Wednesday, July 29, 2009
"Poetry carved in stone": Agra and Fatehpur Sikri, part 2
And on Sunday, on to Fatehpur Sikri - the Mughal city built by Akbar around the tomb and shrine of Saleem Chishti, to whom he prayed for a son (whom he named Saleem in the sain'ts honor but who would later become Jehangir), the city that served as his capital for 15 years and was mysteriously abandoned in 1585 when Akbar moved to Lahore. The soul of Fatehpur Sikri is, of course, the shrine, and so that was the first place we visited. Although the place was swarming with vendors trying to sell us postcards, jewelry, the usual tourist junk, I felt like the shrine itself had a calming atmosphere - maybe it was the presence of hundreds of generations of tombs of the Chishti family surrounding the main sanctum and the cool shadows of the covered walkways and gates around the edges (I've begun to wonder whether or not European monasteries got this distinctive architectural feature from India - I've seen them in every mosque we've visited). Anyway, the tomb of Saleem Chishti is an elegant structure in the center of the reddish-stone mosque complex, all curls and tracery of white marble and lattice-work windows through with the white smoke of incense lazily floats. Inside, the tomb itself is covered in colorful, embroidered sheets as well as garlands of flowers, and in the heat and stillness of the little sanctuary you can hear the murmured prayers of the pilgrims crowded around it. On the pillars of the tomb and on the lattice-work windows are tied thousands of red and yellow threads, little prayers for children, marriage, love, and other everyday miracles.
Exploring the rest of the complex, we saw tombs hundreds of years old (Saleem Chishti died in 1572) of the saint's various extended family members, as well as other interesting historical oddities (like the entrance to the fabled tunnel through which, if you take your history lessons from Mughal-e-Azam, Anarkali left Akbar's court and traveled underground all the way to Lahore where the other entrance is supposedly in the old Anarkali Bazaar):
Talking to some of the kids trying to sell us stuff also proved to be an interesting cultural experience. Upon hearing that I was American, this sentence tumbled out of one little boy's mouth: "AmericaverygoodObamagreatman MichaelJacksondead." I'm glad that the two things America is associated with are Obama and Michael Jackson. Also upon finding out that the girl I was with was both American and Muslim, this same kid said "But there are being no Muslims in America except for Barack Obama!" That was a fun discussion to have.
The other main attraction of Fatehpur Sikri was the palace of Akbar, where his Nine Jewels rose to fame and where, as in the Red Fort and other palaces, the Diwan-i-Am and Diwan-i-Khas, as well as the queen's quarters, boasted gorgeous architecture. There were also some unique details to this palace complex, though, that spoke to the ash-o-ishrat of the Mughals, such as special concert halls, spaces for fountains and gardens, and a live-size parcheesi board built into the ground, where some unlucky servants would have to be the pieces. All in all, a pleasant foray into the age of the Mughal Empire, even when the sun made the stone underfoot literally blistering.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
"Poetry carved in stone": Agra and Fatehpur Sikri, part 1
This past weekend, most of the students in the Urdu program went on a group trip to another famous location nearby to Lucknow - the city of Agra, where the Taj Mahal is, and the connected Fatehpur Sikri, both cities at the heart of Mughal history and lore. Other than the monuments and palaces, neither city really has much else to recommend it, but the architecture alone is worth risking your life to drive through oncoming traffic for 8+ hours to get there.
We began our Saturday morning with, of course, the Taj, mingling with the throngs of other tourists (Western and Indian) who came to see one of the seven wonders of the world. The Taj really is a wonder - even though I'd seen it before on my last trip to India, there's still something that makes you catch your breath when you first glimpse the white marble dome through the arch of the main gate. We meandered through where there would once have been gardens and a reflecting pool up to the main sanctum, where the tombs of Mumtaz, for whom the Taj Mahal was built, and Shah Jahan, who had it built, lay. Although the Taj Mahal is commonly glossed as a monument to undying love, I think Sahir Ludhianvi says it better in his ode to the Taj where he asks his beloved to meet him at some other place, since "Countless men in this world must have loved and gone,/Who would say their loves weren't truthful or strong?/But in the name of their loves, no memorial is raised/For they too, like you and me, belonged to the common throng." (A different verse from the same poem, in the original Urdu, is as follows: Yeh chaman zar yeh jamna ka kinara yeh mahal/Yeh munaqqash dar-o-deevar yeh mehrab yeh taaq/Ek shahanshah ne daulat ka sahara le kar/Hum gharibon ki mohabbat ka uraya hai mazaaq).
