You will always find taxi drivers waiting to pounce on you at Delhi airport. They all look like they have come from the Chambal valley. Luckily there is a pre-paid service. As you leave, a cop wants to know where you are going. He jots it down carefully in his dirty book. Even he looks as if he is straight out of the Chambal. The first thing that strikes you as you drive through Delhi is the width of the roads. They are very wide. There is plenty of greenery too. Maybe this is because all 15-year-olds -- cars, I mean -- have been banned in Delhi. I think the people here are healthier than their counterparts in other metros. The girls and boys dress very smartly. Then they amble around stylishly, unlike in other cities where people spend all their time rushing from one place to another. For the first time in my life, I saw Black Cat commandos. They have the insignia of a Black Cat on their shoulder just in case you take them for someone else. They are all young, smartly dressed, completely in black, very fair. They exhibit a uniform disinterest in the person they are guarding. I can understand their protecting Sonia Gandhi from the Congress people. But it beats me why they are guarding Youth Congress leader M S Bitta. Rashtrapati Bhavan is huge and gothic. The old fort looks very old indeed. And, appropriately, the old Congress president, the very old and venerable Sitaram Kesriji, lives on the Purana Qila road. Try phoning Kesri and they will tell you he has gone out. But a knowledgeable journalist informed me that Kesriji had no place to go. You will find cops guarding him from god-knows-whom. Of course, they won't let you in. The ready-made excuse is that the old man is "sleeping." All I wanted was ask "If he could be thrown out for getting 141 Lok Sabha seats, what should be done to Soniaji who got just 112?" Like my friend said, Kesriji must be having the last laugh. Delhi, it seems, has more cars than Bombay, Madras and Calcutta put together. It has more signal-lights too. The red light has 'Relax' written on it. Here too, when there is a traffic jam it is because the cops have put off the signals and taken over. Certain things never change. Delhi has frequent power cuts. The people bear the agony without carping. It makes me sad, though. The seat of the nation's power is without power. Then what about the nation? The AICC headquarters is huge and well maintained. But the toilets stink. Sonia Gandhi has a room here that is kept locked. Not only locked, but there is a seal on the lock. In Bombay they do this only if you don't pay your rent. Sonia lives at 10, Janpath. Janpath is a road behind the AICC headquarters. But 10, Janpath is actually on Akbar road and adjacent to the Congress HQ. There is a difference, however. Everybody is welcome at the Congress HQ. Nobody is welcome at 10, Janpath. When the BJP and its allies achieved a majority on the second day of counting you should have seen their HQ on Ashoka road. It looked like a marriage hall, all decorated with lights. And they have a bachelor prime minister! Their HQ may not be well maintained as the Congress's, but then they have not been the ruling party for 45 years either. Manmohan Singh lives on Safdarjung road. Delhi has such quaint names for its roads. Every name resounds with history. Akbar road, Aurangazeb road, Shahjahan road... each tells its own story. And luckily the BJP hasn't so far tried to change the names of these roads on the ground that they take after foreign invaders. Sorry, we were talking about Manmohan Singh. He was sad that he lost. But unlike Jayalalitha, he did not say the polls were rigged. We were in the aircraft for our flight back to Bombay. Even after 40 minutes, it did not take off. Suddenly in walked a family of 10. I asked the steward if we had been waiting for these folks. "I don't know, ask the captain," he said. Five minutes later singer Anuradha Paudwal walked in, orange saree and all. Then we took off. Next time I think I will fly Jet. A Ganesh Nadar is a frequent flier.
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