Goats Everywhere!

Post for 11/21/09—Delhi: Goats Everywhere!

1. The first picture shows Denise with our friends Reade and David Dornan, of East Lansing, in the courtyard at Yatri Guest House in Delhi, the morning of 11/21. They had flown in from Vietnam where they are teaching for the academic year, and we flew in from Paris. David is retired from the Michigan Department of Community Health, and Reade is almost retired as a Professor in the English Department at Michigan State University.

2. The next picture is the India we thought we’d see—tall buildings and modern conveniences at Connaught Circle. The Circle was built by the British in the 1930s as an upscale shopping center, although the stores and restaurants are a bit bedraggled. We found a decent restaurant there for dinner after our wild afternoon.

3. Here’s our wild afternoon—the market happening in the half mile or so behind the Jami Masjid, the largest mosque in India. We had taken the subway from our guesthouse and walked to the Red Fort, which I’ll describe in Picture #5. Finding the lines for admission too long, we decided to start walking elsewhere. Soon we were caught in a crush of people and goats. Most of the goats were decorated with ribbons, and I’ve never been in such a crush of people, selling and buying and yelling. We walked from the banner barely visible at the far end of the picture to the mosque steps, from which I was able to take the picture. The occasion was the Eid al-Adhha, the feast of sacrifice, where Muslims remember Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac—until a suitable animal wandered by. Apparently the goats would be sacrificed within the 3 days of the feast. (The story is in the Jewish and Christian scriptures—Genesis—and in American Blues sung by Bob Dylan and Johnny Winter: God said “Abraham, kill me a son;” Abe said, “Where you want this killin’ done?” God said, “Out on Highway 61.”)

4. This is the mosque itself—though when I compared my photo with those in the guidebook, I realized we had walked up toward the back of the mosque. It was built in the 1650s by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, who also built the Taj Mahal. The mosque holds 20,000 worshipers.

5. For two more centuries the Mughals ruled much of India from Delhi’s Red Fort, also built by Emperor Jahan. This was also where the British crushed a revolt against their rule in 1857 and put a formal end to Indian sovereignty. For 90 years the British monarch claimed the title of Emperor of India, until the Indian people, led by Gandhi, took their nation back. One guidebook says—I haven’t fact-checked it—that the Red Fort is the first place the new flag of independent India was raised at midnight, August 15, 1947.
Final note: Reade has been reading, and highly recommends, Salman Rushdie’s novel, Midnight’s Children, about Indian families with children born at midnight August 15, 1947.

Ho Chi Minh City

12/6/09

We spent yesterday making our way from Delhi via Bangkok to Ho Chi Minh City. While waiting in the airport in Delhi, I got 8 posts ready, so you’ll be seeing them soon.

In my Jaipur post I noted that I didn’t see a lot of gender equality in India. On the plane I read an op-ed piece in the Times of India by Sudhir Kakar (a man who is a psychoanalyst and novelist) that seems to confirm that. He comments at length on what he sees as a good trend for India: middle income women insisting on what he calls “intimacy” in marriage—moving away from the idea that the wife simply supplements the husband in his major role as son and brother in the extended family. He cites real dangers in the isolation of what we usually call the “nuclear family,” but thinks the trend is positive.

Of course, we didn’t meet too many middle class Indians in our visit to tourist hotspots. I think we chatted with 3 male hotel owners; none really at length or in depth. Clearly, a two-week sightseeing tour cannot substitute for real study of a society.

Paul

Farewell to India

12/4/09—Delhi

Today is our last full day in India. We fly tomorrow to Vietnam. I’m behind on posts because we’re spending our time DOING rather than blogging. Of course, Denise is working on her course, and I’m insisting on journaling and reading. I have picked the pictures I want to share; the task is simply to take the time to accurately describe the pictures.

Headline—Since our last post on Sunday, we’ve managed to see a tiger in the bush at Ranthambhore National Park. (You’ll see the photo I botched!) We also saw the Taj Mahal. I’ll try to attach one of my decent photos of that now. The Taj really is beautiful beyond words and does live up to the hype.

