Sikandra and Agra: Akbar's tomb and the Taj Mahal

We recently drove from Delhi to see the Taj Mahal. On the way, we stopped at Sikandra to visit the tomb of Akbar, the greatest of the Mughal emperors. Here's the trip in pictures.

The sunrise over industrial Faridabad was beautiful, but I'm not enough of a morning person to have taken a picture. Being more of an animals-later-in-the-day person, this was the first pic I took on our trip:

 

Our driver pulled over at a seemingly random spot along the highway, and this macaque leapt out of nowhere at our car, startling everyone. Of course we fell headlong into the tourist trap, taking pictures :) 

 

When we gave the monkey's owner Rs 20, he demanded Rs 100 each from the three of us. He got Rs 30 and that was that.

Below: Sikandra. This is the "buland darwaaza" (great gate) leading to the gardens of the tomb of Akbar, the greatest, ablest, and probably the most enlightened of the Mughal emperors. Early 17th century, local red sandstone with ornate marble inlay (including Koranic calligraphy in letters at least a foot high). I can't imagine how anyone can plan and execute a facade as ornate and detailed as this.

 

Below: A closer look at the main arch of the gate. It's the south gate of the complex. This is not painting or glazed tiles - it's stone inlay, set in stone.

 

 Below: Because iconography is strictly forbidden, Islamic art relies heavily on geometric and floral motifs, and calligraphy. Chevrons, eight-pointed stars, and octagonal designs are common, but I find the incorporation of this swastika to be an interesting Hindu / Indic touch:

The gate is equally ornate on the other side. I took this picture after walking through the gate, into the gardens. Garden tombs, by the way, seem to be an innovation from around the 15th-16th century. Not really sure about this, though. The gardens at Sikandra are laid in the typical Mughal "chaar baagh" design, which divides the layout into four equal quadrants and is aligned precisely to the four cardinal points.

One of the smaller residents of the gardens. He was excessively bold for an Indian squirrel - almost climbed on my shoe. According to legend, the Indian squirrel got his stripes by helping Ram build the bridge to Lanka and bring back Sita. Ram patted him to thank him, and his fingers left this mark.

Other denizens of the gardens included spotted deer and black buck. On a previous visit, I've seen monkeys, but there weren't any this time. Looking out on the gardens feels like stepping into an 18th century miniature painting (which, incidentally, would likely be painted using a squirrel-hair brush).

Below: The tomb itself looks like a mishmash of architectural styles, with Islamic arches and a profusion of chhatris. Beyond the main arch is an ornate foyer, then a dark passage leading into the chamber where Akbar rests.

 

Below: Vaulted foyer through which you enter the tomb, with floral designs and calligraphy embossed with gold leaf.

Below: Damaged panel under main arch.

Below: Door leading to Akbar's burial chamber.

Below: Recess in the foyer wall. I suppose this is a recent addition - the wall looks like plaster and the design is too stark.

Below: Carved stone screen off the main foyer of the tomb structure. I am not sure what the symbolic significance (if any) of skylights and screens is in Islamic architecture - given the interdiction to portray god, I wonder there's more to it than beauty / ventilation / lighting.

Below: Akbar's cenotaph in the foreground. In the background is the ramp that leads into the chamber.

Below: The single skylight that lights the chamber.

Sorry this picture lacks drama and romance:

My little camera couldn't capture the ornate lamp that hung over the cenotaph in that dark chamber, so I had to use a flash to show the detail. Must ... get ... DSLR ...

Below: Gold-plated lunch recess for the guard at Sikandra.

Below: Lamp in the foyer. My guess is bronze.

Below: Pottery "store" on the highway from Sikandra to Agra. I took this from the car window - it's on the edge of the road.

Got stuck in a horrendous traffic jam on the edge of Agra. This chai shop was right outside our car:

Back on the road in our tasseled Toyota Innova, with Sekhar at the wheel and Venkateswara on the dashboard:

Below: Cut paper delivery guy stuck in the traffic jam along with us. Maybe he's headed for a bindery?

