India, August 2007

Incredible India
August 2007

1. Invited to tour India and Australia to give a variety of lectures, I asked my daughter, Anne, to come along. After obtaining visas, plenty of immunizations, malaria tablets, and travel advice (eat only cooked food; drink only bottled water), here we are at the Atlanta airport, waiting for our flight to Chicago and on to New Delhi.

2. After a 14-hour flight from Chicago to New Delhi, we arrived late in the evening, managed to get a prepaid taxi cab that, after another hour or so, eventually dropped us off at the Regent Intercontinental Hotel, a midrange place I had prebooked via the Internet. For the next couple of days, we hired a driver and airconditioned car for about $25 for the day (below) ...

3. ... and started touring. Unsurprisingly, the streets were busy. The yellow-and-green "autorickshaws" (motorized 3-wheelers) were everywhere, as where the motorbikes.

4. We went to Old Delhi first to have a peek at Jama Masjid, a mosque from the mid-1600s, ...

5. ... and at the Red Fort, also built at that time. The walls of the Fort are well over a mile long (2km in fact) and between about 60 to 100 feet high. Unfortunately, in preparation for India Day (independence day), the Fort was closed to visitors.

6. We visited Mahatma Gandhi's grave site ...

7. ... and too note of inspiring words such as those pictured below.

8. We had a hunch that we would not be able to see Agra's famous Taj Mahal, a mausoleum built by a grieving husband for his beloved, dead wife. But we DID see, in New Delhi, the opposite affection: a mausoleum built by a grieving wife for her beloved, dead husband: Humayun's Tomb (built 1565-1572 AD).

9. India of course is the religion capital of the world. Virtually every religion has a significant and storied presence here. While Muslim mosques and Hindu temples (the Birla Mandir is pictured below) were impressive and inspiring ...

10. ... the site that captivated us most was the massive quietness of the Bahai temple (below).

11. Situated inside a huge garden, the lotus-flower shaped structure is surrounded by several pools of water.

12. The Qutb-Minar, a victory tower built between 1193 and 1368, was erected to celebrate the onset of Islamic rule in India after the defeat of the last Hindu empire. It stands over 200 feet tall and, at its base, measures 45 feet in diameter.

13. A closeup photograph gives a sense of the beauty and intricacy with which each of the many columns of red sandstone, that make up each of the five stories of the tower, are made.

14. Next, we had a look at India's National Museum, below a collection of classical musical instruments, ...

15. ... and the Railway Museum ...

16. ... where this letter engrossed us.

17. Also on our agenda was a visit to the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Museum (India's first prime minister).

18. While our driver took a nap, we explored the house, including Nehru's daughter's rooms - Indira Ghandi, later to become India's prime minister herself (as did HER son, Rajiv, and, perhaps, so will her grandson). Behind the house lies a beautiful garden, freshly soaked by a monsoon sprinkling ...

19. ... and inside we studied letters, photos, newspaper articles, and other mementos regarding India's struggle for independence from Britian. A sample of Nehru's library (below) struck me in particular since in my student days I read many of the same works, such as by Jean-Paul Satre, Gunnar Myrdal, and Albert Schweitzer.

20. On the third day in Delhi we had an evening flight booked to Kolkata (Calcutta), so we took a morning walk around the hotel neighborhood before leaving in good time for the airport (which was well air-conditioned to bring us relief from stifling heat). Despite this frightening tangle of electric lines (below), we never experienced electricity supply problems. (Mostly, we had water supply problems, that is, we took our showers one-drop-at-a-time.)

21. The intersection (below) does not seem overly busy. The street markets weren't open yet. The housing speaks for itself. Note the bicycle rickshaw, a very common form of transport.

22. On the concrete strip that divides the street, people had built slum dwellings. They were literally cooking, sleeping, living in-between moving traffic (below).

23. In Kolkata, I was kept fairly busy with three talks in two days, so photographs are scarce. We were picked up at the airport by a colleague, Prof. Pathik, who delivered us to the S.N. Bose Institute for Basic Science's Guesthouse in a part of Kolkata called Salt Lake. Construction was going on ...

24. ... and despite the oppressive heat, Anne attempted an early morning run. It took not 5 minutes to convince her otherwise.

