Ajanta

A road trip is always a pleasure. To be in charge of how you travel, the sights to linger over, the music to listen to and the feel of road beneath your wheels is an amazing feeling. It cannot be described, only felt.

Travelling on highways in India can be a bit of a mixed experience; it is very symbolic of how we Indians work - things work, only not quite the way they are expected to. People, in general, expect you to overtake from the left. It can be quite frustrating to drive on a good two-lane road on the fast lane to arrive behind a ponderous truck which simply refuses to give way. He suddenly realises you would like to overtake him and starts flashing his left indicator. You feel relieved that he has decided to move to the left lane and then after a while realization dawns. By flashing his left indicator he is asking you to overtake him -- only from the left. After a while one gets used to this and you don't even bother, just honk once and keep overtaking from the left.

Amazingly, the moment it gets dark, almost all of the trucks move into the left lane to allow you to overtake from the right. The worst vehicles on the road, worse than the Sumos, are the Maruti 800s and Zens. You almost need to achieve Zen to be able to deal with them. They behave as if they were the zippiest vehicles on the road, cut in and out of traffic, hog the fast lane and generally make nuisances of themselves. Their faith in themselves is touching, if a bit misplaced. Most accidents seem to involve Sumos, 800s and Zens.

Madhya Pradesh certainly seems to be more caring of its archeological heritage than Maharashtra. Whether it is Elephanta or Ajanta or Ellora; almost all of these places are well endowed with hand drawn hearts lovingly disfiguring the walls.

It really makes one wonder. We have all these very vocal defendants of Indian culture. Rarely does this defense have anything to do with defending our Indian cultural or historical heritage. In fact, quite often, one finds the foot soldiers of this great war to protect our culture to be the greatest wall decorators. A visit to a historical site in Maharashtra is incomplete without being treated to some raucous singing or some other generous expression of general well-being by those selfsame foot soldiers. This is of course without any consideration for the improvements they make to the general decor. Littering, of course, like swaraj, is a birthright.

Despite all of this, seeing what was created thousands of years ago is a humbling experience. The knowledge of geometry, of trigonometry, of stress factors and vectors and most of all the imagination and devotion demonstrated by the rock-cut temples at Ajanta and Ellora is quite frankly mind-boggling. The chaityas cut from rock that look like they are made of wood. The smooth rock ceilings that give the illusion of being a colorful cloth ceiling swaying in the wind, the three dimensional images whose eyes follow you as you move around, the sheer vibrancy of the images and sculptures, the brightness of the colours, the overwhelming impression of the Kailash temple are images that remain.

Aurangzeb's grave at Khultabad is also humbling, but for a very different reason. Here was a man, who ruled over almost the whole of the sub-continent. His son, Bahadur Shah I also was a powerful emperor. Despite that, his grave is extremely simple. In fact, all the decoration on the grave was done in the early 2oth century on the orders of Lord Curzon. The grave of Shaikh Burhan ud-din Gharib Chisti, in the same complex is far more ornate.

For our tireless and intrepid guardians of Indian (sorry Hindu) culture of course, preserving something like the Bibi-Ka-Maqbara is certainly not a priority. There is a rudimentary garden of course, but nothing like what it could be with some imagination and care and much less money. The monument, built as a copy of the Taj Mahal, shows what the Taj could have been reduced to without the care that is lavished on it. With some care, BKM could be absolutely mind-blowing.

In Madhya Pradesh, the roads that lead to a Khajuraho or a Sanchi or even to the wildlife reserves are terrible, while the preservation and conservation efforts, while if not perfect, are certainly very good. In Maharashtra, the reverse holds true. Roads in Maharashtra are built not only to support tourism, but also industry. In Madhya Pradesh, since there is little industry, the need for good roads probably has not become dire.

What this means is two things. Firstly, infrastructure in India follows demand; the notion that good infrastructure can create its own demand is yet to take hold. And secondly, other than some well-intentioned lip-service, the effect that sustained tourism can have on an economy is something that just does not appear to have been accepted here.

Just got back from Shirdi and Nashik. At Nashik went to the Trimbakeshwar temple. The experience at the two places was quite different and at some level quite similar. Trimbakeshwar is a Jyotirling, one of the 12 places where Shiva is worshipped as a pillar of light. The present temple is not too old, but there are traces of a much older temple there. It  is not a very large temple and full of devotees. Sitting in the temple, I felt an extraordinary sense of peace and fulfillment. There were people passing by, all intent on their own hopes, the staff telling people to move on quickly, but the overpowering sense was one of peace.

Driving to Shirdi early in the morning was an amazing experience -- an 80 kilometer drive. The changing notes of light and shadow as the day progressed was amazing and uplifting. To me it symbolized the hopes that people have on such a trip.

