Fatehpur Sikri

Fatehpur Sikri is another World Heritage Site in Agra. This one was built by the Mughal Emperor, Akbar in the 16th century. In an earlier post I called him "Akbar the Great" but I have since then worked out that "Akbar" means "great"(as in Allah akbar--God is great). It seems a bit redundant to call him "Great the Great." I guess he had another name in his childhood but I don't know it. He built a Persian tomb for his father, Humayun, in what is now Delhi. He built Fatehpur Sikri as a palace and governmental seat here to be near the tomb of a Sufi Moslem saint named Salim Chistie.

Touring the complex, which included administrative buildings and religiously appropriate living rooms for Akbar's Moslem, Hindu, and Christian wives, I imagined the now empty Fatehpur buzzing with the life of the court.

Akbar would have sat in his throne on top of this pillar while his ministers sat on the balcony around the edge of the building. Guards, and perhaps supplicants, would have been on the floor where I'm standing to take the picture.

Fatehpur was probably abandoned when the water supply proved to be unstable or insufficient. Water features were an important part of the palace.

This fellow didn't seem concerned about water supply or quality. I don't know that the tank was originally built for swimming or how he got in. He wanted a tip for letting us take pictures.

I didn't think I needed to tip him for doing what he was obviously planning on doing anyway.

The massive and imposing gate leading into the walled enclosure that contains a Masjid (Mosque) and the shrine to Salim Chistie.

As with all holy places in India, we left our shoes at the gate. To enter the shrine, we had to cover our heads. If you didn't have a scarf or hat, you were given a plastic version of the head cover the young man below is wearing.

It was actually fairly crowded inside, but I got lucky with this shot. It's a space that feels very reverent and holy, even with lots of westerners in plastic hats snapping pictures.

The Taj Mahal

Built by Shah Jahan in the 17th century. It's a mausoleum for his wife, the Empress known as Mumtaz--the Jewel of the Mughal Empire. A Persian style garden tomb built over the course of 22 years, people like to talk about it as a testament to love. I don't know . . . I hope Jenny just has me cremated and takes a nice trip with the savings.  It is one of the "Wonders of the World" and it is magnificent. You really have to see it in person to appreciate its full power.

We arrived early in the morning--not early enough to catch the sunrise, but we got to watch the morning haze slowly lift and the crowds and heat were less intense.

This photo was taken from the Mosque that flanks the Taj on the west side.

The marble gleams in the sunshine, though with the haze and my photography skills, it doesn't quite come through.

Looking back toward the gate from atop the plinth (base platform), you can see the symmetry of the gardens. Everthing is organized in quarters, eighths, and sixteenths. In the time of the Mughals the gardens would have been filled with fruit trees and intended to simulate a Garden of Eden, the paradise the Empress was enjoying in heaven. The British came in, cut the trees down, and put in lawns so that the broad vista of the place was not spoiled. At least they didn't take it all down to use the marble.

This mosque (Masjid in India) flanks the Taj Mahal on the West. On East side a guest house provides perfect mirror-symmetry.

A close-up of the inlay work. This is all hand-cut semi-precious stones set into the marble.

After Shah Jahan's death, his son Aurungzeb, had him interred next to Mumtaz. His cenotaph is the only thing in the whole place that spoils the symmetry. You're not allowed to take pictures inside the main mausoleum . . . shhh.

During the years of construction, craftsmen might have stayed in these little cells outside the gate. I liked this view.

VIPs

We’ve been dogged by the police in Agra for the last three days. It’s not so terrible for us, but it’s funny. Apparently the city of Agra is under the impression that we are very important people. Really, I over head one of the officers say “V.I.P.” in referring to us. It began on the road into town. We had already been forced off our route by construction, stopped to change a flat tire, stopped to buy fruit (that one was our fault), stuck in traffic, and stopped at the Indian version of an old route 66 tourist trap for the driver and his assistant to take lunch. We had given up on stopping at Fatehpur Sikri and hoped to make the hotel in time for dinner, when four khaki-clad men in a jeep marked, “UP (Uttar Pradesh) Police” waved the bus over. What now? The bus had already had its horn forcibly removed by the Gurgaon police two weeks ago. The men, three carrying what looked like antique bolt-action rifles and the fourth with a pistol stuck in his belt, had a short conversation with our driver and Aditi, the project director, then got back into the jeep (a Tata, really) and pulled out, motioning for the bus to follow. “They are our police escort,” Aditi said.

