RTW ’25 Leftovers

Posted on June 12, 2025 by admin

Summertime, and the living’s not bad. Pretty good, really. But those aren’t as catchy as the actual lyric. Time to pause posting for the summer holiday string: Flag Day, Juneteenth, Canada Day, Independence Day and Nunavut Day. Come to think of it, that’s an exceptionally representative run of holidays for North America. Back around July 13.

The flight from Chicago to Tokyo took us far north, as that flight path usually does. There was more light than I thought there would be, looking down at this moment on the February snows of the Yukon or Alaska; I’ll never know which. I could have been eying the border, for all I know, which suggests that borders are a gossamer fiction at these latitudes.

Japan

It was a happy moment when we ate at Mos Burger. One of these days, I’m going to dig out my paper copy of an article I wrote for Kansai Time Out in 1993 about four varieties of Western-style fast food chains founded in Japan, and post it. Today isn’t that day. But I can say that Mos Burger was the best of them.

As good as I remember it from 25+ years ago, the last time I went to one.

In Enoshima, near the ocean, this fellow hawks soft serve ice cream. Goo goo g’joob. Look but don’t touch.

The handsome Osaka City Central Public Hall, completed in 1918. Amazing that it survived the war and urban renewal 20 years later, those forces that generally gave modern urban Japan the boxy concrete character it enjoys today.

India

A monumental monument in New Delhi: India Gate, which honors more than 74,100 soldiers of the Indian Army who died during the Great War, and a number more in the Third Afghan War a few years later. They did their part. One of the larger relics of the Raj, unless you count things better described as legacies, such as railroad lines, parliamentary government, and the bitter feud between India and Pakistan.

While we were looking at India Gate, a group of about a dozen uniformed schoolboys, who had detached themselves from a larger group, approached me and asked where I was from. They were gleeful to hear “America,” a reaction I didn’t know anyone would have anymore, but I suppose they’ve seen a lot of our movies. A middle-aged male chaperon appeared in short order and shooed them away, while giving me a sidelong glance with a hairy eyeball, though I hadn’t precipitated the encounter in any way. I was just a suspicious foreigner, I guess.

The Taj Mahal has a fair amount of parkland around it. That means a population of monkeys, too. I spotted more monkeys in urban India than I would have anticipated. These didn’t seem to be bothered by the men, the dogs or the motorcycle.

On display at the Ghandi Museum: a Marconigram. I don’t know that I’d ever seen one of those before. Or maybe there was one on display at the Titanic Museum in Branson. Anyway, that’s one good reason to go to museums: for things once common, now curiosities. Safia Zaghloul was an Egyptian political activist of the time.

United Arab Emirates

In Dubai it seemed like there were more men at work sweeping, mopping and other cleaning of floors and other flat places, per square meter, than anywhere else I’ve ever been. There are worse things to do with cheap labor.

Not sure exactly where this was, except somewhere out on Palm Jumeirah. Must have been a wall, or like a wall, in one of the posh retail corridors winding through one of the posh resort properties amid the poshness of the island.

Note: White on green is common indeed around the world.

Desert flowers. Of course, sprinklers water that bit of terrain at regular intervals.

Germany

What’s Berlin without currywurst? They say it came into style soon after the city was divided.

What would Germany be without Ritter Sport? A giant stack of them can be seen, in their great variety, at the Hauptbahnhof in Berlin. Later, I bought about 10 squares of RS at a discount price at a Netto grocery store near our hotel. Think Aldi or Lidl, but more cluttered.

Views of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, near the Tiergarten in Berlin. It wasn’t there in 1983.

Czech Republic

Not calling it Czechia. Or, if it ever comes to it, not calling India Bharat, either.

St. George’s Basilica. I admired the nearby St. Vitus Cathedral. That’s a grand edifice. But St. George’s has that human scale, and echoes of an even earlier time. It was completed during the time of Good King Wenceslaus.

Vladislav Hall. The site of centuries of Bohemian parties, banquets and balls, me boys. That and affairs of state.

