MAY-A-4
DELHI DAY, AND TOUR OF TEMPLES—BAHAI,
HINDU, AND MAMMON BIRLA LAKSHMI NARAYN TEMPLE, GHANDI’S FUNERAL PLINTH
AND THE FLEA MARKETS FOR LAST MINUTE SHOPPERS,
BEFORE OUR FAREWELL CELEBRATION OF HEM’S BIRTHDAY,
AND A MIDDLE OF THE NIGHTTAKEOFF TOWARD FRANKFURT, WASHINGTON AND HOME
May 3, 2001
At last! A lazy day for late arising is just what we needed after a sequence of pre-dawn starts and after midnight stops. I had a chance to send off my last postcards-about the only literary art from I have been able to generate when in the brief intervals between jostling transports, so you will have a series of cards that tell in more abbreviated fashion what I have experienced in yet-another "Passage to India." I hope you enjoy it, since it is never easy getting a message out about what I am seeing and doing, since, often, the effort of recording the events some times runs interference on the events themselves! But that has not stopped me before under conditions of considerably greater adversity, in scrambling for electricity I had to generate myself and use multiple adapters to keep the portable machine from being silenced-and then searching for a means to transmit the message, even to the point of including US embassies that blew up into small pieces right after my message was transmitted through the pouch! [The trial of those accused of the bombing f the Kenyan and Tanzanian embassies will be in progress soon, with the whole world watching, since we have only been able to catch he little fish -albeit with irrefutable evidence as well as confessions-while the big fish, as often, are swimming away to prowl some other prey.]
With a slow and sleepy start, we are actually going to make something of a Delhi tour, although the usual response of some who have not been here and do not anticipate a return at any time soon, is to see how much packing space is left, and overstuff the suitcases with bargain souvenirs at the last opportunity to drop US currency and spend all the Rupees they still have to play with. So, we would plan to spread out in multiple taxis for a few sights to be seen, with a rendezvous at the restaurant I had first been in on the occasion of our parting company from the 1998 Himachal excursion-and then go out for our final Delhi shopping spree. This will likely mean covering the same ground again we had been through before, to the flea market and the street-side stalls, where we ought to be familiar figures by now, giving the few who have walked away from prior bargains a last chance to part company with George, Ben, Abraham and other dead presidents in exchange for Lakshmi, Ghopal, Laji, and Raju's finest craftsmanship
DELHI EXCURSION BEGINS WITH A RESPECTFUL VISIT
TO THE FUNERAL PLINTH OF THE B ELOVED MAHATMA-
GHANDI-JI
We found out from the morning newspaper as we waited in the Jukosa Inn lobby for our stragglers that the day we spent in sweltering around Agra was the hottest day on record in Delhi. Another comparably hot day was expected for this pre-monsoon day again, and we were moving with some deliberation. We hopped out of our taxi convoy to enter a park that I had not seen before, which, to the best of my knowledge was not here. I saw they were still dong the lawns and landscaping as they were arranging a green space around a central black marble plinth with cut flowers and a single word inscribed on it in Hindi. The word, "Heron!" was translated by Hem who reported that it meant "O God!" in the invocation to Lord Vishnu in the Hindu religion. This is the memorial to Mahatma Gandhi, as well as the other monument statue which I had seen and photographed on each of my previous Delhi tours, in which he is depicted on his long walk across India, leading the "Children of God"-the "Untouchable Caste"-as he walks along in his ascetic homespun leaning on a walking staff. This is the up and coming barrister of India who had been thrown off trains in South Africa for being colored-in a few memorial points I had seen to Gandhi in Durban, RSA. He was one of the more unlikely leaders of this past century, leading like a Martin Luther King through the suasion of moral authority, before his assassination by an anarchist in the garden here in Delhi.
I know that this memorial park was not here before, since I had previously seen a much more modest memorial in an unkempt park in which a concrete platform was remaining as the slab upon which his funeral pyre was built and ignited by his first born. Gandhi himself would probably have objected to the marble deluxe plinth representing him here, with a bust of him in very much larger than life at the street side of the entrance to this park. He was larger than life in his homespun, and a heroic bronze is diminished by his legacy of non-violent resistance for just causes.
