had magic power, I'd reduce the number of people on the planet.
Jane Goodall

I awaken on my first morning in Delhi, bright-eyed and eager to see it all. I dress hastily and quickstep out the Imperial Hotel and onto the streets for a pre-dawn stroll to watch the city awaken. The nearest thing to peace in downtown Delhi takes place at this perfect hour, in the dim light of primal dawn, when the air still has a fresh, unused feel to it. At this time even the most ardent debauchers are still at roost. And not just in the slums. I ponder the eerie quiet as I step over a few of the city’s many homeless who have made their nest this night in the fashionable hotel district. Bodies lie like flotsam, in doorways, under poster-plastered trees, and in gutters.

I walk about a mile, past a single familiar logo-McDonalds, touting its muttonburger Maharaja Mac (no sacred beefburgers in Hinduland)-then turn back toward the hotel. Already in this brief timespan the cityscape has morphed. A hazy light now overlays the streets, casting an eerie mood over the dawn. Smoke and dust fill the air and explain my sudden cough. There are many more people milling about, a fraction of Delhi’s 22 million, give or take. Who’s counting any more? On the distant hillsides, now visible in the gloaming, are sprawling shantytowns, the willy-nilly brown blight that creeps over the environs hourly as migrants arrive from rural villages, seeking a better life. Same old, same old.

 

I took more people pictures in India than anywhere I’d ever been. There are simply no stereotypes here. Everyone looks made up to a Westerner, like Holloween. Which means, of course, they need to have their picture taken. This mosque was my first visit to the world of Islam and I wanted to make sure that I followed all the rules. As it turned out Muslims were like everyone else. They didn’t seem to care what I was up to as they got on with their daily lives.