Delhi’s belly

I’m a Lahori. I arrived in Delhi to do a two-month stint at a newspaper. Ostensibly a trip to acquaint myself with the print media in India — my parents are journalists, I’m a poor student, the reasoning worked like a charm — I’ve come really to explore India and familiarise myself with Pakistan’s vilified old neighbour.

When I stepped foot in Delhi, I was amazed by some basic changes I noticed since my last visit five years ago. Drivers were now wearing seatbelts, and all motorcyclists helmets. One is hard-pressed to find a seatbelt-strapped driver on Lahore’s frenzied roads. These are inconsequential changes on the face of it (I can imagine a couple of Pakistani friends scoffing in my face, ‘So you think Delhi is more advanced because they wear seat-belts? Har har har’). I do think Delhi is substantially more progressive than Lahore. The fact that women can drive motorbikes in most of urban India stands in glaring contrast to Pakistan where not a single woman would dare straddle a motorbike.

And although inside some of Lahore’s liberal homes, the situation is different (parties are thrown where fun is had, where dance floors are packed and where Lahore’s young and youthful shimmer away under disco lights) there is a frantic edge to our cheer — we know our merriment can’t be duplicated outside our homes: Clubs and pubs

do not exist.

It’s the little things that tell the story of a city.