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.

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.”

Jain Shwetambar Shree Sambhavnath Prabhu Derasar, Delhi

Posted on April 14, 2025 by admin

On foot is pretty much the way to go when you’re on the twisty little market streets of the Chandni Chowk district of Delhi. That includes where we found ourselves, at the smallish slice around a street called Khari Baoli, where vendors sell spices, herbs, nuts, dried fruits, herbs, pickles and preserves and an effusion of other edible goods.

There has been a market at Chandni Chowk since Old Delhi wasn’t old, or even much of a city, and from what I’ve read, the variety of goods is well-nigh inexhaustible. These days, it’s a good place to wander. Always something to see, but also a good idea to keep your eyes on the ground, which wasn’t entirely smooth or level. Come to think of it, neither were the wires overhead, but at least you aren’t at risk of a trip and fall because of them.

Took in the aromas. Dodged foot traffic. Heard the muffled roar of people and machines. Kept aware of our valuables at all times. Bought some tea.

Examined ornate doors.

Something unexpected was behind this one: a Jain temple.

Jain Shwetambar Shree Sambhavnath Prabhu Derasar.

Our friendly guide for a few minutes. A lay volunteer, I think. Otherwise the temple was empty that morning.

The last time I thought much about Jainism was in a VU class focused on Dharmic religions, except for a brief visit some years ago to a Jain temple in suburban Chicago, a colorful and sedate place. Even in class we didn’t study the religion long, with a few days for it and Sikhism tucked in between Hinduism and Buddhism.

I remember a bit, and I’ve read a little more. Sounds pretty strict, but if you’re going to be strict about something, nonviolence seems like a good choice, though I suspect that such an attitude has inspired more aggressive members of other religions to take whacks at Jains down the centuries. As an ancient religion, the fine points of its origin are debated, including how much of an offshoot of Vedic religion it is, or how much it is or isn’t like Buddhism. The founder isn’t really considered the founder, but one who understood what the universe had been saying for a long time.

In any case, I’m sadly unfamiliar with Jain iconography. Our guide had a few words to say about some of the works, and I’m sure he was knowledgeable, but it didn’t stick with me.

But I know stunning work when I see it. Glasswork, especially.

Glasswork that tells stories.

The details might be opaque, but you can see a lot is going on.

A Small Selection From the Large Universe of Indian Truck Art

Posted on April 7, 2025 by admin

Our driver in India, who took us around to places in Delhi, Agra and Jaipur, seemed like a good fellow, but it was hard to say for sure. He was perhaps a decade or so younger than us, so none of us were youngsters. He had less hair than I do – and indeed might have used some of his tip money one day to have most of what little he had shaved off – and less stomach, but not none. Even in modern India, I take that as a sign that he has done reasonably well in his job driving foreigners around, though probably not well enough to ever to be a foreigner himself somewhere.

We of course have no Hindi, and he had only enough English for basic communication about stopping for meals and destinations, and to exchange other bits of other biographical information, such as his status as a father of five, and ours as parents of two. Riding on the dashboard, looking back at the driver and the passengers, was a colorful image of a deity. I didn’t ask him about it, but after some thought, realized was probably Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity and fortune, among other attributes. That would fit for your place of business.

He typically would receive two sorts of calls, which he answered in what I assume was rapid-fire Hindi. One kind from his boss – the fellow who rented us the car and driver, and who had a salesman’s command of English – probably asking where we were and, for all I know, where we were going to stop for lunch that day; all I can say about that is I hope the driver got a cut, because his boss surely got one. Or at least a no-charge lunch. The other kind of call involved the voice, or voices, of young women, who were pretty clearly his daughters asking for something. You don’t need a common language to understand that.

It might be just as well that we couldn’t distract him with a lot of chit-chat. He needed to concentrate on the task at hand, namely driving in urban India’s packed streets. Packed with every sort of vehicle you can imagine and then some: trucks, cars, buses, motorcycles, motorized tuk-tuks, human-powered tuk-tuks, bicycles, scooters and other moving thingamabobs, horns blowing and each edging around the other in a tide that sometimes moved and sometimes didn’t.

