Nothing quite prepares you for a glimpse of a pair of bright pink cement monkey legs as you shoot a roundabout in thick traffic. Legs that have a beanstalk feel about them as you can't see out of the car window much higher than his knees. Rahul the driver points him out on the drive west through Delhi.
"Monkey God Temple. Look!"
I crane my neck to try and see his face but it's lost to me, too high for my field of view. It's a Hanuman Temple, this much I can see, but anything more is lost to the heights of the Banyan tree and the swirling traffic. I sit back, slightly underwhelmed.
I talk to my friends about the statue. "Do you follow Hanuman?" I am asked. I say no, but I'm interested in energy hotspots and cultural bits and bobs. I like to underplay the latter. Their car and driver is dropping me home, and I wonder if he can drop me off at the temple and I'll take the metro home through rush hour.
I'm taken to lunch and we aim for Sector 10 and Hakkims. Famous for its kebabs and tandoor, it's an exciting moment. Trailing up the stairs behind the team I sense their disappointment. Hakkims is shuttered. "Closed. Hanuman day. Tuesday". I look baffled.
" Tuesday is Hamuman's day. No meat for followers of Hanuman. Hakkims clientele is non-veg. " I work out the logic and then my antenna flicks on. Definitely the right time to visit this monkey god's temple.
Rahul drops me at the roundabout.
"Madam. Metro is that way. Temple entrance over there. Shoes to the keeper." And then he's gone, lost to the vortex of rush hour.
I stand for a moment after he's gone, absorbing the atmosphere, checking out the players. A couple of beggars on the peripheral, poverty stricken rather than maimed (unlike some of the bigger mosques and temples which used to be loaded with Delhi's poor). A temple keeper is ushering pedestrians off the temple frontage, which is demarcated by the shoe shelves, traffic cones and a table. To the edge of these, the roundabout is in full flood, traffic building to a crescendo of horns and beeps and roars of unloved exhausts. I walk carefully to the far edge of the temple, on the strand line between temple and transportation. The temple keeper points crossly to my feet and says "Madam. Shoes".
But I am judging, absorbing, looking. Do I want to go through the monkeys mouth enough to see inside his brain? For the main entrance, across some wetland tiling and a long, black, shoe-sole painted tongue, past his large, violently curved incisors, is through his mouth. The traffic roars, one fellow one-handedly flicking his scooter past as he clamps his mobile to his ear. The noise is so loud that an ambulance can't be heard. It's visceral, shocking. The monkey's vicious head is also at ground level, making him a two headed-beast. But you can't see his head from ground level because you'd have to walk backwards, away, for the perspective. Into that traffic. So the architects put another head in, as a funky exit, and another as a shoe-sole tongued entrance. Actually that makes three heads but nobody's really thinking about anatomy (or reality) here. I'd like a job as a Hanuman temple architect. This job spec has a brief that says 'Themepark Rollercoaster. Shock. Sensory overload." There's even a set of steps twisting upwards, up to his torso and possibly beyond, and downstairs there is a WookyHole grotto with demons and snakes and a definite House of Horrors Kali and Durga vibe. It's kitch. It's cool.
I decide to risk baring my feet and find my way in. It's unlike any temple I've ever been in, with platforms and plaster gods on several levels, and people proffering themselves on rugs and chanting religious texts from their iPhones. The colours are bubblegum pink, lime green, hot orange. Even the garlanded flower waste is beautiful.
This is not a place of restraint. This is a place of uncontrolled, riotous colour, a religious excitement. And it's TUESDAY, Hanuman day, so followers are carefully lighting little candles and touching his feet.
Which are, without being cheeky, huge. Hanuman is 108 feet tall. He needs bug feet to stand on.
This is serious worship, a candle lit, and Hanuman 's big toe suspiciously clean. A quick google later tells me it is a new temple, completed in 1997. And it's glorious. Two stands at the entrance points sell Puja offerings, doing a hotly orange business, the flags are gently flapping in the pollution, and despite rush hour, despite the traffic, people are ringing the brass bells and serious in their intent.
I pay for a tikal and a photo. Various priests call to their section, but it is Hanuman 's followers that reel me in. A sweeter priest takes pity, offers a proper tikal, sending my thought upwards towards spirituality, gently threads my wrist red. Suddenly I'm back in South India, transported to the first time a priest tied a red thread on my wrist, half a lifetime ago. I know nothing of Hanuman. But the intensity of worship and ritual I recognise.
This is a temple of the 21st century. It roars up into the skyline, cemently contoured, proud that modern paints allow the Monkey God to be seen in full transcendental Shalimar paint. It could only be where the traffic at Karol Bagh judders past, drivers and passengers making fast votive movements as they absorb his energy and spirit on the way through. Is he also a god of travel?
He is, on a Tuesday.