Paul

The Amber Fort and Other Jaipur Sights

11/28/09

Eleven pictures today, and one powerful moment to share. (Numercal order of pictures at same level go right to left).
1. The “Palace of the Winds” in Jaipur. Built in 1799, this is a façade one room thick—a kind of stadium seating on steroids—for women of the court to use for viewing parades and festivals. When the Mughals invaded India, they helped establish the concept of “purdah,” the exclusion of women from public life. So women had to stay hidden in structures such as these, even in the case of Hindu royalty such as Jaipur’s. Of course, “har har,” women talk so much that it must be windy in there!
2. A close-up of one of the viewing rooms. On purdah: it’s sad to see women still so subordinate in India. Our guide told one of our traveling companions (Reade) that he never eats meals with his wife. The American idea of spouses as best friends and companions is really incomprehensible to the Indians with whom I’ve talked. The fact that the President of India (a seventy-something female) indulged in her own “Mission Accomplished” moment this week and flew a fighter jet doesn’t change that.
3. The Amber Fort, a few miles north of Jaipur. This was the seat of the Jaipur Maharajahs from the late 1500s to when they built Jaipur in 1727. We spent most of the morning there.
4. And also #5
5. Support of women’s equality doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy watching them and hanging out with them. The first woman in red was shooting some type of movie and made repeated entrances through the doorway. The second picture shows another woman in red (Denise) who consented along with Reade to explore the fort together with me.
6. The pleasure garden of the Fort. (Remember “In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a pleasure dome decree?”)
7. Text describing the basil plant pictured in #8.
8. The god Tulsi—basil. Denise can relate, as can consumers of her pesto!
9. The Ganesh Gate to the Fort. Ganesh, the elephant-headed Hindu god, is the most popular deity in India, according to one guidebook. This is because he is the remover of obstacles and bringer of good fortune, and he is therefore placed on doorways and entrances of all sorts. In Denise’s and my spiritual tradition we experienced a similar concept that often when we center and listen to the Divine, “way opens,” and problems are overcome.
10. The “Water Palace” (Jal Mahal) built for day excursions (to play music or hunt birds, for example) by the Maharajah. It seems to float.
11. Sunset from the Lakshmi Narayan Hindu Temple on the south side of Jaipur.

Our driver took us here this afternoon because we wanted to see a temple. Because photography wasn’t allowed inside, I didn’t pay attention to getting a good picture outside. I was busy leaving my shoes for the shoe-check guy. The marble structure was built in the 1980s. It is cool and airy, with many marble carvings and stained glass windows showing scenes from the Hindu epics and depicting Hindu deities. We sat cross-legged on the marble floor and meditated for at least 15 minutes. Although many people were passing through, I was as close to centered worship as I’ve been since 11/8 when I was last in Quaker Meeting. Coming out and watching the sun go down seemed to be a good end to the day—and more of what we had hoped India would be.

PAUL

Giving Thanks

Paul talked about Jaipur, so I’ll talk about our time in Varanasi, which is the holiest city to the Hindu (like Mecca is to the Muslims). To quote one of our guidebooks:

“Spiritual life in Varanasi revolves around the ghats, the long string of bathing steps leading down to the water on the western bank of the Ganges. Most are used for bathing but there are also several ‘burning ghats’ where bodies are cremated in public.” Per our guide, there are about 70 cremations a day. Tourists are taken by rickety boats to the burning ghats to see the cremations, which are performed by male relatives as part of a Hindu ritual. This felt ghoulish to us – it felt like exploiting families’ grief for the boat rowers and guides to make money off of voyeuristic photo-taking tourists.

We spent three days in Varanasi, which for me was two days too many. I wish I had a scanner to post a photo showing 8 cows sitting in the Ganges from Thanksgiving Day's Hindustan Times (an English language Indian Newspaper). The caption read: "The divisional commissioner's order of keeping cattle away from the river front being openly flouted in Varanasi." Varanasi may be a holy city, but it is also the filthiest place I have ever been. (Maybe I shouldn’t mention “filth” after a member of the Indian Prime Minister’s cabinet took so much grief a couple of days ago for saying “If there was a Nobel Prize for filth, India would win it.”) The narrow streets are packed with residents, pilgrims, and a few tourists, and also goats, cows, dogs, and monkeys. You need to watch where you step! Cow dung is collected, dried, and used as fuel (see photo). In addition to the filth, tourists are constantly hassled by street vendors and tugged on by women and children begging for money. Who can blame them when they are so poor, and of course we – compared to them – are like millionaires.