Shirdi - the environs were a tad disappointing. Full of hotels of various types and that symbol of progress in India - a traffic jam. An absolute ocean of people of various types. By and large people were disciplined but patient, but there was a quite a bit of pushing and shoving. A marked contrast to the Golden Temple at Amritsar, which is also very crowded, but in a very solemn reflective manner. This was like standing in queue at a railway station -- people munching on biscuits and theplas. Every few minutes some group or the other would feel compelled to start chanting in unison very loudly and that would inspire some other group to prove the superiority of their devotion and lung-power. 

There were a couple of minor scuffles and even a small bout of fisticuffs. My own worst moment came when the press of the crowd carried Mithi away from me. For about 15 seconds I couldn't see and then i took about a minute (?) more to reach her. It seemed an eternity. I don't know how I reached her, but I did.

Post the darshan got some space to just reflect and be there. That was nice, felt good. My natural scepticism about praying to a man as opposed to God was very strong, but the need to have faith to believe in something much greater than one's own self is very strong and so it is easy to rationalize that through praying to man you are actually worshipping God.

Getting back from Shirdi was an absolute nightmare. A 2 kilometer stretch took over an hour, that too by mainly driving off-road. Another huge traffic jam at Sinnar meant that instead of driving through Nashik, took the road to Pune. Stopped at Sunny's on the old Bombay-Pune road for some kebabs. It was the first meal of the day. 

The journey to a pilgrimage is supposed to be a difficult one -- this is exemplified by the fact that most temples in India are in hills or in terrain that is difficult to cross. Must say that this journey qualified - in fact if the quality of pilgrimage is proportional to the difficulty of the journey, it must really have been a good pilgrimage. It certainly was satisfying enough.

Hubris

It was good that President Obama spoke of America's need to reflect and not assume that power alone does not protect nor entitle America to do as it pleases.  For the past 8 years America has shown a very unattractive side of itself to the world - a hubris ridden face that almost begged for divine retribution in the best traditions of tragedy.

Anyway a politician cautioning against hubris -- that really is a first.

The Inauguration

Watching the run-up to Barack Obama's inauguration. Its so different from what happens when a new government takes office here in India. Its so participative, so open -- its amazing. There literally is an ocean of humanity out there - its extraordinary. I don't know if this is how it is generally, but I'd be surprised if it were. This seems to be an expression of the Hope that Mr. Obama appears to symbolize -- wish the stock markets would show some hope.

Wow!! Michelle Obama towers! over George Bush. :-|)

Wish Barack Obama all the best.

Goodbye Darth Cheney

Karl Marx once said that the banks for their business will give credit to people who can't afford it and then once the borrowers go bust, the banks themselves will go bust and will need to be nationalized thus ushering in Communism.

Hi The World

The skylark sang at midnight in the desert

Clouds covered the Moon

Rain; the desert bloomed

Is this the dune of flowers?

Midday sun overhead; the empty sand all around

Listening to Nikhil Banerjee playing Sindhu Khamaj or Ravi Shankar Tilak Shyam while sipping at a Balvenie is tasting happiness. Watching the sea coming alive with light in the dawn is tasting happiness. Singing We Shall Overcome, believing we shall overcome is joy.

Growing up in a small town in the backwoods of North East India, there was so much to overcome - the small town prejudices; the xenophobia that we all suffered from; the easy reversion to a lotos-eater's life; the temptation to blame all ills on the other person, the other community. To paraphrase Auden, it was so easy to live so that when there was a riot we rioted and when there was peace we cohabited. But the most important, the most difficult thing to overcome was the inclination, common to lotos-eaters, to accept matters of faith as matters of belief, to accept whatever was told to us without question. It was so easy to do so and so difficult to question, to overcome the laziness. Examiners did not like questions, deviations from the standard interpretations of texts.

As I grew up, I felt, in my arrogance, the arrogance of youth, that yes we would overcome these, that as a country we could come out of the prejudices that led to the limitations which need overcoming.

Today 20 years later, the challenges remain, they may have taken a different form, but they remain. The questions grow more invidious. Whether it be the need to fit in and at the same time remain different, to maintain one's own identity; Or to challenge beliefs and still have faith is possibly the most important.  

At one level it is the need to have faith in God despite the importance of questioning the existence of God, which is beautifully expressed in the Nasadiya sukta of the Rig Veda, which questions where everything comes from, which questions where did God originate. At a basic level I suppose the need to believe comes from our basic need for comfort - this can be expressed as the need to have faith in God, in the ability to Overcome the problems that afflict that us today..

Today this need for man to believe in something, to have faith is expressed in the extraordinary faith that is there around the world in Barack Obama. The need for comfort that things will become better, whether economically, socially or societally. 

I suppose therefore that happiness really lies in having faith, in having hope.