Leave from Central Secretariat station, which is at walking distance from India Gate, in the middle of the Lutyens' City.

Underground, everything is made of steel and glass, and there are escalators and displays that announce, precise to the second, when the next train will arrive.

Only a few things remind you that you are still in Delhi. The instructions on how to use the escalators (not so obvious, if you have never seen an escalator before and you happen to be wearing a saari), the ads for "a younger and healthier Delhi" suggesting to the overweight city to use the stairs, the "ladies-only" seats in the train cars.

But aside from that, down in the station, you feel like you are somewhere else. The metro in Delhi is clean, quick, and you even have good cellphone reception underground.

Welcome to the future.

So if you want to experience traveling in time, what you have to do is head North; and for the ultimate time trip, get off at Chawri Bazaar, and exit the station using the escalator (after reading carefully the instructions on how to use it).

Slowly, while you emerge, the past enshrouds you - from your head, down to your shoulders, legs, and feet - and when you are finally out, you're walking somewhere in history. It could be fifty, it could be a hundred years ago. Cycle-rickshaws, crowd, cows, goats (yes, goats); smell of food, pee, animals, sweat, chai, spices; noises, voices, horns, bells, and at the right time, even muezzins singing.

This is India at its maximum, India as it was, and as - so it seems - always will be, hidden in the alleys of the Old Capital City. The Metro station, in the middle of it, looks paradoxical: it is the only stain of a seemingly never-coming future.