When there was no motion for any more than a short time, beggars would appear in amazingly short order, and so would merchants toting their wares: one that stood out was at a jam near one of Delhi’s enormous traffic circles, which circle forlorn green spots with forlorn monuments. A tall, healthy-looking youth, who was at that moment a book-wallah carrying packages of books wrapped in clear plastic. Heavy-looking books, too, text books for learning programming or coding or whatever the tech industry calls it these days. I got a glance and he was off. I’m sure he knew we weren’t in his customer base.

Add to that a steady flow of other pedestrians, and not just ordinary walkers or people hanging out in the street — though there were plenty of those — but also men hauling goods on their backs or pushing carts or wheelbarrows. I swear I saw a guy pushing along a couple of chandeliers on a cart down one street.

In short, traffic like a lot of urban agglomerations in the world, down to details like rolling chandeliers. It’s one thing to know that in the abstract, another to see it so many years after the last time you did. I thought the traffic congestion was bad in Bangkok. (And it was.) But Delhi seems to have a special flair for congestion.

We passed a temple in Jaipur as pilgrims arrived. For a few miles, we passed pilgrims in small groups, headed for the temple, with vendors along the way giving them drinks or bits of food at no charge. Our driver was able to communicate that to us. Life spills into the streets.

I don’t want to forget another important source of movement on the roads of India: animals. Many dogs in the city, idle-looking by day but undertaking noisy turf quarrels by night, and not far from town, bovines in profusion, but also monkeys, horses (ridden and riderless), camels, goats (singly and herded), sheep (ditto) and more. The animals weren’t generally in the road, except when they were. I didn’t see any elephants rambling around, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had, after a few days on the road.

Our driver navigated it all without incident. Of course, it’s home to him, has been for a long time, but even so, he had admirable skill. Not that I would ever want to do it myself – it’s not home to me, never has been – but I had long enough to watch his technique and, in a wider context, get an inkling that there is some method to the madness of the roads.

He mainly used the horn to announce I am here to vehicles he probably was going to pass in ordinary driving, as opposed to their prime use in North America, which is to announce I AM HERE! in emergencies. (Unless you’re an asshole.) Our driver was hardly alone in his liberal use of the horn, which made for more beeping than I’ve heard since my earlier trips to urban glops like Rome, Beijing and, beepiest of all for some reason, Pusan, South Korea.

I close my eyes and I can recall those Pusan nights in ’90 in my non-climate controlled room, drinking the tea available in pots just outside everyone’s door, swatting mosquitoes that had clearly feasted on me moments before they died, and listening to the irregular beep-BEEP-beep-beeps wafting in through the damaged window screens, along with more mosquitoes.

Cruising down the intercity highways in India was another kind of education. Namely, I remembered reading about the Republic of India’s efforts in recent decades to build good highways. We only experienced a small sample, in a well-traveled part of north-central India, but from the looks of that, and things I’ve read, I’d say achievements along those lines have been made. Roads to gladden the heart of my civil engineer and South Texas road-building grandpa. Progress. I agree, though at an environmental cost.

Such roads facilitate commerce, and that means trucks – painted trucks. During the long drive between Jaipur and Delhi, I started paying closer attention to the trucks, which were typically not the 18-wheelers you might see on an Interstate, but smaller vehicles. Bigger than pickups, though. Each with a unique paint job.

The rolling canvases of India – A symphony of truck art design and culture

Like manhole covers in Japan, trucks are an art medium of renown in India. Wish I’d been paying attention earlier, I might have had a better perch for taking pictures.

Enroute, which is devoted to Indian history, tells of the origin of painted trucks in India:

“The transformation of these trucks began with the construction of intricate wooden crowns on their cabins, a practice that originated as Bedford trucks gained widespread acclaim. As trucking expanded, particularly during the 1940s, companies began personalizing their vehicles with unique logos, becoming a form of truck art recognizable to all, regardless of literacy.

“These embellishments evolved into elaborate designs, akin to the competitive decorations seen in buses of that era, aimed at attracting customers. Even after India gained independence, the influence of British Bedford trucks persisted, as Hindustan Motors [still around, what a great name] commenced assembling them locally in 1948. The design legacy of Bedford trucks laid the groundwork for subsequent generations of Indian trucks, with echoes of their aesthetic enduring in the majority of trucks on Indian roads.”

Great India is a popular slogan.

Even more popular, Blow Horn, or some variation.

