Lanterns in the Fog

Part 1

"What is the weight of a soul that has seen the abyss of its own longing?"

The question flickered in my mind like a dying lantern as I stood in the chaos of Connaught Place, a place both ancient and modern, its chalky colonnades steeped in the scents of roasted peanuts and existential dread. The city seemed alive in a way that felt uncomfortably familiar—a restless being, never quite at ease in its own skin.

I had come from my small village near Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh last year in 1998, a place where the earth smelled of simplicity, where the wind carried whispers of old Vedic hymns and the world's urgency felt like a distant storm. Delhi was different. It was a mosaic of contradictions, where the sacred and the profane danced with an unsettling intimacy. Every corner seemed to hum with the tension of a thousand lives intersecting, merging, colliding.

I wandered aimlessly, letting my feet decide the course while my mind dissected the scenes around me. It wasn't long before the city revealed its silent contradictions. A man in a tailored suit walked briskly past a woman in a tattered sari. For a fleeting moment, I saw their worlds collide—only to bounce away as though repelled by some unseen force.

He was the image of precision, his shoes gleaming, his shoulders squared against the morning air. His gaze didn't stray, locked forward as though the path ahead held all the answers he'd been chasing. I wondered if he even saw her. Did he notice the creases in her sari, the way her hands clutched a fraying bag? Or had the city trained him to look past her—to see her as part of the background, the way one sees cracks in a pavement?

And yet, she wasn't invisible to me. Her face bore the weight of stories untold—creases that spoke of battles fought, hopes deferred, and dreams abandoned. She moved with a slow deliberation, as though each step was a negotiation with fate. In her, I saw resilience. In him, I saw ambition. Two faces of the same coin, spinning endlessly in the current of the city's demands.

Further ahead, a street performer stood on a corner, his face painted in garish reds and golds. He spun a tale of kings and gods, his voice rising and falling in practiced rhythm. The few who had gathered to watch weren't really watching. Their eyes darted to the newspapers, magazine, glowing screens of their pager and phones, their minds far from the divine struggles he mimed.

He wore his mask well, layers of paint concealing whatever lay beneath. I wondered if he still believed in the stories he told or if the telling had become mechanical, a means to an end. Perhaps, like the city, he'd learned that the world preferred its truth wrapped in layers of artifice—painted, polished, and palatable.

The more I watched, the more I saw the masks everywhere. The man in the suit wore one too, though his was cut from fabric, not paint. The woman in the sari wore hers in the quiet dignity of someone who refuses to crumble. Even the city wore a mask, its chaos draped in glittering neon, hiding the fractures that ran deep below the surface.

A group of young men stood on the corner, their voices raised in heated debate. Their clothes bore the markings of rebellion—ripped jeans, slogans emblazoned on their shirts, fists clutching cigarette butts as if holding onto defiance itself. "The system is rigged!" one shouted, his voice raw with conviction. "We need revolution, not reform!"

His words struck me as familiar. I'd once believed in such fiery ideologies, convinced that change could be willed into existence by sheer anger. But now, as I watched him, I wondered if his fire would burn out or if it would consume him entirely. His friends nodded, half listening, their laughter punctuating his rhetoric. Perhaps their bond was more about shared discontent than shared ideals.

Near them, an elderly vendor sat by his cart, selling roasted peanuts. His hands moved with practiced ease, shelling and wrapping, his eyes scanning the crowd with the detached wisdom of someone who had seen the city's ebbs and flows. He didn't shout to draw attention, didn't argue over prices. He simply existed, a quiet testament to endurance.