feldmanlarry

Riding a bicycle rickshaw in Old Delhi, really not in Indiana, PA any more

One of my favorite pieces of music is Mozart’s “Exsultate, Jubilate”. There is a very beautiful slow orchestral part that suddenly breaks out into an exhilarating soprano aria. An image I have associated with this is from a specific location in Cascadilla Gorge right near my boyhood home in Ithaca, NY. The water calmly rolls along with no idea that in seconds it will be subjected to the turbulence of a waterfall. The sudden change from calm to aggressive is like the Mozart piece.

I have another image now to associate with that piece. The relative tranquility of Korea and of sitting on airplanes for many hours to get to India severely contrasted in a similar way with what I saw in India. My brief three days in India were the highlight of this four-week trip. As Karl Pilkinton said on Ricky Gervais’ show “An Idiot Abroad “ about India, “When you see one thing, there’s another thing right away.” His neck hurt from looking so much in India.

I was really looking forward to the vibrancy of India but it scared me. Indian food is my favorite of all yet I’m worried about getting sick from the food. When I was in Africa at 20 years old, I got very sick from the food and was stuck in a far away city (Mopti, Mali) for several days with no real idea of how to get well or how to get back.

I had definitely moved from the “developed world” to the “developing world”. This came really clear on my bicycle rickshaw ride through a narrow alley with wild shops, monkeys, and hundreds of people in a space that should have had maybe dozens.

For the first time in all my travels no one was there at the airport when I got in. However, it wasn’t their fault. I left Singapore at 2:30 AM and was supposed to arrive at 5:50 AM with a 2.5 hour time change. Combining this 5 hour 50 minute flight from Singapore to Delhi with the 6 hour 30 minute flight from Seoul to Singapore and over 4 hours in the Singapore Airport was a very long day and night. Arriving about a half hour early was nice. Getting my bag and through immigration went extremely fast. I was all done before my flight was even supposed to arrive.

I called the number for my guide and they were close by. My wait was short so I really couldn’t complain. They took me to my hotel, which was a bit of a luxury to have a hotel for the previous night when coming in at 6 AM. My original thought was to nap until around noon then go sightseeing. However, I only had three full days in India and I decided to betray my hatred of mornings and start the tour at 9 AM. This day turned into the overwhelming display I expected but the following two days were much more intense.

Largest mosque in India, built by the same person who built the Taj Mahal

The first stop was Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in India in the heart of Old Delhi, which can hold 25,000 people in the courtyard. The red sandstone mixed with the white marble was very beautiful. Looking back on it (I’m writing this after the trip is done), it was just one of many amazingly beautiful buildings I saw, highlighted of course by the Taj Mahal. I was surprised at how few European looking people I saw in India (like the ones in the above right photo), even at the Taj Mahal.

Beautiful symmetry of the Jama Masjid mosque except for me

Rules of the mosque including no women or non-Muslims after dark (left), crowded street next to mosque (right)

My sister and my brother were carried by rickshaw to school in Sri Lanka when we lived there in 1955. My sister remembers feeling really bad for the person carrying them. I did feel bad for the rickshaw driver on this trip but at least he had a bicycle. I suppose I could have lost some weight for him. My sister also hated the beggars, the poverty, and the dirtiness so much that to this day she doesn’t like to travel to developing countries.

I’ll write about my take on the beggars, the street vendors that come right up to you, and the dirtiness after some pictures of my rickshaw ride in Old Delhi.

The bicycle rickshaw man has a difficult job (left), starting the ride through Chandni Chowk in Old Delhi (right)

A Mandarin Monkey on the wires at the top of these two pictures!

Monkeys apparently are quite common in this area of Old Delhi and in many parts of India. I couldn’t quite figure out if they are treated like we treat dogs, mice, or chickens. I think they’re treated as nuisances like mice but not feared for disease like mice. They are tolerated but not really appreciated that much. My guide talked about how they get in people’s living spaces, eat food lying around, and leave messes. However most Indians are strong Hindus and believe in reincarnation between human and non-human forms and therefore try not to hurt animals.