OUR "TEMPLE TOUR"
FROM BAHAI, TO HINDU, TO THE WORSHIP OF MAMMON
We rode in our respective taxis through maize of flyovers and spectacular civil engineering, with a new highway system being built that made of central Delhi the same eye-grit producing expensive infrastructure as Boston's "Big Dig." On either side of these amazing construction projects were the equally amazing dense slums of shanties assembled from found parts, some of them stuck superimposed upon each other. At least our taxi and a number of those around us seemed to be doing their parts: each was sporting a sign on the side that advertised "CNG" which I suspected meant that it was powered by compressed natural gas-which I confirmed with our driver. He added that the CNG was even a little cheaper, but its main feature was that it was supposed to be less polluting, which I can assure you and anyone else was a needed feature of any new vehicle added to the snarl of belching exhaust pipes and the more solid emissions from camels, horses, donkeys, and a very occasional elephant caught in the same traffic patterns around us. We were surrounded by Mercedes and diesel trucks high up over the clear-cut slum track, with car-to-car beggars shoving leprosy twisted stumps of hands through the windows of the non-A/C taxi, and younger hustlers trying to squirt the windshield so that it would require washing. A few "service providers" were trying to hawk a series of magazines, with covers showing very non-Indian looking supermodels each on cover teaser shots with an amazingly engineered enhanced cleavage under titles such as Vogue, Elle, Cosmo, Mademoiselle-probably all pirated names for a cheaper knock off copy. I looked past the hawkers and beggars standing at our taxi with four sweaty European faces inside attracting the eager attention as we were gridlocked on the new flyovers-and into the destitute squalor of the slums of Delhi's outskirts. They DO really need some serious infrastructure work! But, again, it should be less in the concrete than in the non-abstraction of the misery just beyond and under these new bridges. In crossing the construction line, we were abruptly in new, affluent recently industrialized India, with the kind of industrial startups that flourish in the absence of honoring any international patent protection. We went from stubs of hands pushed through he windows to the more upmarket salesmen on the other side of the industrial park bridge foisting lotus blossom bouquets at us. Welcome to lotus land.
Then I could see why. In the middle of this large industrial complex in what must be rather high priced real estate, is this unreal green sward through a central part of Delhi with a large white concrete lotus blossom temple in the middle of acres of manicured lawns and splashing fountains and reflecting pools. Welcome to the land of the Bahai---only six months from the time I had toured the US Bahai Temple in Evanston Illinois, near Northwestern University.
The Bahai Temple of Delhi is this large lotus blossom with petals unfolding to house a central Air Conditioned sanctuary and a service of prayer for all peoples about to begin in this sanctuary. I walked around rapidly to see the pictures of the Bahai Temples in other world centers, such as Evanston Illinois and somewhere in West Virginia, and the same placards protesting the martyrdom of the Bahai Faith Martyrs in Iraq where they seem singled out for rough treatment-which I think hardly distinguishes them from the equal-opportunity persecution of the Kurds who have lost a quarter million of their people-a population without a homeland soon to be larger than the population of Turkey-one of the reluctant host nations hardly more hospitable than Saddam Hussein.
I wonder what it is about the Middle East that makes it such a hotbed breeding grounds of the new and often radical religious cults and brand new major religions? The Bahai faith is an attempt at being all-inclusive and is so ecumenical as to incorporate all of Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism and Hinduism not to mention a dozen lesser lights in the world religious gemisch. The Bahai have the attraction of the Unitarians who do not really have to have any specific creed or anything else that must be believed, but just follow a simple standard---please just be a little nicer to each other! They crib from all other faiths so as to make new recruits from a further along starting point-a process we would witness in the Bahai prayer service that was beginning. As in al other temples we had to take off our shoes, and put them in a checked bag upon entry into the temple. There was a cool Dude Californian behind us who asked to pop his sandals in our bag, and asked the usual "Where are you from? " in making his connection with us as a pilgrim traveling the enlightenment road-although, I was traveling considerably lighter since I did not have to carry as much heavy metal in various body piercings. We came in just as the four people leading this "Quaker meeting" service got up to intone, or read, or chant like a cantor, a Torah portion in Hebrew, a homily in Farsi, and a Buddhist mantra, and even one passage in English-a Psalm. I rather liked the last one, if for no other reason than I could understand this one, although I thought it was neat to hear the cantor harmonizing with his own echoing overtone harmonics. The Psalm was followed by "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" I had just been telling Michael about a Colorado University oncologist I wanted him to look up who is doing the kinds of things that I do with frequent trips to India, but broke off, during the readings by saying "But we are just 'Material Men'"
Fertile Persia is the source of the Bahai faith, and not all that long ago, since the first of the Three Promised Ones came along 157 years ago. The three successors came from that area, although the last two came from Mount Carmel when that was in what was then Palestine. Subsequent to the Ayatollah's takeover of the Islamic Republic of Iran, quite a few of the Bahai in the land of the origin of this new comprehensive world religion were persecuted and martyred also -although I can hardly see any deep conviction they would have to a creed the would die for, but it at least gets Saddam off the hook as the only one out to get them. All around the temple are volunteers, wearing name badges and origin addresses like Mormon missionaries who will help sign you up if need be. It seems from the real estate and rather conspicuous stuff the Bahai are flashing, that, like Mormonism, a reflection of your piety is how well you can prosper and support the cause with this world's goods you can accumulate as a marker of your success. The Indians I saw at the Bahai temple were uniformly well heeled and strutting their stuff in designer fashions. So what, indeed, doth it profit a man?