So for the rest of the way into Agra the police drove ahead of us, motioning other drivers to make way with little hand gestures, and generally slowing everything down. Sometimes other vehicles got between us until the gesticulating officers would finally get them to go on around or drop back. I was impressed, but a little worried about how they would feel when they got a look at us. Seventeen bedraggled teachers and administrators in road-wrinkled casual wear doesn’t look much like a delegation of V.I.P.s.  As we stepped off the bus, the officers stood in line, holding their hats in their hands and looking, despite their large guns, shockingly subservient. Never in my life before have I had a cop with a great big gun look at me like he really hoped I was pleased. I smiled and tried to look very pleased, indeed.

They left us at the hotel but were back the next morning as we piled on to the bus for an early morning Taj Mahal tour. They still had big guns. I knew we were safe from rampaging elephants. They stayed outside the gates of the monument, but were there to meet us when we came out.

Our afternoon event was a lecture from the Pollution Control Board in Agra. The police stayed outside, but the whole board, the press, and numerous junior bureaucrats all showed up to the basement hotel conference room for the lecture. There was a period of general shuffling as each functionary found their status-appropriate place either out in the hallway, in the back of the room, or at the table in front of us. Then the lectures proceeded and afterward they presented Aditi and Bhavani with flowers. We all got up to shake hands and nod knowingly and pretend to understand the small talk is a necessary part of the ritual in an Indian Bureaucratic function. Finally they left us with our befuddlement.

Our picture appeared in the local Hindi language newspaper this morning, attentively listening as the Pollution Control Board “talks to American teachers about cleaning up pollution in the Yamuna River.” I gather the article went on to say that what the PCB told us and what the press knew to be true were two entirely different things.  But it was the city that invited the press, so I guess they got what they wanted. Our guide read the paper on the bus and his summary was passed down the rows telephone-style and I don’t claim any firsthand knowledge of anything except that only the top of my head is visible in the photo as I look down to take notes. I was probably writing about how the phrase, “as I have already told you in the presentation” turns up frequently in answers to questions. I think it translates as, “I have said all I am willing or able to say so I will now repeat it and imply that you are stupid to cover up my duplicity.” I have not heard anyone involved with an NGO use it. It is government-speak.

On the way out of Agra this morning we stopped at Fatehpur Sikri and the police joined us for the whole tour. One of them tried to run off a stray dog that Bhavani was feeding crackers to, and she scolded him in Hindi. Unfortunately, she wasn’t nearby when they shoved and slapped the young men trying to latch onto us as “guides” inside the tomb of the Sufi saint Chistie. Sure, the kids were a bit of a pain, and basically trying to chisel us for tips, but that was extreme. We were stunned to see police officers behave that way, but none of us really knew what to do about it. I told Bhavani later, and she said she would have stopped them. I believe her, but she wasn’t there. I’m ashamed to have stayed silent for the most part. I might have said “no” once. It was over too quickly to intervene, and I was too intimidated by the situation and by the police to use whatever leverage my V.I.P. status might have lent me. 

I was glad to see the purple UP Police truck leave us soon afterward. I didn’t want to be a V.I.P. anymore.

Happy Fifth Birthday, Quinn Barrie!

in New Delhi, it's July 25, so . . .

Happy Birthday, Quinn!

I love you! I will be home soon! Until I get home, Mama is the boss, so be good!

Wildlife of Hyderabad

This afternoon I stopped by our hotel room after a curriculum meeting and looked out the window to see . . .

A herd of water buffalo. Of course I went downstairs to get a closer shot.

We've actually seen a lot of water buffalo around Hyderabad. They are in the rest of India too, but they seem to be more prevalent in larger numbers inside the city here. This was the first time I saw them when I wasn't looking out a bus window.

Looking out of the bus window, its too hard to take pictures unless we're stuck in traffic. And for some reason, the interesting creatures never show up when we're stuck in traffic. On the road today I looked out to see a camel making his way along the shoulder. To be fair, he wasn't wild, he was a pack animal, but still. I couldn't get the shot, but maybe Ricky did--he's pretty fast with  his camera and keeps it ready on the bus. I also saw two or three peahens and a peacock. Again, too fast.

Dogs are more common than cows, so it's almost cheating to post a picture of one, but I liked this fellow hanging out at Golconda Fort.

Deeper into the fort, we were hit by a smell that I just recently learned to recognize: bat guano. Inside the vaulted chambers of the royal quarters in the ruined Sultanate fortress, we heard their chittering off in a side chamber. I turned on the flash and shot blind. This shot was pure luck and doesn't enlarge well, but here it is.