After seeing the Taj, we made our way to the Agra Fort, which would be more accurately described as the Great Mughals' walled city. Inside it are the famous Diwan-i-Am (public audience hall) and Diwan-i-Khas (private audience hall), the Khas Mahal, all white marble and intricate tracery where Jodhaa Bai and other queens would have lived, as well as private mosques, areas for the harems, and once housed pools and gardens. Shah Jahan was also imprisoned unti his death in the Fort by his son Aurangzeb.
Having seen what would have been the height of Agra's grandeur at the time when Akbar made it his capital (1558), we visited Akbar's tomb, which also boasted amazingly beautiful calligraphy and geometric designs. The room where his actual tomb was, though, surprisingly stark - a simple tomb with one lantern hanging from the ceiling, the walls dull white. I suppose that at the time of his death this room would have been opulent beyond belief, but probably due to the difficulty of restoration the decision was made to just paint over calligraphy, carving, and paintings. Nevertheless, I thought the tomb's simple nature was somehow fitting, in the sense that Akbar in particular with his love for exploring religion and life's great mysteries was at peace in a room that was free of all the pomp and circumstance that was a Mughal emperor's trademark. Just a quiet grave and the shadow of the lantern on the walls.
We also saw peacocks competing for attention in the gardens around this monument, which was exciting.
We began our Saturday morning with, of course, the Taj, mingling with the throngs of other tourists (Western and Indian) who came to see one of the seven wonders of the world. The Taj really is a wonder - even though I'd seen it before on my last trip to India, there's still something that makes you catch your breath when you first glimpse the white marble dome through the arch of the main gate. We meandered through where there would once have been gardens and a reflecting pool up to the main sanctum, where the tombs of Mumtaz, for whom the Taj Mahal was built, and Shah Jahan, who had it built, lay. Although the Taj Mahal is commonly glossed as a monument to undying love, I think Sahir Ludhianvi says it better in his ode to the Taj where he asks his beloved to meet him at some other place, since "Countless men in this world must have loved and gone,/Who would say their loves weren't truthful or strong?/But in the name of their loves, no memorial is raised/For they too, like you and me, belonged to the common throng." (A different verse from the same poem, in the original Urdu, is as follows: Yeh chaman zar yeh jamna ka kinara yeh mahal/Yeh munaqqash dar-o-deevar yeh mehrab yeh taaq/Ek shahanshah ne daulat ka sahara le kar/Hum gharibon ki mohabbat ka uraya hai mazaaq).
After seeing the Taj, we made our way to the Agra Fort, which would be more accurately described as the Great Mughals' walled city. Inside it are the famous Diwan-i-Am (public audience hall) and Diwan-i-Khas (private audience hall), the Khas Mahal, all white marble and intricate tracery where Jodhaa Bai and other queens would have lived, as well as private mosques, areas for the harems, and once housed pools and gardens. Shah Jahan was also imprisoned unti his death in the Fort by his son Aurangzeb.
Having seen what would have been the height of Agra's grandeur at the time when Akbar made it his capital (1558), we visited Akbar's tomb, which also boasted amazingly beautiful calligraphy and geometric designs. The room where his actual tomb was, though, surprisingly stark - a simple tomb with one lantern hanging from the ceiling, the walls dull white. I suppose that at the time of his death this room would have been opulent beyond belief, but probably due to the difficulty of restoration the decision was made to just paint over calligraphy, carving, and paintings. Nevertheless, I thought the tomb's simple nature was somehow fitting, in the sense that Akbar in particular with his love for exploring religion and life's great mysteries was at peace in a room that was free of all the pomp and circumstance that was a Mughal emperor's trademark. Just a quiet grave and the shadow of the lantern on the walls.
We also saw peacocks competing for attention in the gardens around this monument, which was exciting.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Delhi - "Diwan-i-am, ashiq bhi hun"
Two weekends ago we (meaning my housemates Ranjanpreet, Sehris, Beenish and I) decided to escape Lucknow for a couple days and go to Delhi. So, several hours of theater-of-the-absurd bureaucracy later, we had train tickets and were on our way on the overnight express. The process of buying the tickets was completely insane - an elderly employee trying to type in our names on a computer that had to be even older than he was, being unable to spell even the Indian names; being shuttled back and forth at least six or seven times between different ticket windows; being told we could pay by credit card and then being ordered to do so in cash, for which we had to go to an ATM and withdraw these huge fistfuls of money because of course the ATM dispenses in 50-rupee notes when you need over 6,000; but in the end getting on the train off the waitlist because we were foreign tourists. Sometimes it's an advantage.
