Dilli Ka Kya Kehna!!!

Everyone who knows me knows how I love new cities and how I fall in love with them. Yet one city which has always repulsed me has been Delhi. I have been ok with Chennai not welcoming me or cheating me in broad daylight through its Auto Drivers but somehow Delhi I could never forgive. Not that it has done anything to me, ever.

Yet as we grow up, things change. Life slowly removes the tinted glasses from your eyes and you begin to just bend down a bit from your lofty moralistic ideas of right or wrong. Over the last 15 odd months, I have begun to see Delhi through a new eye without staying there for more than 24 hours at a stretch. It helps when most new friends I have made at work are from Delhi and while I still am mortally petrified of women from Delhi :) I think given time I can fall in love with the city. After all, I already am in love with Pammiji.

As I sit in the new, swanky Delhi airport, I am trying to figure out Pammiji. Of all the women I love, starting from Sen Kakima to Pavithramma, Pammiji is perhaps the simplest and the most open of them all. Sitting in the heart of Delhi, happy with her life as a housewife, Pammiji is the one lady who can laugh in the face of all adversities. That’s where perhaps the difference is. Sarbajaya epitomized grit, Rojamma epitomized supreme sacrifice, Kamla behn epitomized silent suffering but Pammiji? She laughed her sorrows away.

While the men in her city are often heartless, she is the fussy caring Indian mother, seldom saying anything against her husband, supporting him through his drinking binges and caring for him all along. She loves the chill of Dilli, She loves its sweltering heat, takes the Bong under his wing saying, “Kuch meetha doon? Aaplogon ko toh itni tikha jamta nahin”

And that’s why I think Dilliwallahs can not like my Mumbai. Mumbai is nice to everyone in equal measures. Also Mumbai knows what to say to whom and when. But Pammiji decides at the very first go, if she likes you and then she will open her heart out to you or be extremely possessive about the information she wants to share. Boisterous, noisy, talkative, she can make you her friend for the couple of hours you spend with her, talking about her life, her aspirations. People make fun of her saying she is superficial. But if her exaggerated affection is superficial, so be it. For those moments, it makes you feel cared for.

Dilli ko main dil de na baithoo :)

PS: In other interesting developments, Sayrem has made a masterpiece out of my ramblings. This is a first time in my blog and I am awesomely kicked about it.

Also actually someone I reviewed read my review :) Does make me feel special :)