More from Enroute: “In India, the landscape of truck design is significantly influenced by laws and regulations, notably the Central Motor Vehicles Act (1989) and the Code of Practice for Construction and Approval of Truck Cabs, Truck Bodies, and Trailers, among others… [Somehow, this doesn’t surprise me.] The phrases ubiquitous in Indian truck art, such as ‘Horn Please,’ ‘Keep Distance,’ and ‘Use Dipper at Night,’ have origins in legislative requirements mandating their presence on trucks.”

Use Dipper at Night? I saw that sometimes as well. One meaning: use dipped headlights. Don’t be the guy that uses your brights on a busy nighttime road, in other words. But that’s not all, according to an Indian site called Onlymyhealth.

“In the late 1980s and 1990s, India faced a rising HIV/AIDS epidemic, with truck drivers identified as a high-risk group…. Tata Motors along with NGOs initiated creative strategies to reach this mobile but hard-to-target demographic. Truck drivers were known for their love of truck art and slogans, so organisations leveraged this cultural quirk as a medium to promote awareness. Tata Motors, in collaboration with the TCI Foundation, adopted the widely recognised phrase ‘Use Dipper at Night’ to launch a creative initiative aimed at promoting safe sex among truck drivers.”

Later, Dipper became the brand name for a condom in India, marketed in a colorful way that has won some awards in the Indian advertising industry. Come to think of it, Blow Horn might just have another meaning, but never mind.

Humayun’s Tomb, Isa Khan’s Tomb, Delhi

Posted on March 31, 2025 by admin

Just outside the gates of Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi, I spotted postcards for a sale from a street vendor, which was a rarity. I paused to look. That was a mistake. Before you could say boo, several other vendors – those that didn’t even have a spot on the near the gates, but who carried their wares around – were in my face. Inexpensive jewelry-, souvenir- and tchotchke-wallas. The only thing for it was to keep moving.

We were at the tomb on February 19. As a Mughal emperor, Humayun (d. 1556) rated one of considerable splendor.

“Persian and Indian craftsmen worked together to build the garden-tomb, far grander than any tomb built before in the Islamic world,” notes UNESCO, for indeed the tomb complex is a World Heritage Site. “Humayun’s garden-tomb is an example of the charbagh (a four quadrant garden with the four rivers of Quranic paradise represented), with pools joined by channels.”

“The mausoleum itself stands on a high, wide terraced platform with two bay deep vaulted cells on all four sides,” UNESCO continues. “It has an irregular octagon plan with four long sides and chamfered edges. It is surmounted by a 42.5 m high double dome clad with marble flanked by pillared kiosks (chhatris) and the domes of the central chhatris are adorned with glazed ceramic tiles.

“The interior is a large octagonal chamber with vaulted roof compartments interconnected by galleries or corridors. This octagonal plan is repeated on the second storey. The structure is of dressed stone clad in red sandstone with white and black inlaid marble borders. Humayun’s garden-tomb is also called the ‘dormitory of the Mughals’ as in the cells are buried over 150 Mughal family members.”

A precursor to the Taj Mahal, it is said. I can see that. But Humayun wasn’t the only eminence to have a mausoleum on the grounds. There are others, such as that of Isa Khan (d. 1548), who was there first.

A more manageable-sized mausoleum.

Isa Khan wasn’t royalty, but rather a noble, in service of the short-lived Sur Empire, whom the Mughals eventually overcame.

Seems easier to appreciate the details in a smaller-scale edifice.

Not far from his tomb is a mosque named for him.

Also has some worthwhile detail.

Humayun and Isa Khan: Not on the same side in life, but in death good neighbors.

Qutb Minar, Delhi

Posted on March 24, 2025 by admin

When it comes to historic ruins in Delhi, the Mughals aren’t the only game in town. Qutb Minar, a 238-foot pre-Mughal legacy of the Delhi Sultanate, rises above the southern part of the metro, part of a larger complex that’s a World Heritage Site. That was how it went for us as tourists in modern India. Another day, another World Heritage Site.

I’d say Qutb Minar deserves its modern status.

Casual visitors can’t climb to the top any more and I’m not sure I could have anyway. “Access to the top ceased after 2000 due to suicides,” asserts Wiki. But you can stand right under the tower and behold the detail, as we did on the afternoon of February 20.