I also saw a mouse in one of the diaramas at the Nehru Centenary Tribal Museum, but now I'm really reaching.

The Generosity of Self-Help Groups

The women who form self-help groups in India are among the most down-trodden and marginalized people in the country. They are often widows or abandoned women, women living in extreme poverty (less than $1.25 a day), women who have been abused, women of tribal and Dalit heritage.  Dalit can translate as “oppressed,” and it is the self-selected name for those once called “untouchables.” By pooling their resources and getting support and guidance from NGO’s such as the DHAN Foundation, SUCHI, and SCINDEA, with some help from the government, they have managed to lift themselves from absolute poverty to subsistence living and give their children some education and hope for the future. If they were bitter and suspicious of a group like us, I wouldn’t blame them.

But far from being bitter or suspicious, we have found them welcoming, funny, generous, and warm. The SUCHI and SCINDEA affiliated groups both welcomed us with traditional tribal dances that were thrilling to see. I shot some video and hopefully will get it up before too long.  The Yelagiri Hills federation of self-help groups presented us each with the gift of a small enameled brass bowl. The DHAN Foundation group met with us in their village. They received us in a dirt yard, where we sat, with our shoes off, on make-shift rugs of repurposed political banners. While we talked together through an interpreter, a couple of them went out and came back with a cold three-liter bottle of Fanta orange soda and served us in plastic cups so thin they felt like molded plastic wrap. This was a village like most, with a communal water pump, and, I am sure, very limited electricity access. The gift of cold soda must have been an extravagance for them. Often shy at first, the women would eventually be laughing and joking with each other and with us. They spoke unselfconsciously of how their husbands used to beat them and scold them for attending the self-help meetings, until they started bringing in money for the family. Charming and remarkable women, they have inspired all of us.

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Monsooner or Later

While I was in the shower a cloudburst finally broke loose. It was done by the time I emerged but I'm told it was intense. Then on the way back from our evening site visit, the rain came again. Not so hard, but steady. We rolled through one intersection where the water must have been a meter deep and three men were poking at something under the surface with a long stick--I'm guessing trying to unclog a storm drain. I couldn't get a good picture, which is too bad. But after three weeks with only one cloudburst on day 2, perhaps the much anticipated monsoon rains have arrived. I was starting to feel a little cheated, having packed a rain poncho, umbrella, and backpack cover, along with a waterproof bag for my camera. Also, I know the land and the people really depend on these rains, which have become increasingly unpredictable with climate change. Last year brought twice the usual amount, and flooding, while the year before was a drought.

Viralipatty Forest and Indian Forest Service

I've been wanting to get into the forest since we arrived in Tamil Nadu, so the news that we would actually go out to see Viralipatty Forest and the nearby village of the same name after an office visit with the head forestry official of the Madurai district was good news to me. I didn't care how late it would make us getting back to the hotel. Mr. Rakesh was an affable and knowledgeable technocrat in khakis, an out-doorsy knit shirt, and expensive hiking boots. He had studied for two years with the U.S. Forest Service in Colorado and while he didn't have all of his statistics straight, or offer anything particularly new and innovative, he seemed to be doing more or less all the right things in managing his forest district. (Full disclosure: that assessment was made by Kerry Fegasun. I wouldn't know personally.)

Robert G. and I got to ride the Forest Service suv on the way out to the village. A man in uniform with a huge mustache who appeared to only speak Tamil squeezed into the back seat with us while Mr. Rakesh sat up front with the driver. We passed through the village and arrived at a gate. Another Tata suv was parked there and four men in green forest service uniforms lounged in plastic chairs nearby. When they saw us pull up, they leapt to attention and then scurried to the suv and piled in. Then one of them, with green and yellow piping on his shoulders and more authoritative hat scurried back, grabbed a briefcase, and climbed back into to the truck. We pulled through the gate and they followed behind, while the bus filled with our fellow Fulbrighters brought up the rear. As we went along the dirt road got rougher and we kept looking back to see if the bus was still following. When we started rolling over low scrub, the bus driver finally decided he had gone far enough and stopped. It was decided that we would all walk the rest of the way up to the edge of the national forest. The crew in the second suv drove on ahead and then ran back down like two-legged green mountain goats to meet us.



