Delhis

April 14, 2002-Old
(photos:Jama Masjid Mosque,
Red Fort,
Squallor viewed from our hotel room)

Our guide, Kumar, picked us up at 9 AM at our hotel. We drove through New Delhi, created by the British as a governmental center. In 1911, the British moved the capital of India from Calcutta to Delhi. On the way to Old Delhi, we passed lots of donkeys lounging on the streets & several goats. David still hasn’t seen the cows. Kumar pointed out a bazaar that we skirted. It was a curbside flea market with only Indians doing the shopping. There was row after row of shoes & Kumar joked that a lot of them were stolen & we might find ours if we looked closely. We saw people carrying plastic bags with water in them. I didn’t see any fish swimming in the water so I asked the guide about this. They were buying clean water to take home. Some of them were washing up directly from the bag as they stood on the street. Since it was Sunday, a day when most businesses close, the streets were not as busy as they were yesterday. Delhi has a population of 14 million, which is a real contrast to Australia, which has a total population of 20 million. The streets here don’t seem as crowded as China & Viet Nam, but we haven’t been to Mumbai yet.

In the 17th century, the Moghuls came down from Persia & united the seven separate cities in this area into one thus forming Delhi. They were expert builders & created a walled city with a confusing labyrinth of streets & alleys. They also left a legacy of their name to describe someone who is rich & successful, e.g., movie mogul. They were great patrons of the arts & enjoyed all the beauty that nature & humans could create.

They built the Jama Masjid Mosque, the largest in India. It & the Red Fort that can be seen from the mosque are built of red sandstone. It’s amazing that the red is all natural coloration. The mosque can hold 25,000 worshippers at one time. To maximize capacity, white lines are painted on the ground in the courtyard to organize where the prayer mats are placed. Women aren’t permitted to be there during worship but may come at other times. In keeping with tradition, the faithful face west, towards Mecca. In the U.S., they face east. The entire area is open to anyone now, but in the time of the Moghuls, only royalty could go into the marble floored interior.

We checked our shoes at the entrance & could have rented slippers or socks or gone barefoot. We chose to use our own socks. I had a sarong to wear & David rented a wrap to cover his shorts. It was a charming blue & green checked number that gracefully draped around his waist & fell modestly to his ankles. We paid a fee to be able to use our camera & began picking our way through the grime as we gingerly avoided pigeon droppings that festooned the enormous open courtyard. Pigeon food was strewn around to encourage this Muslim symbol of peace to stay. Our guide mumbled that information to us & added a bit about how ironic that is nowadays. There was a large area of water in the center of the courtyard where Muslims wash before prayer. The Indian term for it is “tank.” That’s what they call any enclosed artificial body of water. The derivations of some of the words are interesting. Their word for tie-dye is bandhani, kind of like bandana.

Before entering the Red Fort we had to go through metal detectors, all bags were opened, & we were patted down. India has the second largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia. Delhi is 65% Muslim & they were taking no chances. The fort is still used by the army & that presence was felt with armed guards looming everywhere. We passed through a still operating shopping area that Moghul kings used as a Saturday bazaar for members of the harem & concubines. They weren’t permitted to leave the fort so the shopkeepers brought their wares to them weekly.

The king’s residence & throne room are all marble intricately decorated with inlays of semi-precious stones. Where paint is used, it’s made from gold dust or dust left after precious gems have been cut. Red is from ruby dust, blue from lapis, etc. Women weren’t allowed into the throne room so lattice covered windows or jali (jail?) were set into the wall in back of the throne so they could observe what was going on. They were influential in many decisions & were literally the power behind the throne. Pools of water threaded their way through the royal buildings & cascaded over waterfalls that were backlit by flickering candles. The floors were covered with silk Persian carpets, of course, & the columns & open spaces were draped with silk fabric woven with gold threads. It must have been quite the spectacle. This is where the Peacock Throne used to sit. It was carted off to Iran in 1739 & broken apart so that the gold & gems could be sold separately. One jewel made its way back to India & now resides in the crown (The Jewel in the Crown) that sits in the Tower of London in England. It was last seen in public riding on top of the casket of the Queen Mum. The fort is undergoing a massive restoration project using original materials & techniques. When it’s completed, it will be magnificent. For now, our imaginations had to work overtime.

Our last tourist sight was the Rajghat. It’s where the elite are cremated. We stopped to see the memorial & marble platform where Gandhi was cremated before his ashes were spread in the Ganges. Mahatma Gandhi is considered the father of the country. He was assassinated six months after independence (1947) by a fanatic Hindu who was in favor of partition. Gandhi wanted a untied India & was even willing to have a Muslim become prime minister to prevent the partition of a Muslim state. The man he offered it to turned it down & said he would rather have a separate Muslim state or destroy India. Pakistan was created as a Muslim country, but India still has more Muslims.

