Connaught Lane

On the dusty lane off Barakhamba Road, businesses, beggars and an army of street dogs jostle for the attention of the office class. A shoeless man with a forearm on his knee uses his body as a paperweight to hold down today's news. The godowns sell nameplates and official stamps and printer ink and pens across from a juice stand with overflowing baskets of limes. A man sits on a thin cloth on the ground where he's laid out a variety of heavy-looking door handles. Next to him is another man's artistic vegetable display. Men in suits sip chai next to other men cooking tantalizing chapati blooms on tavas. The rule here is smell-no taste. For beneath the odor of frying flour and saffron and fresh-squeezed fruit is hundreds of years of filth and grime pounded into the street.