 

Below: Paper recycling guy was also stuck in the same traffic.

Below: Another "buland darwaaza", also of red sandstone. This is the gateway to the Taj Mahal. Again, chaar baagh gardens on the other side. The forecourt has entrances from three cardinal directions. We are in front of the gate that faces the fourth direction (north) and leads to the Taj Mahal (like Akbar's tomb, the Taj faces south). This gate is perfectly aligned with the Taj - you can see the pale arch of the Taj through it.

Below: Walking through the gate - view of the Taj from under the arch. It was very sunny, around 1:30 or 2 pm.

Below: On the other side of the gate. The Taj is mindboggling in its perfection and symmetry. I cannot imagine how anyone could even conceive of something so huge, so detailed, so complicated (importing precious materials and experts from so many countries) in the 17th century, much less actually have it made. The whole structure is tiled with marble from Makrana, Rajasthan. The jade, onyx, coral, amethyst, lapis lazuli, mother-of-pearl and other semiprecious inlay materials came from Persia, China, Tibet, Afghanistan, Russia, and the Indian Ocean. Many of the artisans came from other countries too.

Below: I turned around and took this picture of the sandstone gate again. It's equally ornate on the outside and inside. Again, not painting or glazed tile but stone inlay.

Below: The gardens are perfect at many levels. First, each quadrant mirrors the other quadrants. Second, the motifs tiled into the quadrants are horizontally and vertically symmetrical in themselves. And the whole complex is perfectly symmetrical and aligned to the four directions, with the Taj facing south.

Below: Satellite view of the perfection. This is how the Taj complex looks in Google Earth - perfectly aligned to the four cardinal points. Mid-17th century!

In the above image, going from south to north, you can see the forecourt with its three entrances to the east, west and south. Tourists enter  from the east. On the northern side of the forecourt are the sandstone steps and the big sandstone gate. Further up, the gardens in front of the Taj, and then the monument itself with its four minarets, flanked by the mosque and its replica.

Below: The main cupola with its crescent finial.

It's very difficult to convey scale. I took the picture below from maybe 20 meters away.

Below: The sides of the Taj Mahal are about as ornate as the front, and the arches built on a similar scale - perhaps the exact same height as the front arch. This calligraphic stone inlay runs around the main arch on the Western face.

Although many people were taking pictures, photography is not permitted in the main chamber where the cenotaphs of Arjumand Bano (Mumtaz Mahal) and emperor Shahjehan are. So I have no pictures of that dimly daylit chamber whose walls are covered with even finer inlay than the outside. The cenotaphs are encircled by carved screens.

Below: Wall of one of the narrow passageways that filter daylight very gently into the building. At Sikandra, a sign by the car park said: हमारी विरासत, हमारा गौरव (our heritage, our pride). Clearly not for some idiots.

Below: The Yamuna river runs by just north of the Taj Mahal. This is the minaret in the northeast corner of the structure. We sat for a couple of hours, I think, in the marble-covered shadow of the Taj, with a cool breeze coming in from across the river. Despite the hundreds of tourists gaping, jabbering and taking pictures, it was relaxing to sit there.

Below: This red sandstone building is to the east of the Taj Mahal, and a replica of the mosque on the other side. It was possibly used as a rest house - can't find confirmation of this.

Below: East-facing arch of the Taj.

Below: Southeastern minaret in the late afternoon sun. Makrana marble tile.

Below: We stopped for coffee at a not-very-clean UP Tourism cafe.

And then the long drive back home. A tiring but fabulous day!

Semaine de la musique arabe / Arab music week - 8

Why did I do it, this Arab music week? Until a few days ago, Arab music for me was limited to Fairouz, a Khaled album that I bought on cassette tape years ago and later bought on CD, and Putumayo's Arabic Groove that I discovered a few years ago.
Pourquoi je l'ai fait, cette Semaine de la musique arabe? Jusqu'a la semaine derniere, je ne connaissais rien de la musique arabe sauf que Fairouz, Khaled, et Arabic Groove de Putumayo, que j'ai decouvert il y a quelques annees.