Based on our first week in India, this is my Thanksgiving list that I sent to my family and a few of my public health colleagues of things for which I am thankful:

Dependable electricity
Water from the faucet that I can drink
Good sanitation
Clean air
Fire standards
Food safety standards
Traffic safety laws
Sidewalks
Freedom from marauding monkeys
Peace and quiet

Being in India has helped me appreciate the 30 year increase in longevity in the United States over the last 100 years as a result of public health measures, and reinforced my concern about legislators and members of the U.S. public who see government regulation as a waste of taxpayers’ money.

I will share things I like about India in another post.

INDIA!!!

So it’s Friday night in Jaipur, known as the “pink city” 150 miles southwest of Delhi. That’s 5.5 hours of what, a week ago, we’d have considered to be insane driving. Now we’re somewhat used to it, and think we can tell the difference between drivers skilled at this lawless transportation and ones who are merely dangerous! But that is only the tip of the iceburg.

At least two people told me before I left North America that a visit to India would be “life-changing.” I’m not sure I’d go that far, but I’m facing new experiences of such an extreme level of strangeness to me that I can only compare it to 40 years ago when I went off to college. (I think Denise shares some of this—she wrote a lengthy email to her family for Thanksgiving listing all the things for which India makes her thankful.) Not being someone who splats my feelings onto the internet without a lot of care, I’ll post more about the past week in due course.

In the meantime, today started with breakfast in the charming courtyard of our hotel, pictured here past Denise’s shoulder. The hotel is the “Madhuban,” the home of “the erstwhile ruling family of Patan, an ancient state which lies about 70 miles northeast of Jaipur.” The quote is from the hotel’s publicity.www.madhuban.net
One of the amazing things we saw today was a huge sundial, shown in the attached picture. It was part of a huge outdoor astronomical observatory built (1728-1734) by the maharajah who founded Jaipur. The guide claimed that it tells time accurately to within 2 seconds, and we were able to confirm that the time shown was at least as accurate as our casually-set watches.

Paul

1 1/2 days in Paris

Sunday evening, 11/22/09

We’re flying to Varanasi in the morning after two exciting, if not always comfortable days in Delhi. So, as schoolkids with late assignments, here’s the Paris two days.

First picture is the glass pyramid at the Louvre. We chose not to make it our priority museum. Instead, as dusk fell, we walked up the Champs Elysees toward the Arc de Triomphe, until we found a good bridge to the Eiffel Tower. We rode up to the second level and got a good tourist view of the city. (Second pic is of one of the four legs of the Tower.) Then we tracked down the new restaurant (see third picture) serving French “comfort food” as pitched by Susan Stamberg on Morning Edition a few weeks ago. We were not disappointed in the tender pork and the chicken casserole we had. We were disappointed that the ’07 Gigondas red wine, so beloved of Mark and Ellen Sullivan was listed on the menu but sold out! We settled for a Bandol red from near the Spanish border.

Thursday a.m. we used our metro passes (having walked probably 9 miles Wednesday). We spent three hours in Notre Dame, appreciating the architecture (4^th picture), Denise’s friends, the gargoyles (5^th picture) and sadly, the Memorial to those deported from France by the Nazis (6^th picture). We bought a baguette and cheese and yogurt from a grocery store and ate in a park. It was after 3, and we assumed we had missed our chance to do much else. But Denise thought we ought to at least check out the Orsay Museum, where the art of the greatest French impressionists lives. We found that on Thursday nights, the Orsay is open until 9! So we spent over 3 hours viewing Van Gogh, Millett, Manet, Monet, Gauguin and others—including Whistler and his “Mother.” (We giggled, remembering the last time we saw the Whistler, when it was on loan to the Detroit Institute of Arts. Friends of ours from Lansing who were visiting in Paris at the time had to go without!) Striking new (to me) fact: Degas, who painted many ballerinas and dancers, was also a sculptor, and sculpted them too. (Picture 7)

Empires? There are connections to be made between several, but not simply. So keep in mind the year 1160, when construction on Notre Dame was begun. It relates to things we saw today in Delhi. Of course there will be a test!

Paul