Hometown Pride - New Delhi, Jan. 14, 2009

(Top: The colors fly over the historic Red Fort; Bottom: An NCO prepares parade troops for Republic Day near India Gate)

Log margin notes:

Today the Lost Nav made a stop at the desk of Rajendra Pachauri. The director of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the USA's own Al Gore.

The interview stuck to general topics, but a personal highlight was the wait before the interview.

I had a few hours to kill after a previous interview with Subhash Arora a local wine expert. I knew the TERI campus featured an American-style diner and I couldn't resist allowing myself to slip back into old habits for a few hours.

The "diner" hit the mark... it was an actual diner.

The pink neon reflected a bright shade of home on the black and white checkered floor. The signs on the walls helped tell the story: Ice Cold COKE Sold Here. Pegasus needed no other words to demostrate the majesty of "Mobilgas."

I pulled up a stool by the counter, ordered a coffee (not an 'Americano' or a tea with milk, but a coffee) and heard our Long Island folk hero, Billy Joel, on the jukebox sing New York State of Mind.

It's not uncommon for a traveler to think about how much home means, but I was also considering something the wine expert, Mr. Arora, had said.

The smaller wineries would really do well if they could band together and market their product, but "everybody is out for himself," he said, adding that it's a national character trait.

As an outsider, I feel uncomfortable making sweeping assessments of 'national character traits,' but this wasn't the first time I've heard the sentiment. Actually, people tell me similar things fairly often. I heard the same thing about Mumbai's ambulance services... the system and the patients suffer because no one wanted to be grouped under a single dispatcher. "Everyone wants to be the best," the doc said.

I think of it every time I anticipate having to answer the impossible question: What's India like?

One difference between what I've seen here and what I see in New York is civic pride. Honestly, from the way I view the world, I see less here. There is probably a greater sense of personal pride than we have in the States, which is obvious when seeing a homeless man scrub himself clean from a bucket of cold water on a 40F day. Or the way men will have a shoeshine before continuing down a muddy street, where trash collection is inconsistent at best. I personally don't bother even though the shoeshine kids are persistent in offering.

People often speak of corruption here. A tea cart vendor on the Main Bazaar tells of police making collection rounds after midnight. He was even worried enough about reprisal to ask: "Are you police?"

It's not that corruption doesn't exist in the U.S., but I think if not more civic pride, we at least have more civic shame. We may still take a few bills from the register, spit or throw trash in the street, shove someone a little to get onto a train, make that illegal u-turn; but we do it with a shred of shame. Here it seems more matter-of-course that all of these things happen.

I am at a loss to say if a greater national pride is growing along with the gross national product, but I do notice a good effort at Delhi's new metro.

The platforms are painted with boundaries and arrows which herd people to the sides of the opening train doors. People, in fact, do stand in a line to the sides of the opening doors in order to let disembarking passengers off. At least they stand in that queue until the moment the doors open; then old habits die hard and the entering and exiting passengers begin pushing each other to get on or off the train.

Some people here, especially in the media, are fiercely nationalist and incensed at the litterbugs as well as the corrupt officials. Everyone has their own private reasons, but all over Delhi there are public signs of the national spirit. The military and police have been going through their paces for the Republic Day Parade on Jan. 26 celebrating the 60th anniversary of the signing of the constitution. Construction dust is in the air and traffic is held up everywhere as the city expands its public transportation by digging new tunnels for the metro. New stadiums and facilities are going up for the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

So back to the impossible question... What's India like? It's different, but it's the same.