Sundays are for Golf

Today was golf day. I reached Delhi Golf Club at about 11:00 A.M. It is a huge place with hundreds of people milling around the clubhouse and restaurant. After a little effort I found my way to the Pro Shop and bought myself a nice cap with the local logo on it. Then I walked around and saw the course. It looks so beautiful. Inside the course there are various ruins of tombs from the Mughal period. The tombs look very pretty in their red and yellow colors contrasting with the green around them.

Where in USA can I say that I played golf teeing off from the porch of beautiful tomb made before Columbus discovered America? The fairways are totally green and lined with dense row of trees on both sides. The trees are of various kinds, mostly acacia and related varieties. The whole place is in sharp contrast to what is in Delhi outside of the golf course. I felt like I was a criminal taking advantage of all that while outside the golf course miserable people worked like slaves to make two bucks a day.

Prabhat Singh came right on time and introduced me to his group. There were eight people in the group, it was very hard to remember people’s names. We made a small bet and started playing. We had four caddies. When we tee off, the caddies will go to the middle of the fairway and watch for our balls. It was uncanny to hit when there were four people right where you were supposed to hit. But they had sharp eyes, they moved when the ball came to them.

On the greens they had women, in bright orange sarees, sitting and fixing the greens. They were wearing hard hats! They would take out any weeds from the greens and put sand in any ball mark divot. Then they would smoothen out the sand with their hands.

I started out good but pretty soon my game went down. The golf course looked prettier when I was playing well. I ended up posting an awful score and loosing all my bets.