This week has been my exploration of the living, breathing, modern reality of young people in the Arab world. So no traditional wedding songs and Bedouin folk music - I was looking for rai, rap, rock, hip-hop, and reggae. I feel it's too bad that some people know nothing of it beyond Osama, Al Qaeda and the Taliban (yes, I know Pakistanis and Afghans are not Arabs), and am alarmed at how little I myself know of the culture and everyday life of West Asia and North Africa, despite my own country's ancient ties with that region.
Cette semaine a ete mon exploration de la musique contemporaine de la jeunesse arabe. Pas de chansons de mariage traditionelles ou de la musique bedouine. Je cherchais rai, rap, rock, hip-hop et reggae. C'est dommage que quelques gens ne savent rien de cette culture qu'Osama, Al Qaida et les Talibans (oui, je sais que les habitants de Pakistan et Afghanistan ne sont pas arabes). J'ai ete choque de realiser que moi aussi, je sais trop peu de la culture et vie quotidienne d'Asie de l'Ouest et d'Afrique du Nord, malgre les liens anciens de mon pays avec la region.

The songs I've posted, as far as I can tell, are about love and everyday life, just like pop music anywhere. As far as I'm aware, no song advocates violence (if you discover otherwise, please alert me).
Les chansons que j'ai postees parlent, pour autant que je sache, de l'amour et de la vie quotidienne, tout comme la musique pop partout. Je crois qu'aucune chanson exhorte la violence (si vous decouvrez autrement, s'il vous plait me prevenir).

For me, no language crosses barriers as effectively as music, especially contemporary music. I often used it when teaching world history at an American university, discussing how it was the outcome of a particular region's history.
Pour moi, aucune langue traverse les barrieres culturelles aussi bien que la musique, surtout la musique d'aujourd'hui. Je jouais souvent de la musique quand j'enseignais l'histoire du monde dans une universite americaine - on a discute la musique comme un resultat de l'histoire d'une region donnee.

To pick each day's song, I went through several others, and in that process, I made discoveries that
don't show up in the blog, like Tunisian mezoued music. I was surprised, because it sounds to me a bit like Celtic bagpipe music and a bit like the popular folk music from my own ancestral land (where I have never lived, but which is also desert, with lots of tribes and a relatively large proportion of Muslims in the population).
Pour choisir la chanson de la journee, j'en ai ecoute plusieurs. En train de faire cela, j'ai decouvert des choses qui ne sont pas inclus dans les postes - par exemple la musique mezoued tunisienne, qui m'a surpris car elle sonne un peu comme la cornemuse ecossaise, et un peu comme la musique de ma terre ancestrale (je n'y ai jamais habite, mais c'est aussi dans le desert et a une grande population des musulmans).

When I started out on the Arabic Music Week project, it was just to explore a contemporary culture that I knew was out there. As an Indian and a graduate student in the US, I've read, heard and experienced enough stereotypes to know how devastating they can be at worst, hurtful and dangerous very often, and annoying at best. I once wore an everyday cotton shalwaar-kameez to campus (in the US) on a day off and got asked if it was a "ceremonial dress" - does everything that's different from the western norm have to be special and steeped in tradition? Can't it just be another everyday reality? Western men make jokes about women and violence all the time (and they are frequently offensive). If an Arab makes such jokes, should that be perceived as religious politics, then? I think most people are ordinary people in their culture(s), and their thoughts and behavior are for the most part ordinary reactions to the things around them.
Quand j'ai commence ce projet sur la musique arabe, je voulais seulement explorer une culture contemporaine dont l'existence j'etais sure. Comme indienne qui a etudie dans une universite americaine, j'ai lu, entendu et vecu assez de stereotypes qui sont blessant, dangereux, et a tout le moins genant. Une fois, j'ai porte un shalwaar-kameez ordinaire au campus (c'etait le weekend), et quelqu'un m'a demande si c'etait de vetements ceremoniales. Est-ce que tout ce qui est different de la norme de l'Ouest doit etre special ou de la tradition sacree? N'est-il pas possible que ce n'est qu'une realite quotidienne? Les hommes americains, britanniques et europeens font souvent des blagues sexistes, par exemple, ou sur la violence. Ces plaisenteries sont parfois blessants ou de mauvais gout. Quand un Arabe fait une telle blague, est-ce qu'elle est ancree donc dans une politique religieuse? Je pense que la pluspart des gens est ordinaire dans leur culture, et ses pensees et ses manieres sont generalement des reactions ordinaires a leur environnement.

