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I’ve seen chaotic driving before – downtown Joburg puts hair on your chest and even Camberwell, where I live in London, isn’t much fun – but this is a horn-tooting free-for-all.... often in front of signs insisting traffic laws will be strictly enforced. A lot of the red lights on the traffic lights have the word ‘relax’ written across them. That message appears be falling on deaf ears, but I definitely started to enjoy the anarchic way you get around.

I live in a city where you get fined 100 pounds for parking a few centimetres the wrong side of the line. London has rules for every part of your life. I like the apparent freedom here – drive how you want, make what noise you want, sell what you want where you want. I can see the appeal of that.

But it’s not the hectic traffic that really got me thinking in Delhi, but the air quality. When I arrived at the airport I naively asked a security guard ‘is it normally this foggy?’ It’s not fog he told me, it’s smog. I was stunned. The street lights lit up air heavy with dust and exhaust fumes. The next day I was playing frisbee in the amazing Lodi Gardens (near your flat I think Anu) and was out of breath long before I expected to be. The sky, just as sometimes happens in Nairobi, had an other-worldly orangey-brown colour.

I have been excited about this trip for months and it’s living up to my expectations. All the guide book cliches about India delivering a ‘sensory overload’ appear to be true. But I can’t believe that in all the conversations I’ve ever had with people in Delhi, no-one has mentioned the air.

Anu’s reply....

Hi everyone! It’s great to be back on the programme. Ros, I asked you to go first with your impressions because I’ve been here many times, and after awhile, you tend not to notice the big stuff. I’m chuckling as I read your account, because

It’s neither naive nor simplistic to say that people in India drive like lunatics! I’ve lost count how many times I’ve nearly been mowed down by someone careening through a red light; someone backing up against moving traffic or making a u-turn on a busy road.

It’s not for nothing that Delhi is the ‘Road Death Capital of the World.’

And despite everyone here telling you that the air quality is so much better, just go to which monitors pollutant levels. It’s permanently RED, just one level below critical.

Relax indeed!

I’ve had the pleasure of being back in India now for three months. It still Ros! If you can believe this, the colour and chaos in front of you is just the beginning.

This week, you might hear a piece I did on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service about India’s black economy. Men with burlap sacks dumping one kilo silver bars onto scales to weigh and sell – no receipts, no tax paid.

A few years ago, I did a story on

And today, I’m sitting in one of Chandigarh’s poshest hotels, looking down on a shimmery swimming pool as I write, just a stone’s throw from shops selling expensive chocolates and Gucci sunglasses.

How does it all connect? That’s what we want to find out this week. What holds Indians together? What keeps them apart? And how is India connected to you?

I will never be bored of India, nor ever stop reading and wondering how it became a place of such mind-boggling diversity, beauty, squalor, sprituality and violence.... But sometimes, I think a few rules might go a long way!