The terrain was rocky and steep, with thorny scrub plants. It reminded me of parts of Texas actually. We hiked up a trail to a marker near a catch dam. Where Mr. Rakesh pointed out some of the new tree plantings they had done. We saw teak trees and neem trees and several others that I wouldn't recognize again if they fell on me. We walked up to the catch dam, too high to see over, and thought about how much water must run down that ravine during the monsoon rains for it to be so high. The purpose of a catch dam is to slow down the run-off from the hills, thus getting the silt to settle and slowing erosion while giving the water time to soak into the ground and recharge the water table instead of running off down the highway at the bottom of the valley.

We wandered around, snapping pictures and trying not trip over the thorns while looking up at the gorgeous landscape. When we looked back at the forest rangers, they were setting out biscuits (cookies in America) and tea on the hood of their suv. Really. Nobody in India is going to get caught failing to serve tea apparently, even if its in a national forest. After serving tea, which was really the first time the men appeared to do anything useful, although I heard someone refer to them as guards, they collected our trash and we began the trek back down. The visit the village and the self-help group sponsored by the forest service deserves it's own write up, so hopefully I'll get to it later. I need a little time sort through pictures and add a few to this post, and my web access will shut down in about thirty minutes.







Catch Dam.



The #2 and #3 forest officers. They have Authoritay!
Above: you won't granite fence posts in Texas.

Tea Service or Forest Service?

Why choose?

It looked like rain but none came. Monsoons are late this year.



A Eureka Moment at the U. of Hyderabad

It's the end of a long day in Hyderabad. We spent most of it at the University of Hyderabad attending lectures from professors there. We took in three fascinating presentations from three excellent speakers, first on the economics of India, next on the women's movement, and finally on the environmental movement. I had to decide between listening to comprehend, and taking notes on the first lecture as I couldn't readily follow the vocabulary, but the economics geeks in our group were beside themselves. I greatly enjoyed the second lecture and took lots of notes, but most of the content will not be directly useful for my curriculum project. Then Professor Sheila Prasad arrived to speak--old school style with notes on an overhead projector--on the environmental issues related to India's development and I could not stop myself from asking questions that derailed her from her planned lecture. Actually, she was endearingly easy to distract, and I kept  looking at the clock because I knew right away that she was going to be the best source yet for the subject I had originally wanted to use for my curriculum project and I didn't want to miss anything she had to offer. Also, I had a very specific question I wanted to ask. She spoke about styles of environmental activists in India, and how the conservation issue is framed. She talked about the competing imperatives of development and conservation, and the necessity of considering the traditional people living in the environment. I asked her for specific examples of how that tension played out and then turned on my voice recorder and listened attentively with my pen down. For fifteen minutes she talked about the history of tribal groups in the forests being dispossed by the British and then again by newly independent Indian state. She talked of the tension between preserving the tiger, or helping the tribal people who had always lived in the same ecosystem with it, about the fishing community or the turtle. She explained that people and animals which had coexisted in the past were now being squeezed into smaller areas of forest and driven into direct competition by industrial exploitation of mineral and other resources. When she concluded sadly by saying that she didn't know the answer, and didn't think anyone did, I was probably grinning like a lunatic. It's not that I am gleeful about the problem. It's that she had just laid out the conceptual framework I needed for my problem based learning unit and pointed me toward exactly what I need to research next. Ok, maybe I am gleeful about the problem, but only because now I have a real-world problem for my students to tackle. And it's a problem that will engage them and challenge their assumptions. For an American fourth grader, particularly a very bright one, the issue is black and white: save the tiger, save the turtle, stop the mining. But with the unit I plan to develop they will have to try to unravel the gordian knot formed by the strands of environmental conservation, traditional human human interaction with an ecosystem, and economic development. I love it.

Cyberabad

The dhoti post below was written on Monday night, the 18th of July, but I just got it posted. We arrived in Hyderabad yesterday night after a long day of travel and the first thing that hit us when we stepped off the Kingfisher Airlines turbo-prop and onto the tarmac was a cool breeze. Oh, yeah. Inside the terminal, things were bright and clean and smelled like disinfectant. There was a two-story wall of green plants and a flat-screen video monitor showing the bags coming up onto the carousel. Weary and cranky travelers started to feel more optimistic. Outside the airport, we rolled our bags down a smooth series of ramps past brightly lit stores and fast-food resurants and onto an unbroken sidewalk that parelleled the entrance road. A fountain gushed across the way and I read two clearly marked signs I had never seen in India before, "Do not spit," read one, and the other commanded, "Do not litter." And it looked like either the command had been followed, or someone had been cleaning up.