In the middle of my exploration, I discovered that almost at the same time that I posted a Tunisian rap song, CNN posted this report, about the important role of rap in Tunisia:
Pendant mon exploration, j'ai decouvert que quand j'ai poste le rap tunisien, CNN a poste au meme temps un report sur la role politique de rap en Tunisie:



And in my search, I discovered the astonishingly cool MaliKah (sorry, embedding is disabled, but please watch the AFP video!). Below I'm posting another song, just for you to sample - the person who posted it says she's singing about a group that doesn't even understand Islam is spoiling the image of the faith by killing in the name of religion:
Et dans mes recherches, j'ai decouvert la super-cool MaliKah (integration m alheureusement desactivee par YouTube, mais s'il vous plait regardez cette video de l'AFP!). Dessous j'ai poste une chanson ou elle chante d'un groupe qui gate l'image de l'Islam en tuant au nom de la religion:



I've never been a fan of rap, but I'm a little closer to being one after Arab Music Week :)

Je n'ai jamais ete un fan de rap, mais peut-etre mais la semaine de la musique arabe m'a apporté un peu plus près :)

And lastly, an interview with the Palestinian rap group DAM:

Et enfin, une entrevue avec les rappeurs palestiniens de DAM:

Semaine de la musique arabe / Arab music week - 7

Osiris is a rock group from Bahrain.

Osiris est une groupe rock de Bahrein.

Arab music week / semaine de la musique arabe - 6

Today, a political song. This is the Palestinian group DAM.

Aujourd'hui, une chanson politique, par un groupe Palestinienne qui s'appelle DAM.

Semaine de la musique arabe / Arab music week - 5

Rap tunisien par Balti. (Note: je ne comprends pas tous les paroles. Si elles sont blessantes, je m'excuse et j'espere que vous laissez une note pour me prevenir. Je ne supporte pas la violence et la haine.)

Rap from Tunisia by Balti. (Please note that I don't understand all the words. If they are offensive, I apologize, and hope that you'll leave a comment to alert me. I do not support violence and hate.)

Arab music week / semaine de la musique arabe - 4

Cette chanson s'appelle "Still Libyano" mais je ne suis pas sure si l'artiste est de la Libye.

The song is called "Still Libyano, but I'm not sure the singer is Libyan.



Sooo, here's another song, "Bahebbak" by a real Libyan, Cheb Jilani.

Voici donc encore une chanson, "Bahebbak" par Cheb Jilani, qui vient vraiement de la Libye.

Semaine de la musique arabe / Arab music week - 3

Diana Haddad, Lebanon / Liban:

Arab music week / Semaine de la musique arabe - 2

Rachid Taha, Algeria / Algerie

Semaine de la musique arabe / Arab music week

Starting today, I'm going to try to post a song every day. Just popular music, not necessarily political. Today's song is from Morocco, by Sawt el Atlas. I'm not familiar with Arabic pop music, so your suggestions, information, translations are welcome (please leave a comment). Peace.

Cette semaine j'essaierai poster chaque jour une chanson arabe. Je m'interesse ici dans la musique populaire, pas necessairement des chansons politiques. La premiere chanson est par Sawt el Atlas, un duo marocain. Je ne connais pas bien la musique populaire arabe - je serais contente de vos suggestions, informations, traductions. Paix.

Consumer, cow, milkman, roses, tulsi: one ecosystem

When I was little, we got our milk delivered straight from the buffalo sheds a few miles away (this was still Bombay, not somewhere in the countryside). The milkman had a bunch of buffaloes (or tended someone else's), and brought milk in large aluminum buckets, like the one on the left, and measured out as much as my mom wanted, into a large saucepan from the kitchen.