The Dancing House. We rode a streetcar line out of our way to see it, though not that far. It wasn’t there in 1994.

A sidewalk golem in the old Jewish Quarter of Prague. The Sidewalk Golems was a relatively obscure band who sometimes toured with Irwin Hepplewhite and the Terrifying Papoose Jockeys.

This could have been over Spain or Portugal.

The last image of thousands that I took, a staggering number in any context except digital images that take practically no time or effort to make.

Raj Ghat, Delhi

Posted on May 22, 2025 by admin

Still a chill in the air here in Illinois, but a bit warmer, so we’re on a slow climb back to real spring. Back to posting on May 27. In its float around late May, Memorial Day is four days earlier than Decoration Day this year.

Chilly, maybe, but that hasn’t discouraged the back yard irises.

A gift from a neighbor last year – some bulbs that we planted in the patch of land that, decades ago, had been a garden. That isn’t quite what I’d call it now. More of a back yard feature whose greenery towers over the ordinary lawn grass.

Not just irises. On the other side of the yard:

Raj Ghat was one of the first places we went in India. Its centerpiece is a memorial dedicated to Gandhi, in the middle of a large green square surrounded by walls. The black marble platform marks the spot of his cremation on January 31, 1948.

Outside the walls is more green space. A popular spot for school groups, looks like.

Nearby is the National Gandhi Museum. Considering that he’s Father of the Nation, not many people were there, but I suppose school groups show up regularly to enliven the place. Overall, the memorial seemed to be more of a draw.

On the grounds of the museum.

The plain rooms of the museum featured a lot of photos of Gandhi and text to go with it. For someone who lived before digital photography, his image was certainly captured by a lot of cameras. There were also a few artifacts, including one large one.

The vehicle used to carry his remains to Raj Ghat for cremation. I thought of the wagon I’d seen in Atlanta used for a similar melancholy purpose.

I can’t leave it at that.

Seen at the museum’s entrance.

Amer Fort, Jaipur

Posted on May 21, 2025 by admin

Something that greater Jaipur had that Agra and Delhi didn’t seem to: hills. Impressive hills.

The thing to do with a hill, at least in pre-modern times, is to build a fort on it. Or perhaps a fort with palace-like elements, or a palace with fort-like elements. In any case, Man Singh I, Maharaja of Amer (or Amber), a Rajput princely state, ordered the construction of Amer Fort (Amber Fort) in the late 16th century. He wasn’t a Mughal, but worked for one: Akbar. When the emperor needed an enemy crushed militarily in pursuit of imperial expansion, Man Singh, a Hindu devotee of Krishna, was his man.

Even arriving by car, the uphill trip took a while, winding along narrow, busy roads to a place without enough parking. That was the driver’s concern. He dropped us off and we walked a bit further to the fort.

It’s expansive.

Amer is in fact one of six forts in the area that form a World Heritage Site.

“The series of six massive hill forts are architectural manifestations of Rajput valour, bravery, feudalism and cultural traditions, documented in several historic texts and paintings of the medieval and late medieval period in India,” UNESCO notes.

“Their elaborate fortifications, built to protect not only garrisons for defence but also palatial buildings, temples, and urban centres, and their distinctive Rajput architecture, are an exceptional testimony to the cultural traditions of the ruling Rajput clans.”

Amer displays the kind of intricate work one comes to expect after seeing a half-dozen monumental Indian structures. It seemed like much of the rest of India had come to see the superb craftsmanship, too.

Something I didn’t expect: Amer Fort toilets.

Remarkably, there is information online about these and other toilets for the relief of important people of the Indian past: “An Insight Into The Royal Mughal Toilets” by one Dr. Atul Kumar Singh Parmar.

Fatehpur Sikri, Uttar Pradesh

Posted on May 20, 2025 by admin

Here we are, in a cold May. Cold and today, rainy. Cold in April is one thing, but in May? Not wintertime freezing cold, of course, but nearly refrigerator chilly. Too cold to lounge around on the deck, which is pretty much my definition of atmospheric chill.

