By STEPHANIE NOLEN, Toronto Globe and Mail

NEW DELHI - Too old. Too germy. Too religious.

It's a warm autumn morning in Old Delhi, and the city's crack anti-begging squad is on patrol tasked with arresting beggars and getting them off the streets. It is part of a crucial clean-up effort before the Commonwealth Games next year.

NEW DELHI - Nagesh Simha knows about pain. He has had three kidney transplants, one of which led to such severe complications that he had to have both hips replaced. But when he's not a patient, he's a surgeon, supervising a cancer hospice in Bangalore -- where he sees patients in what he calls the "catastrophic pain" that frequently accompanies the disease.

They left home early in the morning to get a seat at the front of the exhibition grounds for a campaign appearance by their political hero. They settled in on the rough mat floor, in their best bright polyester saris, prepared to wait for hours despite the 113-degree heat.
"I wanted to be sure I'd be able to see and hear her," Rajesh Devi said happily.

There are 714 million votes potentially in play as Indians go to the polls this week -- the first phase in a staggered, month-long national election -- and the outcome is less certain that at any other point in this country's storied electoral history.

In villages, people lunge to touch his feet and ring garlands of marigolds around his neck. He sends his security detail into a panic by launching himself into the open arms of the crowd. When an older woman is overcome at his arrival and swoons, he shrugs off the entourage to hold his own water bottle to her lips.

The day that Kusum lost her job working on the assembly line at an electronics factory, she told her five children the new status quo: She would buy milk and chapatti, or flatbread, only every second day. And when the school term ends, they will not be continuing. She cannot afford the $3 fee the public school asks for each of them.

Dr. Anoop Gupta slumps in his swivel chair and surveys what the day has brought his fertility clinic:

From the land that brought the enlightenment of the Buddha, the didactic drama of the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata and the wisdom of the Sikh gurus comes a question to give pause to spiritual seekers of all kinds: Can Muslims do yoga?
Technically, of course, they probably can, with a little practice and some stretchy pants.
But should they?

The lunchtime hum of a Delhi garden cafe was split by a piercing cry. "You! You're one of those! Those Shining India types!" The accuser was Seema Guha, a writer. The object of her ire was a gray-bearded cultural commentator who disapproved of "Slumdog Millionaire."

Irene O'Brien and her parents sometimes gather for an evening to review the prospects: What new groom looms on the horizon? O'Brien, who, like many Christians in India has a "western" name, is 29 and is beginning seriously to consider her prospects in the marriage market.