And we even had a partial solar eclipse

And your quiz is: What part of the body is left after your body has been cremated?

Here's Delhi.

January 15, 2010

Oh, my!

Exactly how I feel in trying to describe today. So I’ll start at the beginning. India, formerly known as Hindustan (“Place of the Hindu”), has a population of 1.2 billion people, 70% of whom are Hindu, 20% Moslem, and 10% Christian. Included in the Hindu are Buddhists, Jainists and Sikhs, all of whom follow an off-branch of Hinduism.
Delhi, which includes New Delhi, has 14 million people, and is the site of 7 cities, the current and 6 previous cities.
This morning, Delhi is hazy, windy and cold. The leaves are out, the grass is green and it is dusty almost everywhere, but particularly where we are headed first off. Shankar again told us about not giving out money except in two instances, to those who are truly handicapped and those who are very old and can’t work anymore. The traffic is steady on the four-lane roads, and the honking is constant, perpetual, insistent. They honk even when no one is around, it seems. And the green and yellow auto-rickshaws are everywhere, by the thousands. They are the size of a Smart car, with green body and yellow canvas tops, and have tricycle gear. Darting in and out, I’m sure they need the airbags they must have.

Jama Masjid

This is our first stop, a very important Mosque. To my untrained eye, it is not impressive. Very large, holding tens of thousands in a large courtyard surrounded by tall walls, with only two entrances. In one of the cloisters is the “White Room”, a 15-foot high mini-castle with padlocked doors and ornate trappings - it supposedly holds a lock of the Prophet Muhammed’s hair. Of course, we had to walk around in our socks in the cold early morning mist, stepping over pigeon dung. As we left and circled around the mosque, we entered the Moslem area, filled with shops every ten feet or so, some selling lamb skulls, some selling live chickens, others cooking breakfast over an open fire, and all covered with scores of wires just hanging about their doorways, going from shop to shop down the block. The sidewalks are covered with men - we see very few women out. The roads in Old Delhi, where we were, are very narrow, and here there are many forms of transportation, mostly bicycles, rickshaws, including the auto- rickshaws, small cars and few buses.

Raj Ghat

We passed out of Old Delhi and traveled into New Delhi, to Raj Ghat. Raj means “royal” and “ghat” is a cremation site. This is where Gandhi was cremated and then his ashes deposited in the river which is no longer there. Other important people were also cremated there - Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, both former Prime Ministers of India. This is a beautiful, clean park with large lawns, intersected by low bushes and concrete paths on which to walk to the monuments commemorating the fallen leaders. If you walk down to the site, you must leave your shoes (charge is “whatever you wish”) and walk in your stockinged feet to the monument which is totally covered with flowers and overseen by a perpetual flame. It is moving.

Birla House

Continuing with the Gandhi theme, we bussed to the Birla House, a private house where Gandhi was staying when he was shot. Birla is a very wealth car manufacturing family and Gandhi had accepted their invitation to stay with them the last 144 days of his life, from September 9, 1947 (25 days after the liberation of India) to his assassination on January 30, 1948. His last footsteps are raised on a stone walk out to the garden where he went every night after prayers to greet wellwishers. It is a large walled-in lawn with low bushes in the open area and large trees along the walls. The assassin, a conservative Hindu, approached Gandhi, and bowed and touched his feet, a Hindu way of asking for his blessing. So when a child leaves for school in the morning, he touches the feet of his mother to ask for her blessing. She raises her hand to give him her blessing and the child leaves for school. And it was not to be in this case. Before Gandhi had a chance to bless him, he stood up and shot Gandhi, killing him.
There are numerous materials in the building and along the courtyard that portray India’s fight for independence, the most interesting to me being the Indian take on The Mutiny in 1857, also called by the British “The Sepoy Mutiny” and by the Indians, India’s ‘’First War of Independence.” Those soldiers who “mutinied” against the British are heroes to the Indians who fought the powerful British and for many, gave their lives.

Kashmiri Rug Makers

We proceeded on to Kashmiri Oriental rug makers for lunch where they showed us beautiful examples of their work, complex patterned rugs taking 4 people 18 months to make. Well, Sugar, you know how I am about Oriental rugs. Of course, I couldn’t resist buying a “work of art” that is priceless and will last a hundred years at least. The salesman assured me that you would like it - in fact he guaranteed it. So please look for it in 3 weeks if I’m not back by then. And Robyn, I guess I’ll need a pay raise. And what ever happened with my goal of losing desire for possessions? One step forward to enlightenment and two steps back.

Laxmi Narajan Temple

This temple is a Hindu temple, built by the same Birla family mentioned above. Again, off come the shoes and we pad around on the cold marble floors in our socks. In the Hindu religion, there are three main gods, Brahma (the Generator), Vishnu (the Operator) and Shiva (the Destroyer of bad things), thereby making GOD. And above them all is Om. There are many other gods, and each god make have several incarnations so it’s very complicated. You can only go to pray there if you are “clean and neat” so Shankar said he would not be able to do so because he had had lunch and would have to shower before he could come back to pray.

Vietnam War Redux

Friendly Planet in India was treating us to dinner tonight. After the long day on the tour, Bay decided to order a pizza and stay in so I went off with the rest of the group. I sat with Pat and Betsy from Washington State and three others at one table. Pat and I talked about our trips to NYC a day early, and I told the table about all the troops at Bangor when we arrived for our flight, and about how each troop plane is met by Troop Greeters, given a cell phone, homemade cookies, hugs, etc., from those greeting them. As I was telling them about this, Pat (who is a very large, strong man, with arms as big as my thighs, a shaved head, the chest of an ox - just a large man, one you would expect to see on a Harley Road King) started to squirm, then tear up, and then cry uncontrollably as his wife patted his leg. I stopped when the tears started to flow. “When I came back from Vietnam, there was no one there to greet me. And while waiting for my connecting flight I fell asleep. An MP came by and smashed me in the knee with his nightstick. That was my greeting.” And the tears fell onto his food in a flood as his wife kept patting his thigh.

Good night. Love, Nat