Delhi – October 2004

Delhi is chaotic, unruly, crowded, surprising, and laidback – all rolled up into one. You can find anything and everything in Delhi. The muddy, potholed streets are teeming with life – men, women, children, roosters, donkeys, dogs (many dogs), humped bulls, buffalo, motorcycles, cars, and sacred cows. But above all are the yellow and green rickshaws – auto and bicycle – with their painted bumper warnings: “Keep Distance” and “Horn Please.”

The drivers of the bicycle rickshaws were skinny men who sometimes carried huge loads. They drove the schoolchildren home, sometimes carrying as many as a dozen children in a wagon behind the bike. In their closed wagons with bars, the children looked almost as if they were being carted off to jail.