The big, brand new bus that picked us up pulled out onto a wide, uncrowded highway and headed down the road, apparently keeping to its own lane and not honking. After a few miles, Ricky turned around and asked, "Do you know where we are, because we're not in India." And the place we found ourselves in did not seem like the India we have gotten used to. There we surprisingly few people sleeping under the overpass, trash had not grown to vast piles, and gleaming modern buildings rose up all around. At the Best Western in Jubilee Hills, we checked in and dined on a lavish buffet while the Discovery channel played on a flatsceen and orchestral versions of 80's top 40 hits played. Looking out the window of our room, it hit me. We weren't in the ancient and storied city of Hyderabad. We were in Cyberabad, the brash and new-moneyed suburbs where the IT sector is booming and foreign business executives wine and dine.

Of course, our study of the Millennium Development Goals has no use for Cyberabad except to give weary Americans a little comfort. Today we headed out visit our daily NGO's. The work that Akshaya Patra (getting its own blog entry in the near future) does takes place in the government schools where the student population is high poverty and there are problems with dropouts and truancy. We visited a school where the organization is providing lunches for school chindren attending class in bare concrete rooms and lunching in an open center field where boars rooted around for the leftovers. On the way to our afternoon session we passed a dead dog so stiff his legs really were sticking straight out into the air and flies formed a thick blanket over him. Just a few yards further down the street, the Andra Pradesh state police loitered in front of a gate in full riot gear. It's getting a little tired to say India is a land of contradictions but, well . . . it is.

Even Cyberabad has its issues and absurdities, but they are different. I have to take my laptop down to the front desk once a day to have the concierge help me log in for my 24 hours of free wifi because you have to have a mobile phone to activate your pin number and I didn't bring mine. And I could not call my bank using the toll free international number on the back of my card because the entire hotel is VOIP. In Cyberabad, I'm the less developed one.

I rock a Dhoti

 In Kanchipuram I bought a dhoti.  It’s like a lungi, except nicer. I really am not clear on the difference. Each one is three meters of cloth that men wear in a skirt-like fashion. Craig and I shopped for them together, and he and I each bought one that was labeled a “dhoti” and then Craig picked another one labeled a “lungi.” The lungi they offered to stitch together so that it created a tube, while the shop owners said that the dhotis where not to be stitched. You wear both items by wrapping them around your waist and rolling them down to keep them in place. I have noticed a lot of men wearing them with khaki shorts underneath which, I think I mentioned previously, seems to defeat the advantages of wearing a skirt in the first place—air flow and unrestricted range of motion. On the other hand I have also witnessed a drunk who, and I think I mentioned this previously as well, was not wearing anything under his dhoti and did some major public readjusting. Ow, my eyes. Anyway, it’s definitely a South Indian thing. I am not sure if I ever saw one in Delhi, but down here they are ubiquitous on men from laborers to priests (well, Brahmin priests, I don’t think I saw any paired with a clerical collar). When he saw me come back to the room in Kanchipuram with a Dhoti, Robert G. (not to be confused with Robert B.) had to go buy one too. Then we took the night train to Madurai.

In Madurai, Lady Doak College, a small women’s college affiliated with the University of Madurai, is hosting our visit. Tonight they planned a world cultures showcase and dinner for us and a group of students from Japan, Korea, and China who are there for the month. They asked us to contribute a performance to for the evening’s festivities, and with so little advance notice we found ourselves sadly short of ideas.  We finally decided, by default rather than real agreement, to perform the “Cotton Eye Joe” and teach it to our hosts. I told them I don’t dance. They said, “Of course you can, it’s easy,” and I pointed out that better dance teachers have said the same thing to me and given up. I pointed out that I actually had to drop country western dancing in college. Nobody was listening. Oh well.

Aditi suggested that we wear our new Indian clothes to the cultural night, so I wrapped myself in my lovely orange dhoti, and put on my new blue-striped jibba. I think that’s what it’s called, or kurta in the the north. In America we say shirt. Craig claimed he couldn’t get his dhoti to work and refused my help (it’s not like I got it on the first try), and said that his new shirt didn’t fit right. Robert denied that he had heard about wearing the lungi or dhoti that night. Maybe, but that’s awfully convenient. In any event, the final result was that, of the seventeen of us, only I was wearing a traditional Indian man-skirt. Thanks for the solidarity, guys.