The cold came after considerable warmth last week, even a day that felt hot, during which a dust storm blew through northern Illinois. We didn’t feel the brunt of the storm, just a gusty and dusty edge of it. In all the years I’ve been here, I don’t remember any other Chicagoland-spanning dust storms. Odd.

Out of curiosity, I checked temps in Agra and Jaipur today. At about 2 am IST – the middle of the night – it was 90° F. in Agra. Tomorrow: Abundant sunshine. Hazy. High 106° F. Winds light and variable. As for Jaipur, middle of the night temp, 93° F. Tomorrow: Sunny, along with a few afternoon clouds. Hazy. High 112° F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph.

Zounds. Between Agra and Jaipur, on National Highway 21, is the border of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. This is what it looked like, leaving Uttar Pradesh, headed for Jaipur.

Behold, the National Highway system of India. Infrastructure, by the looks of it, that is reaping enormous economic benefits. The roads were renumbered in 2010. News of that didn’t reach my part of North America, or if it did, it was a squib of an item, lost in the news churn. Under the new(ish) numbering scheme in India, east-west highways are numbered odd, while north-south ones are even, the opposite of the U.S. Interstate system. The numbers increase as you go west or south. Again, the opposite.

Imagine the government committee meetings, the endless, hours-long committee meetings, that must have gone into renumbering the roads. Was there a bureaucratic faction that pushed not to be like the Interstate system, as a matter of national pride?

Near the border along NH 21, but still in Uttar Pradesh, is Fatehpur Sikri, which Akbar, the third Mughal emperor, made his capital for a little more than a decade in the 16th century. A short-time capital it might have been, but Akbar didn’t think small when it came to developing Fatehpur Sikri – Mughal potentates never thought small, it seems – and so left behind some World Heritage-class sites (and indeed, it is on the UNESCO list).

When we arrived, temps were nowhere near 100+ F. Maybe 80° F. or so, which I count as pleasant.

Turn up the heat another 20° or so, and those broad stone courtyards wouldn’t be that pleasant for tourists or touts.

The stonemasons, as usual, did wonders with red sandstone.

Unlike any other big-deal historic site we visited in India in February, roving vendors were allowed inside the complex at Fatehpur Sikri. The vendors tend to swarm, especially if you buy anything from anyone at any moment – as I did, a necklace for Yuriko. I might as well have painted a DayGlo rupee symbol (₹) on my back.

Never mind, Fatehpur Sikri was up to high Mughal standards: a splendor. In one courtyard, an array of Mughal tombs caught my attention, marking resting places on a less grand scale than the likes of the Taj or the Baby Taj.

Royalty gets royal treatment after death, but so many other people were involved in running a court, and they deserved dignified entombments, too. Such as, for example, the overseer of the royal flyswatters. (Servant jobs were very specific in those days.)

I hope our guide for a couple of hours at Fatehpur Sikri got a cut, one way or another, of what we paid to hire the car and driver, on top of the tip we gave him directly. He told us a good many interesting things about the town and its history, but nothing quite as interesting as how an uptick in tourism — mostly domestic tourists, I bet — had allowed him enough money to buy a motorcycle a few years earlier. “Changed our lives completely,” was how he put the impact on his family.

His brother had a souvenir stall near the historic sites, and a clubfoot. We drank tea with them, and in lieu of buying something, I gave him a tip as well. Could be he’s saving for a motorcycle, too, or needs gas money if he’s got one already.

The Tomb of I’timād-ud-Daulah

Posted on May 19, 2025 by admin

As a tourist in Agra, the thing to do is visit the Taj Mahal last. Anything seen after the Taj will pale in comparison, however grand the edifice. So after the Agra Fort, and toward the end of our first day in that city, we visited the Tomb of I’timād-ud-Daulah, with Taj Mahal slated for early the next morning.

Go through a finely styled gate.

From there, it isn’t far to the mausoleum.

An exquisite work. How is carving in stone like that possible? It’s impossibly intricate. It’s also always compared to the top masterpiece that is the Taj, which is not far away. More modest than the Taj, but with some clear similarities. This tomb came first by a few decades, so it would be the inspiration. There is a reason the Tomb of I’timād-ud-Daulah is also called “Bachcha Taj” or the “Baby Taj.”