New

Although Hindi is the national language, there’s no national religion. Punjabi (Pakistani) is the second most common language followed by Urdu, a combination of Hindi, Arabic, & Sanskrit. Our guide told us that all religions stem from Hinduism & Judaism. From Hinduism comes Jainism (800 BC), Buddhism (600 BC), & the Sikhs. Jainists are non-violent & are strict vegetarians who don’t even eat root vegetables in case there might have been germs living on the roots. Zoroastrianism is in a category of its own & predates them all. As a whole, the conservative nature of religion still permeates society. Homosexuality between men is against the law with sentences as long as life imprisonment. There’s no law against lesbian relations. That isn’t because they approve of lesbians. As in biblical days, no proscriptions were made in this regard since the men couldn’t figure out what women could do anyway.

Kumar frankly told us that he had to take us to a shop on the way back to the hotel. He’s a freelancer but the tour company gets a kickback from the shop. If a guide doesn’t take the tourist to the shop, he’s not likely to get another job from that tour company. We knew the drill. I was happy to go; I needed a rest room. As it turned out, I would have missed seeing a first for me. The toilet was at the confluence of East & West. It was a combination of a porcelain bowl & flush tank with toilet seat plus the option of lifting the seat & using the Eastern squat method. Built into the porcelain bowl, molded as one piece, & extending from the rim of the top of the bowl were what looked like wings. There were treads molded into the wings & it was clear they were a platform onto which you could climb so that the Eastern stance might be assumed. I prefer the squat toilets when traveling in less than sanitary places. Thankfully, I have legs that are long enough, balance that is good enough, & muscles that are still flexible enough so that I could climb aboard with confidence & be relaxed enough to let nature do the rest. To draw a more vivid picture for those of you who have impaired imaginations, picture a person perched in a squat about two feet in the air balancing on two platforms on either side of a toilet bowl. You got it. Do the words dignified & graceful come to mind? I don’t think so.

We were taken to the carpet sales showroom, offered bottled water & tea, & shown how the rugs are made. We’ve only seen that demonstration five times before. I really was interested in looking. Carpets are my weakness & although we’ve collected several in our travels, I’m still looking for one for our entry hall. The salesmen schlepped the rugs, unfurled them, & did their best to make a sale. I really didn’t see anything that excited me.

Our guide asked if we wanted to be taken to a restaurant for lunch or go to the hotel. We opted for the hotel & a restaurant he recommended around the corner. He said that over the years he’s learned which places were safe to eat at for tourists. McDonald’s was on the list. He told us not to eat fish anywhere but Delhi & not to try any of the tempting street foods. We went to Gaylords, an old & elegant restaurant from colonial times. It was the one whose guard directed us to the STD phone last night and he seemed to remember us. The outside looked like it had been bombed. For those of you familiar with the Diamond Grill in Akron, it was exponentially worse. The interior was paneled in rich woods, gilt mirrors, etched glass, & had bas-relief on the walls & ceiling. It needed sprucing up, but was charming. I ordered mulligatawny, a lentil & vegetable soup with a lemony tang to it. It was the best I’d ever eaten. David had Murgh Bharta, a chicken & vegetable dish in a tasty sauce, & rice. We shared garlic nan, a bread that was so full of garlic chunks that they scattered like petals as I tore into the bread. There were pickled vegetable relish & vinegar onions on the table. They definitely don’t dummy down the flavors for tourists here. A bowl of anise seeds with rock candy pieces was brought at the end of the meal. Since there’s such a large Muslim population, mocktails are offered on all drink menus. We passed those up for Diet Coke in a can. The waiter presented each can to us for our inspection as if it was a bottle of wine. He made sure we saw that the seal was intact. There’s a large industry in refilling containers & selling them as new. That’s why the “say no to plastic” campaign encourages people to crush plastic bottles after use so they can’t be refilled with impure water & resold.
Future Tense

It’s amazing how great cultures rise and fall. In the 5th century, Indian mathematicians had worked out the concept of zero & negative numbers. They’d examined geometry & algorithms. India contributed to the world of mathematics by way of Arab traders who took the concept of zero to the West. At the same time they took the lead in astronomy and understood that the earth rotated on its own axis while the moon rotated around the earth. By the 6th century, they had an understanding of the value of pi. How the mighty can fall. Today a lot of their hope is linked to Internet technology & computer industry. They’re creeping ever so slowly into the 21st century & may arrive there by the 22nd.

Toby