Monumental structures this old come with extra layers of marvel, at least in my reckoning. It’s one thing to admire a tower like Tokyo Skytree or Burj Khalifa, which are certainly impressive, but whose construction also had the benefit of all sorts of machines and experts in their use — enormous cranes come to mind, as do CAD systems with more computing power than the entire Apollo program.

On the other hand, Qutb Minar is essentially an artful stack of brick, one of whose characteristics turned out to be longevity. I’m certain some machines were available for the task, but I also imagine much of the building involved human and animal power. How did builders beginning around AD 1200 – around what, AH 620? — undertake such a feat? It only goes to show that machines might augment the result, but technique lies in the human mind.

Various sources tell me that Qutb Minar counts as a minaret for the nearby Quwwatu’l-Islam mosque, built around the same time and now a ruin, and as a “victory tower.” That is, presumably to remind the local population who was in charge now: one Qutb al-Din Aibak, the Ghurid-aligned conqueror of Delhi and founder of the Delhi Sultanate, whose military efforts were part of the hard-to-follow wave of Central and South Asian conquests and counter-conquests that played across centuries now remote.

The Ghurids, who were Tajiks, seem to be one of those peoples that pop up in history with some regularity, a minor group from somewhere remote from most urbanized civilizations, suddenly expanding by conquering its neighbors and basically kicking butt for a few centuries across a wide area before fizzling out. They also had the distinction of being also first Muslim conquerors of north-central India.

Quwwatu’l-Islam is noted for any number of reasons, including its columns.

Their distinctiveness has been long noted. From Treasure spots of the world, by Walter Bentley Woodbury (1875): “… no two columns of this structure are alike, and this peculiarity applies also to the almost endless number forming the colonnade surrounding the building… the portico of the Quwwat ul-Islam Mosque framing the courtyard area consists of columns/pillars from destroyed Hindu and Jain temples…”

Views of the courtyard.

Details. including what look like restorations.

In the middle of the courtyard is the Iron Pillar, covered with faint inscriptions.

Three Raj-era tablets offer translation in Arabic, Hindi and English. Perhaps not up to the latest translation standards, but worth a read all the same.

The pillar is an echo of an even earlier time, created during the Gupta Empire in the fourth to the sixth centuries as reckoned by the Gregorian calendar, and thought to laud the warrior deeds and memory of Chandragupta II (d. 415), also known as Chandra. What is it doing at Quwwatu’l-Islam? Brought from somewhere else as a bit of loot by one ruler or another many years after its creation, though exactly who or when or from where are matters of scholarly debate.

More.

The grounds also include a surprising amount of green space.

We only spent a short time in Delhi, but it didn’t seem overloaded with green space.

The Taj Mahal

Posted on March 18, 2025 by admin

Back in the planning stages for our recent trip, which was last fall, Yuriko wasn’t entirely persuaded that we should visit India. Not at least for any reason I might think it was a good one: because we would already be on that side of the world (more or less) by visiting Japan; because we’d never gotten around to India, even in ’94; or because as a modern state built on a long series of storied civilizations, it would surely would be an interesting place to visit.

No matter, I had an ace in the hole. “Of course, we’ll be able to see the Taj Mahal,” I said. That did it.

So, on February 22, we did.

From a number of vantages.

I sent the first image to a number of friends via email, since I didn’t expect to find many postcards in India, or if I did, I wouldn’t want to deal with a post office to mail them, especially considering that delivery would be uncertain anyway. The email message:

A physical postcard from India is unlikely, but here’s an image you aren’t likely to see in a card or Instagram. You are likely so see it, however, if you stand in front of the structure, as we did… Entirely worth the effort to get here. I didn’t mind the crowds that much — they are a happy crowd, after all, and you’re one of them.

Even in a crowd, assuming they aren’t jostling you, you can pause, stare and consider where you are. The Taj Mahal. A place only ever seen in pictures before, considered one of the top works of human beings. In person, your eyes are apt to agree.

The story of the Taj Mahal is too well known to relate here, as are descriptions of its beauty and architectural transcendence. But I will say this: What would the Indian tourism industry do if the Mughals hadn’t been so keen to build monumental structures? The Taj Mahal is just the crown jewel of a large collection that has survived to our time.

One can visit the terrace.

For closeups of the intricate marble work.