We left the temple, but not the grounds in order to get something drinkable at the concession stands and assemble the stragglers. As we waited I noted that the currency of India is all of different sizes so one can find by touch the difference between a 500, 100 or 50 rupee note-a good idea for the visually impaired. On each bill there is a total of 11 different languages-like South Africa's dozen "official languages"-which leaves English as the default language for each nation, with Hindi and Afrikaans coming in distant second in each place respectively.
From the steps of the Bahai Temple, we can look across the green grass of the temple's lawn and see the competition. There is an ornate Hindu Temple, festooned on the outside with a collection of statues of monkeys, elephants and other deities in a busy swirl of architecture in contrast to the stark simplicity in the Bahai Temple, which must have taken the same imagination as the Sydney Opera House to be able to make this flower functional. We would visit the Hindu Temple after lunch, since for now we were going to go over to the "Chicken Inn" where I had eaten a good lunch in 1998-hardly to be expected from its rather prosaic name. Do not let its gold-handled plumbing fixtures fool you-the cuisine and the menu is as authentic as the Asian toilet offered as an option for those purists who push the authenticity envelope. We did it again this time, although the ambience may have led us to a prejudgment about the food, since sitting in A/C comfort was a big plus after trekking around the gritty dirt of urban India under glowering skies. Just before we got to the restaurant, we stopped and for a gloomy moment, all the vehicles had to put on their headlights since there was a sandstorm when all the dust of the Great Tar Desert must have billowed down in a gale and blotted out the sun like the African Harmattan. This seemed to be the forward advance party of the first of the monsoons-but no such luck. After a few foliage-shredding blasts of hot gritty air, a few large rain drops fell---which some might expect to be a hailstorm under these unusual meteorologic circumstances-and it went back to b e stifling hot as the breeze subsided and the sky lightened up. Both the change in the weather and our appearance at the door of the Chicken Inn on departing, caused another flurry of activity in front of the door. Seeing almost a dozen Europeans emerging from a toney eatery, a fakir had set up his two-basket show and was toodling on his horn to get two cobras to fan out (a male and female, he explained, in a ritual dance) and rise from the baskets. Another basket contained a python and Rajas than snakes-which seemed to be the crowd pleasers after the other three Europeans in front of the restaurant seemed bored with the cobras, which looked drugged. I did not encourage the show by walking up and taking a picture (except from the hip) but I was also being pursued by a gaggle of beggars who just could not give up with such a prime catch in their lair. It wasn't until I go tin the taxi and slammed the door that they finally realized their defeat, having wasted their perfectly woeful appearances, having done their dead level best imitation of starving destitution, as they walked away and made change with each other for their combined take from a previous thespian performance before a much more appreciative audience. The one of them had hobbled bent over painfully on a stick, until the taxi door shut, at which point he stood upright and passed the stick to his colleague who was suddenly stricken with the same crippling disorder.
EQUAL TIME:
TOUR THE BIRLA LAKSHMI NARAYN HINDU TEMPLE
In going now into a Hindu temple we had a pictorial tour through the iconography of Hinduism. Each of the millions of gods of the Hindu faith were on display in elaborate paintings as worship stations-like the stations of the cross for a Roman Catholic. The paintings were like those I have seen in my children's story text on the Hindu deities, and tend toward the "Grandma Moses School' of simplistic primitivism, which, I suppose, elevates them from the often tawdry life around each of the worshippers. I remember one useful phrase from the forward of that book which I had purchased on one of my first trips to India: "Never teach the students; only tell them a story." From my study of the Mahabharata, it seems that this goes for more than the young students, but seems especially true for adults. The Mahabharata never does any explaining about any mysterious passage except to launch yet again in another story. A good deal of the other scriptures are like that as well since little of the Old Testament, and, for that matter, the New, would have any value except like that of the historic bits of submerged DNA in the genetic code, which had an important story for the time it had evolved-like a News Story in the Newspaper, which loses its currency rather quickly and has diminished lesson value unless it fits into a pattern from a later recycling.
