I lived in Delhi 18, went to schools in Delhi 58 and Delhi 22, hospital in Delhi 1 and still do most of my shopping in Delhi 1 and 27. However, I had never before referred to Vikaspuri, Janakpuri, R.K. Puram, Connaught Place and Rajouri garden by their pin codes. I saw Dilli-6 yesterday, where everybody referred to Chandni Chowk as Dilli 6. I think if I tell the auto-wallah to take me to Delhi 6, I think he d say “O Maaaadam, naye ho kya…kaunsi jagah jaana hai ..Sonia Cinema? (O Madam, Are you new here? Where exactly do you want to go …Sonia Cinema?)”!!!
Before the onslaught of multiplexes in Delhi, the innumerable PVRs, we used to have normal theatres: Sonia, Payal, Priya, Anupam etc. , all of them are now PVR. But the auto-wallah, the bus driver and the rickshaw- wallah will still call them by their original names. Near PVR Naraina, the bus stop still says Payal. Similarly Connaught Place is still called by its erstwhile name and not Rajiv Chowk. RML hospital is Wellington, LNJP Hospital is Irwin and AIIMS is Simply Medical. But Chandni Chowk has never been Dilli -6!
Delhi-6 to me meant a yearly excursion to Chandni Chowk for my textbooks. Little shops, I think just about the size of the kitchen in this studio apartment line ‘Nai Sadak’, a famed by- lane of Chandni Chowk where you can find every medical book printed in English (at least). Nai Sadak literally means ‘The New Road’. The new book is however just one of Nai Sadak’s specialties. Books that have exchanged hands once, twice, thrice to those that have been around for a few decades are all here. So are Xerox copies, pirated copies and cut-and-bound copies! I once saw an old, but well-loved copy of Boyd’s “Pathology of Internal Disease.” It was a 1940-something edition. That’s where he would have written “Rheumatic Heart disease licks the joints and bites the heart”, something even the dumbest medical student in India knows. I guess Boyd had two great loves: English and things that “blew life’s little candle”!
It would appear that the shops at The Book Market have no walls. The shelves that line the wall would be packed with books, vertically and horizontally and somewhere there would be a ladder that would lead to an attic. The attic I believe has floors to store hundreds of volumes on medical sub-specialties. That is where one would find Kaplan’s Cardiac Anaesthesia, William’s Endocrinology and the likes. The shop typically has the owner, who probably graduated in commerce (through correspondence), his aging father (who bequeathed the shop to him) and a couple of shop boys. Any boy, who works in any shop in Delhi, is called Chotu. Chotu 1 stays up in the attic. And let us say you ask for Rook, and lo behold as if by magic four huge volumes of dermatology would descend from the attic, into the owner’s perfect grasp. The standard digests of the medical student, the Ganongs, Harpers, Robbins and Shaws, were generally within his reach. And if by chance he doesn’t have a book you asked for Chotu 2 will run around and just find it from somewhere. Then, you would need to ask around in a few shops, to get a general idea about how much you can bargain for, bargain a lot and finally strike a deal after you get at least a 30 percent discount from the original price.
The Lange books got bigger and more colorful with every passing year. Katzung’s pharmacology changed editions so fast in my 5 and ½ yrs of college that I wondered how many drugs they added in these years. Coming to think of it, my edition did not have Nevirapine :). The pages of Harrisons’ got gossamer thin, and Bailey and Love was bluer than ever. The last book I bought there was First Aid to Step 2 CS for Rs. 350 ( after 20 minutes of good bargaining; to get the price down by Rs. 150) . It retails at $ 38 at the UCSF book store (and you cannot bargain there)!
Trips to Chandni Chowk before the Metro were arduous. As soon as you enter Delhi Gate, one of the gates of the Walled City, traffic just inches, as if jinxed. After almost two hours, at least two scratches on our car and after my Dad has used every expletive in his substantial dictionary, we would reach the sprawling parking lots of Red Fort. Finding parking is just a minor ordeal. Chandni Chowk has one main road and numerous by-lanes form a giant maze around it. Only a talented old Delhi cycle rickshaw wallah is the Theseus who can take us to our Minotaur!! Every by-lane (gali) has its speciality: Nai Sadak for books, Parathe Waali Gali for hot, fried parathe, there is one that sells clothes and one that prints wedding cards. My father’s destination is the one that sells surgical instruments. Every retractor, speculum, needle-holder and forceps ever created; catheters, cannulas, vacutainers, needles and syringes; trolleys and trays; tables and lights; they have it all. This is the only place where my Dad shops with the same fervor that I have at Macy’s before Christmas. Once, my Dad’s Maryland dissector refused to open its jaws. He went to find a replacement and came back with a few trays, an autoclave drum, an array of forceps and retractors and even green and blue linen. He was totally in the mood that day. He had this faint smile as forceps closed and ratchets made that sound that generally meant “secure” in his OT. That is when I managed to convince him to get me the maroon Littman :).