We arrived at the auditorium on the Lady Doak campus—a lovely open-air building as so much of the campus is—and took our seats in plastic chairs on the floor. We faced a big stage, and above us, on both sides, were rows and rows of Tamil undergraduate girls, looking down at us and cheering like we had just entered Thunderdome. As the program began, bats fluttered in and out of the auditorium, hunting the mosquitoes and other flying buggies that filled the air. The first performance was a traditional Tamil dance by Lady Doak students—elegant and impressive. Next they performed a set of story-dances in more contemporary style, with girls made up as deer and other wild animals executing graceful, fluid movements that evoked the spirit of the animals they represented. In another dance, half the girls wore traditional saris while the other half, in jeans and shirts, played the parts of men as they danced a battle of the sexes with women triumphing and then winning the men over to their side. It could have been overly precious and silly, but it was absolutely charming. Then the invitation came for Richland College of Texas to perform. I tried suggesting that, as a Hurst-Euless-Bedford teacher, I was expressly not invited, but no one was buying it. Furthermore, no one wanted to introduce our performance. I volunteered to speak the introduction if I didn’t have to dance. No dice, but now I was on the hook for the introduction. Not that that mattered, I took the mic and had just begun to speak when my fellow travelers stepped into the center of the auditorium and the stands went wild. Nobody heard what I said anyway.

During the dance itself, Kerry counted out loud for me, and while I was often on the wrong foot or behind a step or two, I never completely lost it. More importantly, I never lost the dhoti. Remember, I was wearing three meters of hand-woven cotton fabric around my waist, held in place by overlapping and rolling. Of course I had on my shorts underneath. It wasn’t super comfy that way, but I didn’t want to risk traumatizing myself or the crowd of undergraduate girls in the event of a wardrobe malfunction. The dhoti stayed on, and I don’t think I was even the worst dancer in our group. The girls were all loudly and enthusiastically appreciative anyway. Probably we were good comedy, rather than a fascinating look at American folk dance, but they were happy and that’s all that counts. The college president told me later that they had especially enjoyed watching me dance in my dhoti.

The Korean students followed us, and they must have been greatly relieved by our performance. They drummed on plastic bowls and danced to Korean pop music, and they had clearly spent some time practicing. The Japanese students performed a pop song in traditional summer dress, and the Chinese students gamely taught phrases in Mandarin and sang a pop song. The three East Asian groups really blew us off the stage unless you’re looking for pure slapstick. They said they hadn’t practiced much, but I don’t believe them. We had in fact practiced once after a few Kingfishers on the hotel rooftop, so there. Finally, the Filipino college gym teacher sang three lovely songs, accompanying herself on the guitar, and then it was over and we could eat.

When we returned to the hotel, my dhoti was still in place. I never had to adjust it once, and furthermore it makes a great sweat-rag and hand-drying towel. I’m never wearing pants again.

Meenakshi Temple

The temple of the Beautiful Fish-eyed Goddess Meenakshi, wife of Shiva, rises above anything else in the Madurai skyline, at least from the roof top of our hotel. It’s an impressive sight from there, but far more imposing as you press into the crowd at the east gate, pushing for an opportunity to step through the metal detector and stand for a quick frisking before passing into the temple precinct. I was trying to be courteous and getting nowhere until one of our hosts from Lady Doak College here in Madurai tapped me on the shoulder and said, “You have to push in.” Nobody in the crowd was giving any quarter. Old men and women shoved past me and then I got my shoulder into the stream of worshippers and held my ground. It felt strange to be so aggressive going into a temple, but no one seemed to take it personally, and soon I was through and taking in the extraordinary carvings and paintings. The temple was such an electric collage of sound, color, texture, and smells that I could barely take it all in myself, let alone decide what to photograph. (The latter was only a problem for a short while, and then my camera batteries died again.) The carvings on the steep prismatic towers of the temple (five in all) were crowded and exotic and brightly painted. Inside, stone pillars were carved into gods and beasts. Some figures had powdered turmeric adorning them, and worshippers would reach out to touch the icons, getting a bit of the color on their fingertip and transferring it to their foreheads. A tilak, or mark, in the center of the forehead representing the third eye. The ceilings were painted in scenes and images, and our bare feet trod on mandalas painted on the ground. A figure of Meenakshi, pregnant and ready to give birth, was covered with a saffron-colored silk veil and anointed with ghee (clarified butter) that ran down the column and onto the floor. In the museum—a section of the temple where the thousand columns had been enclosed and a polished granite floor added, along with glass cases containing other statues and artifacts—our guide demonstrated singing statues. I put my ear against the arm of a figure and he tapped the other arm—the sound was surprisingly bright and clear. Another corner of the museum held musical columns. Several narrow stone columns sounded in different pitches when tapped with a wood block. It sounded a bit like a xylophone. Most exciting was the elephant. I didn’t get his name, but he is eighteen years old—relatively young, I think, for an elephant. When you gave his handler ten rupees, he would lay his trunk on you in blessing. When my turn came, I felt the weight of his trunk come down on my head and it was a substantial presence, but gentle. I reached up and patted the trunk—warm, coarse-haired, and dry. Just having seen an elephant so close, I was satisfied, but we followed him and his handlers into another hall, with a carved teak ceiling, away from the crowds. There, for 100 rupees (about two dollars and fifty cents), the elephant knelt down and two of us at a time were allowed to climb onto his back. I used his knee as a step and still had to struggle and scramble my way up. Artist rode behind me, each of us clinging to the enormous mammal’s rope harness, and the elephant stood up. I hadn’t realized from the ground how high it felt to be on an elephant’s back. His neck sloped forward and I felt a little like I might pitch over the top of his head if I didn’t lean back and place one palm on his skull. He backed up a few feet and then walked forward again, and the ride was over. When we climbed down I leaned into his side and caressed him. Wow. Just wow. I hope somebody got some good pictures.

