Delhi Stories

Phil Reeves on why it pays to pretend to be Russian; and the urban monkeys that will bite your nose off as soon as look at you

Pyotr is crestfallen. The Delhi air is hot and gritty. Temperatures are in the 90s, and his stock of Kashmiri woolly sweaters, knitted to keep out Siberian winter draughts, is attracting no attention.

No one is shopping, which is particularly irksome given the lengths to which he has gone to try to snag clients. He calls himself Pyotr – the Russian equivalent of Peter – when he is, in fact, an Indian born in Delhi, called Kumar.

I have seen him before, a short, amiable figure prowling outside his small shop in what the locals consider a prestigious New Delhi market but which is more accurately described as a store-lined underground subway, like a smelly passage in one of London's least lovely Tube stations.

He works his pitch in competition with "Misha" – purveyor of clothing and luxury leather goods – whose shop is opposite and who is also an Indian who has renamed himself for commercial reasons. Their targets are Russian-speaking tourists and diplomats from the former Soviet Union whose embassies are close by. To increase their appeal, both men have learnt Russian – albeit a bizarre variety, acquired by ear.

The same seems true of much of rest of the market, Yashwant Place. One walks through it to a heavily accented chorus of "Ztrastuite" and "Privyet"; Cyrillic signs advertising jewellery, cheap flights, international phone calls and even stress counselling are everywhere. "It's not always easy," Pyotr explains. "Call out 'hello' in Russian to the wrong person and they don't like it. The Czechs don't like it, nor do the Americans."

I go to Yashwant Place fairly often. A few dozen yards from Pyotr's pitch, there is a liquor store, the only one in my immediate neighbourhood. To every man his morality and his God, but I have never felt comfortable in a city where you cannot, somehow, somewhere, buy a bottle of gin. Delhi, luckily, drinks. Better still, it does so guiltily.

Very few stores in the city stock alcohol; sales are closely controlled and, as the blackboard in my liquor store declares, the city has "dry days". The shop is spectacularly indifferent to customer care. It is small, clammy and full of cardboard boxes.

A man on a broken swivel chair keeps watch over the iron gate which covers the exit, with the air of someone who works on the assumption that everyone else is a shoplifter who would naturally be wearing a dirty raincoat, were it not for the heat. Raddled looking middle-aged men shuffle in and out, most of them buying half-pints of gum scalding Indian-made rum or whisky, purchased for less than £1.50.

But the products themselves reflect a more commercial spirit, and say something about the enterprise of this country. Bombay has been renamed Mumbai and Madras is now Chennai, in the name of national identity and culture. But the Indian liquor industry clings on shamelessly to the language of the old empire. Bottles of whisky abound: Bagpiper, Lord Nelson, Royal Stag (the "king of the forest ... his antlers towering over all rivals", says the label) and my favourite, Whythall. Like Pyotr and Misha, they'll do what it takes.

We know the rules. Do not look a British football fan in the eye because this is grounds for violent attack. So too in Delhi, with one very small difference.

"Don't look the monkeys in the eye." That's what everyone told us here. It's not as easy as it sounds, because you don't often see monkeys loitering around a world capital. Eyeball-to-eyeball contact is considered aggressive, and may well cost you your nose, or a chunk of cheek.

Delhi's authorities have been trying to get rid of them for ages. They hired monkey catchers, used langur monkeys to chase them off, set up rescue centres, shipped them to the forests.

But they are still here, Robert de Niros in simian form, thinking, "Hey, you lookin' at me?" every time I chug past in a rickshaw, my eyes averted.