“What makes the tomb of Itimad-ud-Daulah stand out from its contemporary structures, undoubtedly is the overwhelming decorative technique that was used — its polychrome profuse ornamentation consisting of intricate florals, stylized arabesques, abstract geometrical designs, mosaic kaleidoscope techniques enriched with splendid ornamentation in semi precious and rare stones inlay and exquisite carvings that resembles the finest of lace,” explains Outlook Traveler.

“All these were mostly inspired by plant studies and motifs of vivid flora and fauna with a distinguished influence of Persian heritage drawn by masterful artisans and craftsmen of Persia who worked at the Mughal court.”

All that made me think of the outline for a bit of sketch comedy, though a bit that assumes that most people have heard of the Baby Taj, and how it compares with the regular full-sized Taj. So not a realistic idea for a sketch that North Americans or western Europeans might respond to. Still, imagine Mitchell and Webb doing the following. Or rather an Indian comic duo equivalent, to abide by modern sensibilities. Say, Mitchell-like and Webb-like. There must be someone.

The setup would be the architect hired to design Tomb of I’timād-ud-Daulah has submitted plans – which are visible to the audience – and they look suspiciously like the Taj Mahal as we know it. The architect meets with the Grand Vizier to discuss the plans (would that actually happen? Never mind, the rule of funny). I imagine Mitchell-like would be the architect, Webb-like the Grand Vizier.

Grand Vizier — We rather like your design, but we want a few tweaks.

Architect — Tweaks?

— Yeah, you know, little things. But we do think your design is wonderful. Too wonderful, in fact.

— What does that mean? What do you want to change?

— Well, it’s a bit large.

— Large?

— Yes, the building. The main one. We were hoping for something, you know, a bit more modest. Yes, that’s it. Modest. Scale it down.

— But it wouldn’t be the same.

— And the dome. That’s a little much, don’t you think?

— No dome?

— Well, something should be up there. Let’s call it a roof element. Your dome’s just a little grand.

— But this is going to be the tomb of the great I’timād-ud-Daulah! The father-in-law of the emperor! Grand Vizier before you!

— And don’t we know it. A great man, for sure. But do you know how much stonemasons cost these days? I mean, really good ones. Oh, and don’t worry, we like the four minarets. That’s a classic. But those should be smaller too.

— Grand Vizier, I object. If I do say so myself, I’ve designed one of the greatest buildings in the world! If we make it smaller, it wouldn’t be that. It would be just another tomb.

— Well, now. Who is it that is paying you?

— You are, Grand Vizier.

— And who could, let’s say, make things pretty uncomfortable for you? We still have some space in our dungeons.

— You could, Grand Vizier.

— So…

— Smaller it is, Grand Vizier. More modest. Yes.

Agra Fort

Posted on May 18, 2025 by admin

“The sky turned the colour of molten copper,” wrote William Dalrymple in City of Djinns. “The earth cracked like a shattered windscreen. April gave way to May, and every day the heat grew worse.”

February, clearly, was the time to visit north-central India, basking in warm but not oppressive sun.

The first place we went in Agra wasn’t the Taj Mahal, which we would visit the next day, but Agra Fort, a massive red sandstone and marble complex associated (of course) with Mughal emperors, especially Humayun, who seized the site of an older structure, and Akbar, who put the structure in its current form, more or less.

“Akbar arrived in Agra in 1558,” says the Archaelogical Survey of India. “He ordered to renovate the fort with red sandstone. Some 4,000 builders daily worked on it and it was completed in eight years (1565-1573).”

The wall circumscribes sizable edifices on sizable green spaces.

Marvel at the detail.

Inner courtyard splendors.

“The walls of the roughly crescent-shaped structure have a circumference of about 1.5 miles (2.5 km), rise 70 feet (21 metres) high, and are surrounded by a moat… ” notes Britannica.

