In India, rarely is there a straight path to what you are seeking.

My partner Orien and have just arrived in New Delhi and are in India to embark on a twelve-part Hearts of the World workshop tour. To avoid unnecessary hassle, we booked our hotel in advance so we could go straight to sleep after our fourteen hour flight from NYC to Istanbul to Delhi. We hired a legitimate cab to the hotel from the prepaid taxi stand so that we wouldn’t have to deal with any nonsense. 

It is 6 am, one hour after leaving the airport, and there we are, parked, in the cab on the side of the road arguing with our driver. He rattles away in Hindi, explaining the mysterious reason we are stopped. We are tired, confused and frustrated with him as we’ve already spent a long drive with him trying to get over on us one way or another from the price of the ride to him trying to convince us to go to other hotels, or shopping for jewelry. Then in English he says, “Road is blocked! you cannot go. It is Dangerous!" 

There is an opening in the road block and we don’t know if we can really believe what he says. It seems like we could pass, but he won’t budge. He wants to take us to the “Government Office.” We’re cranky now and about to get out and hail another cab when he speaks again, "Swine Flu! Road is blocked! Police Block! You cannot go.” Orien, and I look at each other. “Is this guy for real?” We tell him to take us to the police barricade so we can talk to them. The driver then proceeds to speed off with us in the car in the opposite direction with no explanation.“Stop the car! take us back!” Orien shouts. He doesn’t listen and my mind spins with ideas of where he could be taking us.

Shortly after, we find ourselves sitting at a sparse, cracked linoleum desk in a dingy tourist office across from a man who speaks with a calm manner in clear English and explains to us, “Delhi is very dangerous now, there is a Swine Flu here and many people have died. You should leave Delhi now, go to Agra, or take a flight to the Himalayas." We don’t know what to think about this. We hadn’t heard a thing about the swine flu in Delhi. I wanted to see some news, some evidence that this was going on. We’d already payed for our hotel and really just wanted to go there and go to sleep. “Your hotel is in a quarantine zone, You shoudl leave Delhi,” the man says. “Already many tourists have died, it is not safe.” Part of me is suspicious and part of me legitimately worried. It is entirely conceivable that we could have flown into an epidemic zone and no American news outlet would have covered it. There is no way to verify any of this one way or another. It’s 6 am and all internet cafes are closed. 

How can we complete our mission in Delhi if there is a huge concern for swine flu? We need to buy a passenger van, hire a good driver, source a gallery to host the Hearts of the World exhibition, buy supplies and outfit our vehicle. What should we do?

And so this is our introduction to Delhi. Its very typical in India when you are trying to do something or get somewhere, mysterious forces block you and cannot be explained or moved. In the end, we did not fly to the Himalayas. After much finagling we managed to find a reasonably inexpensive hotel and finally went to sleep. 

I’m thinking now that we may need to invest in some kind of pocket Ganesh, the benevolent elephant and “remover of obstacles.” There are so many logistical things we need to do in India, far beyond just finding a hotel! 

This is going to be a very interesting journey~

More to come…