Arriving in Delhi the next morning, we quickly discovered that the 118+ degree heat was a record high, but being the hardcore foreign tourists we are we decided to do all our sightseeing anyway. So - off to the Jama Masjid, where the stones in the mosque courtyard were so hot than after washing our feet in the ablutions pool we could hear the water sizzle off our soles as we scampered onto the carpets that had been laid out for people to walk on. We got lunch at Karim's, a famous Delhi establishment that serves delicious Mughlai meat and kebabs (a Times of India review was hung up on the wall whose headline was 'Of Khusro, Ghalib, and Karim's!'). Afterward, we went to a famous Gurudwara (Sikh house of worship), which was very soothing in its harmonium-based chanting and its cool interior. Braving the sweltering afternoon sun, we saw the Red Fort (Lal Qila) and were able to get me in for the Indian price by inventing a complicated story about how I was the child of missionaries from Tamil Nadu (explanation for why my Hindi was accented) but had gone to boarding school in Delhi, etc etc., and got away with it, which was pretty great. The Red Fort's Diwan-i-Am was surrounded by Indian tourists taking hilarious family photos of themselves (I was very tempted to sneak some pictures and then upload them to awkwardfamilyphotos.com).
At this point we needed to take refuge in our air-conditioned hotel room or shrivel up on the spot (I probably drank about 3 or 4 liters of water and never went to the bathroom), and so we rested until dark before going out to Connaught Place to find a fancy restaurant to eat at and celebrate Beenish's acceptance to SOAS. We found a vastly overpriced Chinese/Thai restaurant that nevertheless was a lot of fun, and then walked around this fashionable circle in the relative cool of the evening. Connaught Place is a real insight into the "new" India - endless lines of designer stores that even reasonably wealthy Americans might have trouble affording.
In the morning, we had planned on visiting the Bahai Lotus Temple, but it turned out to be closed, so instead we went to the (air conditioned) National Museum, stopping to see the India Gate along the way. The museum was mainly archeological in nature, and the pieces that really struck me were the Gaudharan statues from northern Pakistan and Afghanistan that were Hellenistic in style because of the influence of Alexander the Great. It was completely unexpected to find something that looked ancient Greek in a South Asian context.
Mid-afternoon, we headed home and got there in time to try to frantically do the homework that was due on Monday.
Arriving in Delhi the next morning, we quickly discovered that the 118+ degree heat was a record high, but being the hardcore foreign tourists we are we decided to do all our sightseeing anyway. So - off to the Jama Masjid, where the stones in the mosque courtyard were so hot than after washing our feet in the ablutions pool we could hear the water sizzle off our soles as we scampered onto the carpets that had been laid out for people to walk on. We got lunch at Karim's, a famous Delhi establishment that serves delicious Mughlai meat and kebabs (a Times of India review was hung up on the wall whose headline was 'Of Khusro, Ghalib, and Karim's!'). Afterward, we went to a famous Gurudwara (Sikh house of worship), which was very soothing in its harmonium-based chanting and its cool interior. Braving the sweltering afternoon sun, we saw the Red Fort (Lal Qila) and were able to get me in for the Indian price by inventing a complicated story about how I was the child of missionaries from Tamil Nadu (explanation for why my Hindi was accented) but had gone to boarding school in Delhi, etc etc., and got away with it, which was pretty great. The Red Fort's Diwan-i-Am was surrounded by Indian tourists taking hilarious family photos of themselves (I was very tempted to sneak some pictures and then upload them to awkwardfamilyphotos.com).
At this point we needed to take refuge in our air-conditioned hotel room or shrivel up on the spot (I probably drank about 3 or 4 liters of water and never went to the bathroom), and so we rested until dark before going out to Connaught Place to find a fancy restaurant to eat at and celebrate Beenish's acceptance to SOAS. We found a vastly overpriced Chinese/Thai restaurant that nevertheless was a lot of fun, and then walked around this fashionable circle in the relative cool of the evening. Connaught Place is a real insight into the "new" India - endless lines of designer stores that even reasonably wealthy Americans might have trouble affording.
In the morning, we had planned on visiting the Bahai Lotus Temple, but it turned out to be closed, so instead we went to the (air conditioned) National Museum, stopping to see the India Gate along the way. The museum was mainly archeological in nature, and the pieces that really struck me were the Gaudharan statues from northern Pakistan and Afghanistan that were Hellenistic in style because of the influence of Alexander the Great. It was completely unexpected to find something that looked ancient Greek in a South Asian context.
Mid-afternoon, we headed home and got there in time to try to frantically do the homework that was due on Monday.
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