The temple tour is a somewhat special place as a shelter from the reality swirling in the streets outside, but one is confronted with it soon enough upon emerging, since temples or cathedrals everywhere are the prime places for beggars, sick and desperate to huddle seeking alms from those with presumably the right mindset as they emerge from the simpler and more abstract cleaner and clearer revelation inside the temple of the words "But who is my brother?" and ""Go and do thou likewise!"
Well, we did it again. We went shopping. Not as a passion for some of us who had gone to assist others in picking up just a few more items in this one "chance of a lifetime"-which I might have a different view of as that singular opportunity seems to come my way more often than being home to mow the lawn. I am certainly not complaining about this lucky difference, but, I do have a lesser enthusiasm for doing abroad what I cannot be excited about doing at home in a mercantile world that interests me far less than the wilderness natural history settings and the historic and cultural features of a new place which are far less exhaustible and not nearly as exhausting as a shopping orgy. We went back into the Cottage Industries, where I helped largely by being the bored one eager to walk away without consummating the sale, which at least helped the others who had asked me to help in bring down the eventual prices they had to pay for their sought after presents. I was already packed, and needed nothing further that the simple things I had got in Agra as an afterthought.
We returned to the Jukasu Inn and had our farewells. We walked out in the light sprinkle that had finally come after the day's weather threats and went to eat ice cream cones with a different flavor for each of us, in celebration of Hem's birthday. I presented him with a copy of my book "Out of Assa: Heart of the Congo" in which he had expressed such interest when I had arrived so that I know he received what he really wanted. . He was one quarter through it already when we gathered up the group to go down to the lobby around midnight to get the last set of taxis for us in India to carry us off to the Indira Gandhi International Airport. We parted there with Hem, at last relieved of his charge, and we now had to make our way under our own power and tickets-and airport tax.
DEPARTURE LOUNGE PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Once we entered the airport at check-in, we saw a different Indian citizenry than we had been working with in our clinics and travels in the remote rural areas. Here in the airport we would see the affluent upper class Indians going around the world of the Indian Diaspora showing off the disadvantage of the graceful midriff-bearing saris to the aging upper class Indian women whose affluence is altogether too obvious in such clothing. While making gratuitous comments on the physiques of well-heeled Indian middle aged women whose boredom and midriffs seem simultaneously expansive, I shall make one other comment on their male counterparts. Asian men do not seem to develop the European type of male pattern baldness. Even into advanced age, they are sporting full heads of luxuriant dark hair. Most of them seem to be outweighed by their women folk when they get to the class that is in the waiting lounge of an international flight. In contrast, the working women of India, draped in colorful saris, are fully enfranchised laborers in the heavy hod-carrying, road construction and other dirty work-and almost all of them stay so gracefully thin that it is almost unnoticeable that they are wearing midriff-baring saris, since, unlike their memsahib counterparts, there is less there to come on out and strike the eye.
And, we, in contrast, look like aging high school kids with a backpack and Eurail Pass who got off a stop or two too late, and most of us are lugging bags overstuffed with the treasures of prayer wheels, embroidered cloth or marble carvings and enough bric-a-brac to fill more shelves than I have now or could expect to build within any time soon.
Michael was starting to feel ill. He was so far under the weather that he did not see it as amusing when a few Indians so admired his Western wide brimmed hat that they took off their own head covers in a proffered trade. As we stood in the queue to get through the security, he used up one of his souvenir plastic bags for the purposes of leaving his last dinner behind on the curb at the airport. I tried to hustle him up to the waiting lounge, where he simply put his head down and rested for the remainder of the time until we were due to board the 2:00 AM Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt.
So, as on the space ship earth, of which a 747 is simply a microcosm containing
a somewhat skewed socio-economic sample of the nomads and pilgrims of this world's
traveling set, we are a mixed lot coming from a mixed set of circumstances.
On the whole, for us, and for the people we have tried to help, it has been
a very positive experience. There may be some disappointments, and some have
counted on this trip to provide them too much-instant clinical skills for a
freshman medical student that would make him or her feel less frustrated in
encounters with the sick who have overwhelming needs almost none of which can
be satisfied by such an encounter in a brief space of time. For some, like the
huffy woman who came to the government guest house with list of favors she was
here to get as freebies since we were here to take care of people, we were no
good at all. And some of us go home exhilarated, one of us lying supine in the
airport waiting lounge-a bad advertisement to the worried and chagrined bar
tender whose only customers seemed to not be able to hold their mango juice
very well-and all of us tired as we begin the return trek to the side of the
world. Each of us has a load of memories, exposed film, a Santa's bag of souvenirs,
and a lot of hopes for our "next medical mission"-whether that be
next month or next decade. For some of us, it is a real privilege to have "Once
In A Lifetime" come around several more times, while we are (temporarily)
able!