“Many structures within the walls were added later by subsequent Mughal emperors, notably Shah Jahān and Jahāngīr. The complex of buildings — reminiscent of Persian- and Timurid-style architectural features — forms a city within a city.”

Through a window, something familiar. At least from pictures.

Our first glimpse of the Taj Mahal.

“In addition to its other functions, the fort also served as a prison for Shah Jahān,” Britannica continues. “Aurangzeb, his son and successor as emperor, had him confined there from 1658 until his death in 1666.”

The story is that the deposed Shah Jahān spent his time gazing at the Taj Mahal, where his wife was entombed and, when the time came, he would be as well. There are worse places to be under house arrest.

The splendor continues under elegant arches.

No matter how grand, however, time will have its say, and the splendor we see is just a fraction of the total across the centuries.

“Abul Fazl, a court historian of Akbar, records that 5,000 buildings were built here beautifully in Bengali and Gujarati style,” says the Archaelogical Survey. “Most of these buildings have now disappeared. Shah Jahan himself demolished some of these in order to make room for his white marble palaces. Later, the British destroyed most of the buildings for raising barracks.”

Indian Food

Posted on May 5, 2025 by admin

“Stop for tea? Food?” our driver said partly through the longish drive from Jaipur to Delhi, on out last full day in the country. I’m sure he had a list, probably in his head, of places he would earn a bit of baksheesh for delivering us.

This wasn’t an issue. That’s how the game is played, and besides, after nearly a week in India, we’d had some pretty good Indian food as a result, mostly the sort of north Indian specialties also available in the United States during the last 30 years or so: curries, dals, samosas, biryani, chicken tikka masala, lots of good naan, lassi, and so forth. Also, corn flakes at breakfast sometimes with warm milk.

His best suggestion was a roadside pullout zone some miles outside metro Delhi sporting an agglomeration of small food stalls, with long benches for common seating under the shadow of a large shed roof, and stand-up eating tables outside in the late February warmth. Indian roads are well traveled by private cars now, and the place had a healthy crowd, though not overwhelming, enough to create a hum of ambient conversation and kid squeals. The ambient smell: ah, Indian spices. Or, as I expect they call them, spices.

We bought tea in small earthen cups with the assistance of a boy of about 10, surely related to the proprietor, who earned a few rupees from me for his trouble. We downed it standing up at a table. But I don’t want to idealize the stop: trucks belched smoke into the air nearby, small mounds of debris – such as pieces of brick or cinderblock, along with some trash – dotted the grounds near the parking lot, which was also home to a few mangy dogs. Still, it was a lively place, and the well-spiced chai went down well.

Our driver’s second-best suggestion was the one between Jaipur and Delhi. We weren’t especially hungry, but had light sandwiches.

The humble grilled cheese sandwich. Imagine my surprise when I took a first bite and the cheese focused me completely on eating the rest of the sandwich with the same gusto. Why is the cheese so good? What kind of cheese, anyway? None I could identify right away. I put these questions out of my mind and enjoyed the cheese, but now I’m thinking about them again.

Happy cows? That seems like an oversimplification, but it is true that in India cows are on that list that every society unconsciously draws up of most favored animals, such as dogs and cats in North America. So less stress for bovines, better-tasting milk products. But that seems a little hippy-dippy and without a scientific basis. On the other hand —

The last night in Delhi we walked the short distance to a small branch of a very large international organization and had dinner. In a place without beef, chicken is the star.

Some observations (I’m working on a coffee table book, McDonald’s Around the World.)*

As I was slowly carrying my tray up a flight of stairs, a young employee came to help, taking the tray to our table. She didn’t wait around for a tip, though I would have given her one.
I didn’t make exact notes of the price, but accounting for the relative strength of the dollar (at the time), I’d say the food was a discount to domestic McDonald’s, though it has been a good many months since I’ve been to a U.S McD’s. Maybe 20 to 30 percent less, as a guesstimate.
The food was… McDonald’s. Not bad, in other words, with the French fries hewing exactly to the formula.
The paper place mat was, alas, not distinctive to India, unlike in some places and times. My idea of a souvenir is the paper place mat I got in ’90s Moscow, at the only McDonald’s I’ve seen with bouncers.

