Once: The White Horses of Delhi

Once, while staying in one of the bazaars of Delhi, my friend had the good idea of buying some codeine from a local pharmacist. We had only been in Delhi for a day or two and our senses were still adjusting to the shocking and overpowering strength of all the sights, sounds, and smells when we took the codeine and started walking through the winding streets and alleyways of the bazaar.

Night was setting in, and the streets were getting dark. Dogs were coming and going from the deepening shadows and occasional cows were lazily standing in or meandering through the middle of the narrow road, holding up traffic. After a beggar with mangled legs dragged himself through the mud at our feet and muttered something in our direction, we silently decided to cross the street.

Weaving through the current of people and traffic, I suddenly became aware of the effects of the codeine in my system. I felt lighter, a little softer around the edges. The blaring sound of horns from the rickshaws sputtering by, their motors clacking loudly, seemed softer and slower than before, more garbled perhaps, as if these sounds were somehow traveling through water.

I fell into this soft buzz and dropped behind my friend. He turned a corner, onto a quieter, darker side street, and I followed him, almost stumbling over a bunch of wooden benches or cots that were made out of what looked like sticks and were protruding into the street. People were sleeping on them. It couldn’t have been much later than nine o’clock, and already elderly people wrapped in light sheets resembling togas, women in cloaked in sarongs, and shirtless children were lying down to sleep.

I couldn’t believe it. In a strange way, it reminded me of a scene out of Charles Dickens’ London—the poor and the dirty sleeping on the streets with no money and no food.

Then I looked further down the street. Just past the cots, there was a large, open doorway in the ground floor of a crumbling, old building. The opening was lit from somewhere deep within and there, standing in the warm glow of this light, were a number of beautiful white horses calmly braying and eating hay from a trough.

It was the strangest thing. And as I stared in wonder, my feet carried me forward without my realizing it, further down the street, until the horses were gone, out of sight.

On the following days, I tried retracing my steps. I tried finding those horses again. But I never did.

Now they hold a place in my memory and part of me wonders if they were ever really there to begin with.

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Once is a series of micro memoirs inspired by a book of the same title in which Wim Wenders, the German filmmaker, uses a combination of photographs and text to reveal what he considers to be the beginnings of untold stories, which he encourages his readers/viewers to complete.

Similarly, I offer these moments of my life to you as if they were not my own, as if they were in no way connected to me, which in many cases they no longer seem to be. I encourage you to consider these moments as beginnings, beginnings of stories or travels that you are free to write, live, or complete as you see fit.

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