The south gate tower

Detail on south tower

a carving inside

Painted ceiling in temple

Robert Galindo on the temple elephant

Temple elephant

Madurai skyline with temple towers and moon

Night Train to Madurai

I wrote this originally on the 16^th of July, and today is the 20^th.  This morning we arrived at the Madurai train station at 4:30 am to ride the express back to Chennai. I have added some pictures from that trip as well. I’m still having a hard time getting onto the web to post this.

We left ourselves four extra hours to make the train station in Chingalpattu—experience had taught us that an hour and a half by bus can easily turn out to be closer to three or four. It took just over an hour. With four hours until our train arrived at 11:40 pm, we settled into a waiting room and scooted the unbolted 3-seat sections of station chairs up to the wobbly wooden tables to eat vegetable sandwiches on white bread. iPads and laptops, notebooks and novels all deployed, we settled in to wait. Darkness crept over the train platform outside while we sat in the fluorescent buzz and looked at the safety posters lining the walls. Some in English, most in Tamil, they warned against crossing the tracks or failing to heed signals with dire words and leering skulls. “Foot crossings the key to long life,” and crossing over the tracks is “the gateway to hell.” It was a cheery little spot.

It was not ours for long though. While Aditi, our fearless leader, was off getting some much needed alone time, a crew of railroad coolies (the red shirted station porters) appeared and wanted to move our bags over to the platform. This was at 9:00 and Aditi had told us we would wait inside until 10:00. They gesticulated and spoke adamantly to our blank firangi faces until Bhavani, curriculum coordinator and native Tamil speaker, arrived to translate. It was going to take some time, apparently, to get the bags to platform six and there was going to be a crowd. We must begin now. The men could sit with the bags on the platform while the women remained in the waiting room (it was nice of them to volunteer us). A group of seventeen with no real leader present, it took us some minutes to decide, while the coolies waited anxiously. Finally we decided that if someone else was going to carry the bags all the way to platform six, they could do it when they wanted to, and besides, one hard railway station chair is the same as another.

The coolies, in their red shirts with red head-wraps hanging like towels around their necks, brought the bags to the very edge of the platform we stood on and then jumped down onto the rails below. I wondered if they hadn’t read the posters in the waiting room or just didn’t care. They ferried the bags to the next platform, and counting, I realized they had another set of tracks to cross before they would reach platform six. And there was a train sitting between them and the destination. So that was the reason for the rush.

Those of us who had volunteered to wait on the platform with the bags chickened out and took the long way up the stairs and over the crossing. That’s the key to long life, after all. We arrived at the middle of platform six and sat down to wait for the bags to show up. Just as we had thought, one hard chair was the same as another, but now we had a breeze. Finally the coolies arrived with the luggage loaded on two big trolleys. They passed us up and, gesturing for us to follow, kept going. A long line of firangi straggled along the platform. Gary and Stacie managed to stay up with the luggage, causing a lot of heads to turn as two white people passed with a crew of helpers pushing eighteen bags. Americans sure do carry a lot of unnecessary junk. By the time we all reached the designated point on the platform, it was 10:00 pm. It had taken an hour to get from the waiting room to the platform. Ok, so maybe the early start was warranted. But here, where we were told the air-conditioned sleeper cars would stop, there we no chairs, just a pair of stone slab benches sitting about eight inches off the ground. We settled down like hobos among our bags to wait for our train.