25. The food in India was absolutely FABULOUS (especially for us vegetarian folks). Anne and I - and I rarely say this about any food as I seem to have no taste buds at all - reveled in the food! So it was somewhat incongruous that another colleague, Prof. Chatterji, invited us to eat at Kolkata's finest high-end restaurant, called Mainland China. But then, he is Indian, and probably wanted a change. (And Mainland China's offering was excellent, I must say.)

26. It took some effort to get to the restaurant. In Kolkata, as elsewhere in India, we found that taxi drivers do not, as a rule, understand English. When a translator tells them were to go, they nod and wobble their head, but still do not know. Consequently, they make frequent stops, for example to pee by the side of the busiest highway, or even to ask directions of others who also do not know. (This is why I came two hours late to the first talk I was asked to give, at the Alipur campus of the University of Calcutta; but I acquitted myself well, and everyone understood the problem anyway.)

In fact, cab driving is best viewed as a communal affair. An entire neighborhood gets involved, and eventually one gets delivered, so to speak.

But every cab is well-decorated with pictures of the driver's relevant guru (below). Unlike the white "tourist taxis," the yellow or black-and-yellow regular taxis are NOT air-conditioned, so one has to sweat things out for extended periods of time while sitting in overwhelmingly awesome traffic jams. Fortunately, for us, the monsoon rains this summer had not yet fully come. Otherwise, each taxi ride would have been a steam bath.

27. After the Mainland China lunch, we decided to hazard a 30-minute walk to the Queen Victoria Memorial. Asking directions from a policeman, he looked at us quizzically, "are you sure?" "Yes." Along the way, I noticed this impressive scaffolding - bamboo all the way to the highest floor. I wouldn't want to work on the top floor.

28. We also ran into a noisy demonstration by Kolkata's cab drivers, complete with red flags.

29. Another sort of "demonstration" was offered by this tired youngster, literally lying in the middle of the sidewalk, with empty bottle and empty bowl.

30. Back we flew to New Delhi for a day and a half, where I was to give a talk at Jawaharlal Nehru University, or JNU. The students were on strike, perhaps inspired by this Latin American revolutionary (below), ....

31. ... and asked us (most politely) not to attend any lectures, but when I explained that I was a lecturer myself, invited to give a talk for an international conference held at JNU, they quickly (and most politely) opened the door to the School of International Studies to let us in. Why, eventually the big conference room filled up with professors and post-graduate students and we had an interesting day-long discussing issues of war and peace.

32. Nosing around during the lunch break, I noticed the Academic Calendar and was intrigued that instead of Fall and Spring semester - as in the United States - JNU sports Monsoon and Winter semesters.

33. The next stop on our tour was Mumbai (Bombay) where an international conference was held at the Indira Ghandi Institute of Development Research (below), a post-graduate institute financed by India's central bank. Anne and I got fine accommodations on site, right next to Mumbai's famous Film City (or "Bollywood").

34. On our last day, we again hired a cab and driver and on the recommendation of Prof. Babu paid a visit to Elephanta Island.

35. Famous for a set of large caverns and statues carved into the island's rock, we were however greeted by some "monkey business," an advertisement if ever I saw one.

36. Here is a picture that shows the scale of the massive caverns.

37. The signature carving is the Trimurti (below), ...

38. ... a more viewable version of which is shown below.

39. We returned to downtown Mumbai and had a bite to eat in a restaurant in the busy downtown shopping district.

40. As always, the streets are crowded, shopkeepers are everywhere, selling everything under the sun. Not being born shoppers, we must have disappointed hundreds of vendors.

41. Here, a look inside a textile and clothing store.

42. A fleeting view of Mumbai (below), ...

43. ... and the sacred cows really do exist, as Anne demonstrates with this photograph.

44. India is incredible indeed. The car being packed full, these two fellows (below) made due with sitting in the trunk. We had but 10 days in the country, visited Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai, and were well-focused to visit only a limited number of sites so as not to become overwhelmed. We enjoyed the experience, the food, and the people. And we do hope to return.

45. Good bye, India. Off we went on our way to Sydney with a stop-over in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia).

[The end.]