There was no packaging at all, no waste, and the milk had to be 100% fresh or else you'd know at once (it's warm here so fresh milk doesn't keep long unless you pasteurize by boiling). Sometimes the milkman would bring me a rose from the bush that grew by the shed. And when we wanted fertilizer for our house plants, he'd bring a dung cake (dry, not stinky). We'd pound it into a very coarse powder and scatter it in the tulsi pots. One cowpat is quite a lot of fertilizer!

It was such a wonderful, simple and environment-friendly system, and the producers (buffalo and milkman) were a more direct part of the lives of us consumers, not separate. The milk man died, the sheds got moved out, and we now get our milk and fertilizer in plastic packets, and the roses come from commercial farms with a massive carbon footprint (refrigerated trucks or planes). We have no idea who feeds the buffaloes or tends the flowers, what their names are (our milkman was Udit Narayan), whether they look healthy and are paid well, and how fresh or pure the milk truly is.

First truly habitable planet discovered

Illustration of Gliese 581g from National Geographic, courtesy Lynette Cook.

From National Geographic: 

Astronomers studying a nearby star say they've found the first potentially habitable planet—likely a rocky place with an atmosphere, temperate regions, and crucially, liquid water, considered vital for life as we know it.

Other extrasolar planets have been called Earthlike, but, astronomer Paul Butler assured, "this is really the first Goldilocks planet"—not too hot, not too cold...

...The Gliese 581g discovery is based on 11 years of observations, largely via the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The data allowed scientists to detect the wobble in a star's orbit caused by the gravitational pull of an orbiting planet—a technique called radial velocity.

Given the relative ease of finding this planet, 10 to 20 percent of all stars may have potentially habitable planets, Vogt said in a press release. (See an interactive guide to the hundreds of known planets.)

"There could be tens of billions of these systems in our galaxy."

Nice to know, but I don't think of it as a useful discovery. I'm sure they don't want any illegal aliens there, and certainly not ones stupid enough to break their own planet. If we went there, we'd be like fugitive criminals. Stupid fugitive criminals. Maybe they're worrying there that we'd go over and make their planet squalid, too, with all our shouting and overcrowding and dirty habits.

Sanam Marvi and the contemporary sufi music of Pakistan

I'm no fan of Coca-Cola, but I am really grateful for Coke Studio's fabulous contribution to Pakistani culture. So much brilliant tradition and modernity out there! Makes me proud to be South Asian (I happen to be Indian, but only incidentally: my grandmother's village is 10 kilometres from that horrible, artificial border).

It's unfortunate that too much of the world (including India) knows little about Pakistan besides terrorism, intolerance, and political instability. The song I linked above is contemporary Sufi. Sufism is the opposite of violence, intolerance and instability - it's loving, embracing, and enduring.

Bhopal verdict - justice delayed AND denied

Skulls discarded after research at Hamidia Hospital. Medical experts believe the methyl isocyanate gas inhaled by people in Bhopal may have affected the brain. Photo: Raghu Rai.

Referring to the compensation to Bhopal gas victims, Dow Chemical's public affairs specialist Kathy Hunt said in public in 2002 that “$500 is plenty good for an Indian." The explanation for this may be that Hunt and Dow are racist. But what is wrong with us?

From The Times of India, June 8, 2010:

Appearing for CBI, then additional solicitor general Altaf Ahmed had argued before the SC that the accused knew about the potential danger of the lethal gas escaping and hence should be tried under the stringent provision.

"There was ample material produced by the prosecution in support of the chargesheet which indicated that all the accused shared common criminal knowledge about potential danger of escape of the lethal gas — MIC — both on account of the defective plant which was operated under their control and supervision at Bhopal and also on account of the operational shortcomings detected by the Varadarajan expert committee," Ahmed had said in court.