We had been told that the train would only stop for three minutes and we would have to get all our bags and all ourselves onto the train in that time. Aditi asked the station master to hold the train an extra minute as we had such a large group all going into just two cars. “Two minutes is plenty of time for eighteen people” he said. What happened to three? We watched as another train stopped. Bhavani checked her watch as passengers stepped off and others climbed on. A tea wallah worked his way down the platform calling out. When someone answered, he stopped, hung his pot from the bars on the window, and opened the spout to pour a paper cup full. The tea passed through the window to the thirsty customer and a coin passed back to the vendor. Friends bid a fond farewell, clasping hands through the window. A few stragglers ran to catch the train, running alongside as it began to roll, one hand on the rail, then swinging up through the door just as the train picked up speed. Bhavani checked her watch again. “One minute and forty seconds.”

Everyone had a suggestion for how to organize ourselves for maximum boarding efficiency. Somebody said that they were good at doing what they were told and Kerry agreed, “Yeah, there are too many chiefs already. I’ll be an Indian.” She paused for a beat. “I mean a follower.” Finally we worked out that the women would board first with backpacks and light bags while the men formed a bucket-brigade to get the larger suitcases aboard. We stepped up to start lining up bags and the chief coolie waved us off. “Sit down, sit down,” he commanded sternly. He and his two helpers took their red cloths from around their necks and wrapped their heads—now they were ready to work. They lined up the bags while we waited anxiously, peering down the track.

Rumbling and humming, the train arrived. We watched the engine glide past. The chief coolie hailed the engineer and gestured toward our group and the pile of luggage. His meaning was clear, “these American fools are going to get jammed up, be patient.” When the train eased to a halt with a steely whine, we were facing a second-class sitting car. The chief coolie gestured down the platform to where our car waited, the doors shut. We grabbed suitcases and ran as fast as we could, stopwatches ticking in our heads. We reached the first door and the woman at the head of the group fought to open it—it wouldn’t budge.  The porters and those of us carrying bags ran to the next door on the car, which also resisted opening. Finally, Gary was able to muscle it open and the women struggled on. A couple of men climbed on and starting grabbing the bags the porters handed up. I wanted to help but in the press around the door I quickly worked out that the most help I could offer was staying out of the way. When all the bags were on, the last of us climbed on. I don’t know exactly when the train started moving but by the time I was able to push in far enough to get my backpack out of the doorway, we were in motion and a conductor was urging me further in so he could close the door.

Now we found ourselves with a new problem. We were on the wrong car. Ours was one more down, and further, the luggage was stacked in the passageway between us and our goal. The porter and the conductor got more and more irritated with us as we tried to sort ourselves out and move the bags down the narrow passage, between the cars, and into whatever storage space we could find. It was another fifteen minutes before I was able to throw my backpack up to my third tier berth and scramble up to fully appreciate my surroundings. It was air conditioned, and that was good. It was cramped and not very private, though at least all six people in our section were members of our group. There was no window I could see out of, and no way to sit up straight, so I surrendered to circumstances and let the train rock me to sleep.

Despite a paltry pillow, scratchy, odorous blanket, and extremely limited space, I only recall waking up once in the night. Before I knew it I was being poked awake because we were only half an hour from Madurai. I went to the bathroom, which is to say I went to the small closet where you can relieve yourself down a pipe onto the tracks below, and returned to sit with my fellows. We struck up a conversation with the porter who was collecting and folding the sheets and blankets. He was a student at American University in Madurai who planned to earn an MBA and work in the tourist industry. He knew our hotel and said it was nice, but not “star class.” This young man who was practicing his English, learning French and had big ambitions, was doing a weekend job that once would have been solely the life-long work of men from the Sudra castes. It was an encouraging example of modern India. Isaac Newton (yes that was his name, and yes he knew of the famous scientist but did not enjoy science) was right about our hotel. It is comfortable, has good food, and an air conditioned bar I plan to visit later. My only complaint, as I sit and type at my hotel room desk, is that we have no wifi or internet access. I won’t be able to post this story any time in the foreseeable future, and that is not “star class.”

A "coolie" with his red shirt and head wrap

A view down the platform

Sleepers in the early morning: Madurai Train Station

The mail sits out on the platform unattended. It was locked, so not to worry.

A dog undisturbed by the goings on around him

Train was shaking too much for a good picture of the sleeping berths