Old Delhi

On Tuesday I met the South African Deputy President. This morning I met the leading actor of an Oscar winning movie. This street kid played the lead role in the short film The Little Terrorist.

Today I went on a tour of Delhi with a difference. The tour was run by the kids of Salaam Balak (salute the children). Salaam Balak is a shelter for the street kids that lived in and around the New Delhi train station. The kids that took the tour guided us through the lives they lived before they came to the shelter. They explained to us in broken English how each train platform was run by a different gang of street kids. They relayed stories of physical and drug abuse. Mind blowing. Our main guide was in his early twenties with a rakish air and a devilish grin. He is currently studying dance and drama through correspondence and aspires to be an actor.

And then they plunged us into the heart of Old Delhi upon whose streets they roamed. Old Delhi is wild, dusty and chaotic and in sharp contrast to the wide and leafy avenues of New Delhi. I met a potter who has been moulding clay at the same stall for 90 years. I saw a goat serenely assessing his surrounds like a Maharaj from atop an abandoned car. We were invited into the court yards of buildings where royalty used to live; where ornate paintings and inticate mouldings have been superceded by heavily burdened washing lines. We took bicycle rickshaws through the narrow streets and narrowly missed knocking over a wallah pushing his water barrow.

Lastly we went to the shelter where the kids seek refuge and where I met the Oscar nominee. On the way there we crossed one of the busiest and most chaotic intersections in Delhi where even most taxi drivers fear to tread. I took a video of it but my blogging skills are still very underdeveloped so I can't work out how to post it.