A wedding supply shop (left). All the shops were very colorful. The street was very crowded but my guide said this too early for the ridiculously crazy traffic, fortunately.

The food shops all tempted me but I knew I had to be very careful (left), cleaning the sewers (right)

The guide rightfully called this “an electrician’s nightmare” (left), we went several blocks through an area that supplied books, stationery, paper, etc. for all of India (right)

Western-dressed younger man with a more traditionally-dressed man sharing a rickshaw (left), a shop in the butcher area (right)

After the rickshaw ride, we got back in the car and drove to Raj Ghat, the cremation site of Mahatma Gandhi. This was a little emotional for me. Ghandi was one of the most important people in world history. He developed the philosophy of non-violent resistance to evil that was used by Martin Luther King and many others. He organized the successful resistance to British rule that began the freedom of dozens of countries from being controlled by empires.

I bought the dvd of the 1982 Academy Award winner movie “Gandhi” and will watch it on my next trip (across Canada in a train). If you have never seen this movie or haven’t seen it in a while, you should see it. It’s a sweeping epic with brilliant acting by Ben Kingsley. There has been a recent biography of Gandhi that has been very controversial, in fact has been banned in parts of India because of parts about his sexuality.

Raj Ghat, the cremation site of Mahatma Gandhi, very emotional to be there

The eternal flame for Gandhi (left), a girls’ school on a field trip to the Gandhi cremation site (right)

I almost forgot about continuing my discussion of my sister’s issues with Sri Lanka / India. To me, the joy of the amazing sights of India outweighs these problems.

• The people trying to sell stuff weren’t a bad issue for me. Every guide I had carefully explained not to say “no” to the beggars and sellers. They treat a “no” as an invitation to begin bothering you more. I was taught not only not to speak with them but also not to even recognize their presence. I learned to just look a tiny bit out of the corner of my eye in case they did have something that was worth looking at. My guides also helped to shoo them away.
• The guides said also to treat the beggars the same as the vendors. Don’t recognize their presence. They said that frequently the beggars are from a gang of beggars that have a pimp-like leader who takes much of their money. I don’t know if this is true or not but apparently if you do give money to one of them then many more will quickly flock around you. Since I won’t be solving the problem of poverty in India by giving small amounts of money to a few people, I took the advice of not even acknowledging their presence.
• The dirtiness is a problem. It’s easy for Westerners to get sick in India, whether from the food or from just air-borne dirt. There are often piles of  junk lying around. Maybe the key here is not to lie around in the dirt too much, to wash hands frequently, to eat only at established tourist areas, and to be ready to possibly get sick anyway. An alternative is to just immerse yourself in India and be prepared for getting sick.

I sympathize with my sister though, it was probably hard for her as a young child to ignore people coming by who were sick or injured. It made a long-lasting impression on her. I had decided not to spend a long time in India since I had two weeks or so to go after India. Like I said though, these 3 days were the highlight of the whole 4 weeks.

After yesterday’s full day and night of travel with some sleep, just an hour or so of nap at the hotel, and a morning of sightseeing, I was ready for some respite, either sleep or food. My guide said he wanted to take me one more place before lunch and I agreed to it. We went to Humayan’s Tomb, which was visited by President Obama in November 2010. After the terrorist attacks in 2008, visits to this tomb went down quite a bit.

Humayan’s Tomb, a World Heritage Site, built in the 16th century

Two very old trees at the adjoining Bu-Halima’ Garden: ashoka (left), and banyon (right)

Very steep stairs to get to Humayan’s Tomb (left), 6-pointed star (right)

No — this was not built by Jews. I’ll quote from Wikipedia about 6-pointed stars in India. “Within Indic lore, the shape is generally understood to consist of two triangles—one pointed up and the other down—locked in harmonious embrace. The two components are called ‘Om’ and the ‘Hrim’ in Sanskrit, and symbolize man’s position between earth and sky. The downward triangle symbolizes Shakti, the sacred embodiment of femininity, and the upward triangle symbolizes Shiva, or Agni Tattva, representing the focused aspects of masculinity. The mystical union of the two triangles represents Creation, occurring through the divine union of male and female. The two locked triangles are also known as ‘Shanmukha’ – the six-faced, representing the six faces of Shiva & Shakti’s progeny Kartikeya. This symbol is also a part of several yantras and has deep significance in Hindu ritual worship and history.”