The place was busy, and clearly popular with those under 30. I might have been the oldest person in the place, though that happens more and more to me. I’ve seen it before: McDonald’s in Japan in the 1990s, which attracted few of Yuriko’s parents’ generation. I didn’t visit a McDonald’s in Japan this time around, but my money would be on finding people of Yuriko’s generation well represented.

* No I’m not.

Jama Masjid, Delhi

Posted on April 28, 2025 by admin

Part of the inspiration to visit India was the book City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi (1993) by the admirable Scottish writer William Dalrymple, which I’ve known about for years but only got around to reading late last year. Timing is important in one’s travels, even before going anywhere, and I happened to be reading that book as we discussed going to Japan in the coming winter. In a typical train of thought for me, I figured if we’re already in Japan, how much more effort would it take to go on to India? Some, as it turned out, mostly after we arrived, but worth the effort.

One memorable passage in City of Djinns involved Dalrymple’s visit to Jama Masjid in Delhi, during the end of Ramadan one year. A mass swirl of humanity came to the mosque on that occasion.

When we were there in February on an ordinary non-Friday, humanity was mostly represented by tourists, contributing our little bit to the upkeep — a reasonable $3.50 or so each at that moment in February. Plus another $1 or so baksheesh each to the young man watching your shoes.

As well we should visit. Extraordinary in its grandness, the place also reminds a North American just how far he is from home.

At the entrance of the prayer hall.

That hints at a history of video crews making, or trying to make, their works on the sly. Equipment doesn’t need to as large as it used to be.

Up.

Once again, what would modern India be without reminders of Mughal power and prestige? The mosque is the work of Shah Jahan I (d. 1666), fifth Mughal emperor, or rather the 5,000 workers hired for the job and supervised by his Grand Vizier. “Indians, Arabs, Persians, Turks, and Europeans” were among the workers, according to Wiki.

The mosque commands a hill in Old Delhi, rising on the edge of the marketplace maze that is Chandni Chowk. Its minarets rise 135 feet.

I didn’t have the urge to make a video at the Jama Masjid of Delhi, but I can see its omnidirectional visual appeal. The Mughal talent for architectural grandness shows up in pretty much every direction.

The Jantar Mantar of Jaipur

Posted on April 22, 2025 by admin

Apparently Sawai Jai Singh II (d. 1743), Raja of Amber and founder and Raja of Jaipur, had a keen interest in astronomy, because he commissioned the construction of six naked-eye observatories — jantar mantars – in his realm in the early 18th century. The one in Jaipur itself is a complex of structures hard to understand without explanation. Or even with explanation a lot of the time.

I didn’t take that picture, since that vantage was unavailable, or at least I didn’t know about it. Someone calling himself Knowledge Seeker thoughtfully released the image into the public domain, however. It gives a sense of the layout of instruments in a sort of plaza, though it doesn’t depict the large sundial, except right at the lower left corner. Just behind the Jantar Mantar is City Palace, more about which eventually, but which Jai Singh II also had built. One of those busy kings, sounds like.

“The Jantar Mantar observatory in Jaipur constitutes the most significant and best preserved set of fixed monumental instruments built in India in the first half of the 18th century; some of them are the largest ever built in their categories,” UNESCO says, for indeed it is a World Heritage Site, which are thick on the ground in India. “Designed for the observation of astronomical positions with the naked eye, they embody several architectural and instrumental innovations.”

This is the kind of place that reminds me once again how little I know. Such as about Indian astronomy, thousands of years in the making. A familiarity with that subject might help answer the question I have – why didn’t Jai Singh II incorporate places for telescopes? I feel certain he would have had some, imported or locally made.

The Jantar Mantar is also good for some gee-whiz moments, such as looking up at the world’s largest sundial.

Our affable guide in Jaipar that day, Ali, points to the time on the enormous dial plate. The instrument is capable of measuring time to an accuracy of two seconds (with some caveats; see “How accurate is it?” on this page).

