What better, more disorientating, more surreal way to start a nine-week trip to India than with a morning at the latest Harry Potter film? At 10.30am – the day’s only showing – Delhi’s Plaza Cinema is quietly throbbing with anticipation.

The cinema is a grand Thirties affair built in a style best described as South Asian Art Deco. It’s embedded in the bewildering concentric circles of Connaught Place, the commercial hub of the New Delhi built (though not single-handedly) by George V, shortly before India parted company from Britain. Connaught is run-down and, at the moment, even more chaotic than usual during the building of a major interchange for the new Delhi Metro system which is revolutionizing public transport in the city.

But where Connaught has been waiting for better days to come along for 30 years, the Plaza’s better days have already come. It has been swishly refurbished with gleaming marble and polished wood; the toilets must be the plushest outside the city’s five-star hotels. It may suggest Odeons in all their Britishness, but the cinema-going experience is solidly Indian. Signs warn that “items strictly prohibited” include “matchbox, carry bags, chocolate, chips and chewing gum”, presumably to ensure patrons have no distractions from the mountains of food on sale inside.

A chicken hotdog, cola and popcorn will set you back a little over £1.50, and a marginally less indulgent Super Saver Jumbo Combo comes at £1. It’s a glimpse of the US lifestyle to which metropolitan young middle-class Indians increasingly aspire.

They make up most of the audience, jostling with their tubs of popcorn. As they wait for the auditorium doors to open, they form a typical Indian queue, which a friend once described as one person deep and 30 wide. As the doors open, they surge into the auditorium, with its lavish drapes and crimson plush.

The last time I went to the cinema in India, ten years ago, was to see a Bollywood musical. It was amazing, with more noise coming from the audience than from the film. The audience ate and talked throughout, wandered around the auditorium, greeted their friends and generally treated the film as just a handy excuse for socializing. Here at the Plaza, we’re in a more select world. The occasional young man takes calls on his mobile – an essential item of body jewellery in Delhi – but people are generally quiet. But then, they could hardly compete with the astonishing volume level of the soundtrack of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: loud enough to rock the foundations of the Red Fort.

I lasted about 20 minutes, partly because of this shattering sound, more because of the film’s half-baked hokum. Spectacular as its effects may be, it’s incomprehensible to anyone who, like me, has studiously spent the past decade or so avoiding anything to do with Harry Potter hype. Hogwarts? Hogwash!

In any case, everyday Indian life offers far more potent and unlikely fantasies than anything on screen. Take the ground floor of the Plaza itself. It has recently been converted into Piccadelhi, a London theme restaurant. A man dressed as a guardsman (with full bearskin) holds open the doors, which simulate old-fashioned British phone boxes. Inside, a recreated front end of a Routemaster bus emerges from a wall and there are statues of Churchill, Sherlock Holmes and John Lennon (mix fact and fiction to taste). A recreated pub bar displays all that is, or was, great and good about Britain, including Queen Elizabeth (I and II), WG Grace, Private Eye and the Women’s Land Army. The chefs wear Union Jack bandannas.

And the food? Indian, Chinese, Italian, but, apart from fish and chips (which is everywhere in Indian restaurants), there’s not a British dish to be had. “You won’t find much roast beef in India,” says one of the managers. And our conversation turns to chicken tikka masala, in all its pure, unadulterated Britishness.

Page 2: Railroaded at New Delhi station
Page 3: Do Lucknow, there's a wedding on
Page 4: Brought to book in Lucknow
Page 5: Post haste in Lucknow
Page 6: Trains of thought to Jhansi
Page 7: New Year in Snooty Ooty
Page 8: It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Madurai
Page 9: Madurai: dipping back into Blighty
Page 10: Meeting Delhi's scary women
Page 11: Massaging the Ego in Delhi
Page 12: Seeking Delhi's Sound of Silence

December 9, 2005
Railroaded at New Delhi station

I need to sort out a train journey, so I need to buy a timetable, so I need to go to New Delhi Railway Station. The main road to it is a quarter-mile of concentrated bedlam, choked with traffic fumes, jostling with hawkers. It's all pushing and shoving and panic and watch-where-you're-putting-your-feet.

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