Tag: Chandni Chowk

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Existential Parade, Chandni Chowk Market, New Delhi, India

Existential Parade

This parade of life
This hubbub of trade
Of needs
Of desires
This chaos of order
And community

And here am I
Amid the throng
In the moments between
Want and have
In the choices between
Necessity and pleasure

This is existential quandary
Alone in my thoughts
In a sea of solitary moments
Each a universe
Borne from a solitary mind
Known only to itself

These in parallel all
With the essentials
Of desire
And necessity
A flurry of universes
Sharing a single dimension

While in my universe
The bodies of a thousand strangers
Dance in cadence
With the flow of trade
A performance at once
Exquisitely mundane and beautiful

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Bicycle Rickshaw Driver, Chandni Chowk Market, New Delhi, India

Moments I’ll not Remember

In motion
I am still
In stillness
I am empty
In emptiness
I find no peace

Hollow
Haunted
Vacant

Amidst this familiar pandemonium
I alone am solid
Yet invisible

Carrying as passenger
A pain which pays no fare
Answers no questions
Offers no solutions

The me of this moment
None will remember
Not even I

But here
The pain shuffles off
Into the crowd
And I will not remember it either

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Monkey & Red Fort Sunrise, Hotel Tara Place, Chandni Chowk, New Delhi, India

Penultimate Sunrise in the Big Smoke

It was the last full day in India. The smoke had been chokingly thick for the entire month I’d spent in the north, and Delhi hadn’t even been the worst of it. Still, I’d found a decent rate at a decent hotel (some small comfort in exchange for the respiratory distress) on the edge of Old Delhi’s fantastical Chandni Chowk markets for the final days before my flight home.