However, a bench comprising then Chief Justice A M Ahmedi and Justice S B Majmudar disagreed. "On our finding that the material pressed in service by the prosecution does not indicate even prima facie that the accused were guilty of an offence of culpable homicide and, therefore, Section 304-II was out of the picture, Section 304-A on this very finding can straightaway get attracted at least prima facie," the bench said. It then quashed the charge framed against the accused under Section 304-II.

Diwali joy and regrets

I had a happy Diwali. But some precious pictures are only in my mind, and I can only share them through words because I had no camera and/or no time to stop and take pictures.

1. People setting up their bedding on the street for the night on Delisle Road (N. M. Joshi Marg) under cheap strings of LED lights that decorated their shanties for Diwali.
2. Diwali lantern bazaar in Mahim, a little south of Victoria School.
3. Yesterday (Sunday, Oct 25), a police van illegally parked on the kerb outside Nanda Cottage, Church Avenue, Khar. I don't know if the police were there to investigate a local crime, or just on patrol for Chhat Pooja (hundreds of thousands of people were expected at Juhu Beach, and Church Avenue is an arterial road).

Still, here are some pictures I did take during Dassera and Diwali:

Below: Swastikas - an ancient Indic auspicious symbol that invokes good fortune - embellish a neighbor's apartment entrance at Dassera

Below: Fresh marigolds and stalks of grain mark celebration, prosperity and the harvest of the kharif (monsoon) crop

Below: Remains of religious rituals - red-and-yellow cotton thread, red fabric, coconut shells, marigolds and zinnias, and incense ash - are disposed of near the roots of a tree. The plastic bags and polyester fabric are unfortunate mutants of an environmentally friendly tradition of composting religious remnants.

Below: A giant paper Raavan towers over traffic on a busy road. Effigies of Raavan are burned on Dassera, to commemorate the victory of good (Lord Ram) over evil (Raavan).

Below: Clearly the 10-headed demon king disapproves of the way people drive in Mumbai.

Below: Dassera procession on Haines Road at Agripada. Cops were posted in areas where Hindu-Muslim tension may be a possibility, and also along visarjan routes (routes to the beaches, where idols of Durga would be immersed in the water).

Below: All the ladies were out in their colorful finery to bid the mother goddess farewell.

And Durga Maata deserves nothing less than a proper western-style drum kit mounted on wheels:

Below: Durga stands on a float, in front of her tiger and carrying her trident. She is flanked by three priest types. Traditional marigolds have been eschewed for colored gerbera daisies.

Below: Man selling LED lights in the pedestrian subway that connects Capitol Cinema and VT Station. This was a couple of days before Diwali, the festival of lights. The electricity is probably stolen or bought with a bribe.

Below: Rangoli (sand painting) at the entrance of my home for Diwali. I made it long and narrow to fit the threshold, because a bigger one would be in the way of people entering neighboring apartments. The swastika is not anti-semitic, just a wish for good fortune.

Below: The lamps are earthen, with coconut oil and cotton wicks. Some people say they are to welcome the victorious Lord Ram back to Ayodhya. Another explanation is that they welcome Lakshmi (goddess of material prosperity) into one's home. The adherents of the latter theory are generally of the business/trading communities who celebrate a new year (2066 this year) the day after Diwali. For them, Diwali is also the occasion for Lakshmi pooja (worship) , to open new account books on an auspicious note. A swastika is marked in vermilion paste on the first page. Whatever the reason for the lamps, the city looks lovely all lit up.

Below: More offerings under a tree. These must have been left by the Gujarati working-class community near my apartment, because the camel-riding devi, Dashaamaa, is not traditionally worshipped by the trading and Brahman castes as far as I know. The plastic bag is full of a mung bean-like legume called matki.

Below: This is what Diwali is really about in Mumbai - sales on electronics ;) Two men transport a flat-screen LCD TV on a motorcycle near Kamla Mills. I actually saw two other men on another motorcycle a few kilometres further south, doing the same thing. I'm still trying to figure out why someone who spent at least Rs 30,000 on the TV wouldn't pay another Rs 150 for a cab, which would be safer and more comfortable for the men and for the TV.