Of Cycle Rickshaw Rides and Purani Dilli

What a merry time A and I had trapezing all over the city last Saturday! The highlight of the day being the cycle rickshaw ride from the Metro Station at Chandni Chowk to Kareem’s near Jama Masjid. Now A and I, well we aren’t really small people yet there we were happily sitting on one rickshaw. A is 6ft 2 and can no way be classified as skinny while I like to call myself plump. Hahah! But we had soooo much fun on the way and I couldn’t stop laughing cos A wanted to capture every moment and every object on his camera. Photography is his new found passion thanks to his Iphone and he was uploading those pictures almost immediately on Facebook much to my amusement. Those photos were instantaneously inviting the comments of his friends who were all wondering what exactly was A up to until he changed his FB status to Delhi 6. :-) Yup hanging around with him was fun, fun, fun and much nicer than that crazy night at Cirrus in Bangalore last September.
The food at Kareem’s was delicious especially the Mutton Burra Kebab and the sweet nan they bake. I know its called something but I cannot get myself to remember the name. A ordered a Biriyani which wasn’t anything out of the ordinary but the Chicken Kadhai was out of this world with a fusion of flavours. A pronounced that the meal had been worth the Cycle Rickshaw Ride and not to forget the long Metro ride from Dwarka. I followed it up with a huge meetha paan while A smoked and forbade me to do so saying I’ll cause a riot if I smoked in a public place like this. The paanwala was this cheery middle aged man who promised me that I would have never had such a paan before and insisted on putting every possible ingredient into the paan leaf until it was this gigantic thing that could not be stuffed into my mouth. It turned into more of a wrap by the end of it.  We walked into Jama Masjid with our shoes in our hands clicking photographs and trying to find the right mishmash of shadow and light.
Our last stop was India Gate where we treated ourselves to ice lollies and took some very pretty pictures of the tree lined avenue bordering India Gate. Yup it was a day well spent. I like such outings when I get to do something I wouldn’t have done of my own accord. Exploring the old city on my own wouldn't have been half as much exiciting as it was with A. :-)

“After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.”