He asserted that the sundial is indeed the world’s largest, though I’ve seen other sources that weasel with such phrasing as “one of.” I’ll go with Ali on this one: the largest in the world, unless I find out about a bigger one, and I’m not going to look very hard.

Ali also told us that his father was a tour guide in Jaipur, as was his father before him, which is some span, since he might have been close to my age. He was knowledgeable enough that being in the family biz seemed likely. He also might have had information about the use of telescopes back then, but I forgot to ask.

Other instruments, whose descriptions I read on English signs next to the Hindi, but which are less easy to understand than a sundial, except to say they are useful for tracking objects in the sky.

More structures, either built upward or downward.

Of course each instrument has a purpose and a name – such as Samrat Yantra, Jaya Prakasa, and Rama Yantra, which supposedly Jai Singh II designed himself. Detailed information is at jantarmantar.org. Even without a tight grip on all the details, there’s no doubt that the Jantar Mantar of Jaipur is impressive, besides having an impressive name that rolls right off your tongue.

The Lotus Temple

Posted on April 15, 2025 by admin

For a religion with at most 6 million adherents (maybe) – fewer than 0.1 percent of the people on Earth — the Baha’i Faith has created some remarkable temples, all around the Earth. Until recently, we’d been acquainted in person with only one of them, the extraordinary Baha’i House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois. Especially when we lived closer to that part of metro Chicago, it was a go-to place to take out-of-towners.

Now we’ve experienced another remarkable Baha’i edifice: The Lotus Temple (Kamal Mandir) in Delhi, set in an enormous green space in the southern reaches of that city. Green, but inaccessible to casual visitors, and probably for good reason, considering the volume of people that visit. We were among the crowd in late February.

More green space than one would think possible in Delhi, but the land was acquired by Baha’i adherents in 1953, using money left to them in the will of one of the faithful from Hyderabad. The city may have been large then, but not what it would become later. The temple was built from 1977 to 1986.

Designed by Fariborz Sahba, an Iranian architect and Baha’i who long ago left his homeland for North America, the structure includes 27 free-standing marble-clad “petals” arranged in clusters of three, forming nine sides, and surrounded by nine pools as the key landscape feature. Apparently nine sides is mandatory for Baha’i temples. This aerial image is quite striking, though invisible to ordinary tourists.

“There is a deep and universal reverence for the lotus in India,” Sahba said in a 2015 interview. “It is regarded as a sacred flower associated with worship throughout many centuries and therefore its significance is deeply rooted in the minds and hearts of the Indians.

“In the epic poem Mahabharata, the Creator Brahma is described as having sprung from the lotus. In Buddhist folklore the Buddha is represented as being born from a lotus, and is usually depicted standing or sitting on a lotus. It is also deeply rooted in the Zoroastrian and Islamic architecture; for example, the dome of the Taj Mahal is bud of a lotus.”

The Lotus Temple – formally a House of Worship, like the other Baha’i temples around the world – is a popular place. One source claims 3 million visitors a year, which would put it in the same league as the Taj Mahal (though sources offer rather varied numbers for that; it’s in the low millions anyway).

We waited 15 minutes or so to get in. No photography inside, which is a sweeping and unadorned, just as the Baha’i temple in Illinois and elsewhere. That too is a defining characteristic of the temples worldwide.

“The prayer hall is plain and has no altars or religious idols, pulpits, or fixed speaker platforms,” writes Mari Yariah, a Malaysian Baha’i who volunteered at the Lotus Temple for a couple of months. “There are no rituals or ceremonies. No talks or sermons are delivered…

“The prayer hall has a capacity for 1,300 visitors to be seated on the benches. There is capacity to increase the number to 2,500… Visitors were allowed to remain in the prayer hall for as long as they desired. Special prayer services are held four times throughout the day at 10 am, 12 noon, 3 pm, and 5 pm. [We weren’t there for any of those.] During these prayer sessions that last for about ten minutes, scriptures from various religions were read out or chanted in melodious voices.”

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Tag Archives: India