I’ll quote again from Wikipedia about the building itself. “As a contrast to the pure white exterior dome, the rest of the building is made up of red sandstone, with white and black marble and yellow sandstone detailing, to relieve the monotony. The symmetrical and simple design on the exterior is in sharp contrast with the complex interior floor plan, of inner chambers, which is a square ‘ninefold plan’, where eight two-storyed vaulted chambers radiate from the central, double-height domed chamber.”

But what amazed me most about this beautiful building was the geometric shapes of tiled screens. I took pictures of maybe a dozen different shapes. I’m including here just two of them.

Two of maybe a dozen different geometrical screens inside the tomb building

The tombs

Front of the tomb (left), a woman carrying a massive load on her head (right)

Finally, I deserved lunch. We went to a touristy area, which is all I would allow myself to do in order to try to avoid getting sick. The restaurant was called Pindi, which is in the Punjab area of Pakistan. It was wonderful and it reinforced for me why Indian food is my favorite of all foods. I had a Fanta Orange soda to practice for my visit to the Taj Mahal. I’ll tell that story in the post for March 27.

Restaurant I ate at for lunch (left), a Fanta Orange drink; practicing for the Taj Mahal tomorrow (right)

A very long day indeed except that the afternoon’s travels were just beginning. Fortunately, there wasn’t too much on the agenda. The only bad part of the day was the arts and crafts store we went to right after lunch. If I was into buying items like these, this would have been a great place. I wasn’t into it and we didn’t stay long, which is one of the advantages of having a private tour. The first part of the craft store was weaving and selling rugs. Ugh. I had had enough of rugs in Istanbul. I still don’t understand spending many hundreds of dollars for a piece of art that’s on the floor and you step on. I like rugs but I wouldn’t spend a lot of money on them and certainly would not have them imported all the way from India. The only part I liked of this was when they dramatically drop the rolled rug and have it spill out to its full glory.

Weaving demo (left), rugs for sale (right). I’m not interested.

Jewelry at the arts and craft shop, not my thing

Our final site was the President’s House, Parliament House and other Government Secretariat Buildings. These were interesting enough buildings but not on the level of the Jama Masjid mosque or Humayan’s Tomb that I had seen earlier or what I would see the next two days in Agra, like the Taj Mahal. The highlight for me was all the monkeys.

Building of the Indian National Government

Real monkeys at the gate (left), elephants on the column (right)

After I got set up and took a nap at the hotel, I decided I was too hungry to just go to bed. The hotel was excellent (Claridges) and had three restaurants, a Western style one, a mix of Western and Indian, and an Indian food only one. Of course, I chose the Indian one. The food again was excellent. A young British couple sat at the table next to me and we started a conversation. He was a specialist in setting up sound systems for large events like concerts. He had been hired to do the sound for a wedding. We shared similar political beliefs and it was fun to see how someone from Britain looks at our politics. Basically, they felt British politics were at least as messed up as ours. They almost disdained Tony Blair as much as George Bush, while recognizing the intelligence gap.

There is a lot of money in India, some of it getting passed on to people who own farmland that is close enough to become urban sprawl. The land can become worth in the neighborhood of a million dollars or so and these people have more money than they could ever imagine. The people at dinner gave stories of amazingly ridiculous weddings in India, like giving a helicopter as a wedding present only to find that they couldn’t make the upkeep payments. The irony was that they were bringing in British “servants” for Indian people as a total reverse of the role of the nationalities of centuries of British colonial rule.

Wonderful dinner at the hotel Indian restaurant

My highlight of the day was definitely the rickshaw ride through Old Delhi. The mosque and the tomb were spectacular but surpassed by what I was to see the next two days. Most importantly, I had fallen down the waterfall of the Mozart aria that I described at the beginning of today. The feeling of the crazy world of sensual overload will last with me for a long time.