It is believed that an eventual total of 20,000+ masons, stone-cutters, inlayers, carvers, painters, calligraphers, dome builders and other artisans from throughout the realm, and probably beyond, worked more than two decades on the mausoleum and outbuildings.

Inlay, not painting. Twenty-eight kinds of stones, I’ve read.

Imagine the graceful lines of the Taj Mahal main dome without the companion minarets. That would be like Saturn without its rings.

You can also go inside the chamber where ornate slabs sit above the internment sites of the empress Mumtaz Mahal, and, almost as an afterthought, the emperor Shah Jahan, who ordered the Taj Mahal built in the 17th century. We joined the line.

The mausoleum faces away from the river, but it is back there. The view from the mausoleum of the wide Yamuna River, tributary of the Ganges.

A structure that doesn’t get enough love. The main gate of the grounds, through which you pass to see the mausoleum. It is outshone by the mausoleum, but wow.

Not everyone loves the Taj, however.

Around the World ’25

Posted on March 16, 2025 by admin

At times like this, in the funk that comes after a long trip, I ask myself, did I actually do that? An odd question, maybe, but long travels have that odd effect. Somehow such a trip seems less than real. Also more than real. Those are essential features of the intoxication of the road, and hangovers follow intoxication.

Ponder this: Over roughly the last five weeks, starting on February 8, in a series of eight airplane flights, a small number of intercity train trips on either side of the Eurasian land mass (including one of the fastest trains in existence), a large number of bus, subway, streetcar and even monorail rides, a few taxi rides, other car rides provided by friends and relatives and a hired driver, a bicycle rickshaw ride — and you haven’t lived and almost died (or at least felt that way) till you’ve taken such a conveyance in Delhi — climbing a lot of stairs and using a lot of escalators and elevators, and taking more than a few long walks, and many short walks, on sidewalks and cobblestone streets and railway station platforms, I went around the world in a westward direction, from metro Chicago to metro Chicago, by way of Japan, India, the United Arab Emirates, Germany and the Czech Republic.

All that effort for what? To see the world, of course. That and skip out of much of winter in northern Illinois.

How did I have the energy for this, here at the gates of old age? How are the logistics possible?

But it really isn’t that hard. This is the 21st century, and travel is mostly by machine, and part of a mass industry, so even old men firmly from the middle class can go. Retired and semiretired old men, who find themselves with more free time than in previous decades. Moreover, the logistics were the least of it: all you need in our time is a computer to set things up.

I’m convinced that the hard part, for many people, would be finding the will to go. Luckily I have a practically bottomless supply. My always-eager-to-go attitude toward seeing point A and then points B, C and so forth also meant I was completely persuaded that buzzing around the world was a good idea. Tired as I am now — and boy am I tired — I haven’t changed my mind, though I need to rest up a bit at the moment.

Japan: my first visit in 25+ years.

It felt familiar — I did live there for four years — but the passage of time also infused the place with a feeling of the unfamiliar as well, a strange combo sensation indeed.

India: A major lacuna in my travels, now just a little less so.

A friend who goes to India sometimes on business told me last fall, “India makes me tired.” I might not have been on business, but I ended up feeling the same way.

And yet — a phantasmagoria unlike anything I’ve seen, especially the teeming city streets. Teem was never more an apt verb, in my experience. Yuriko came as far as India with me, after we visited Japan and her family and friends there. Then she headed back eastward to Illinois.

I went on alone from India to the UAE.

In an even less familiar part of the world, a city of towers somehow rises on the edge of the Arabian desert. Just that is astonishing in its own way, but there is plenty else.

Then to Germany: An old friend I hadn’t seen in a long time, since about five golden weeks in my youth. A long, long time ago: the last time I was there, there were two Germanies and two Berlins and a Wall and the Stassi and Trabbis and a firm living memory of the cataclysm only 40 years earlier.

Berlin was the focus this time, where I joined my brother Jay for the visit. We’d been kicking around the idea of traveling there together for a while, and ultimately didn’t want to wait till either of us got any older. He had not made it to Berlin in ’72.

A major side trip from Berlin was to Prague. Not quite as old a friend, but old enough.

Yuriko and I visited in ’94, but it was new territory for Jay, another slice of the former Astro-Hungarian Empire to go with his early ’70s visit to Vienna.

Actually, when you visit a place you haven’t seen in 40 or 30 years, it’s like you’ve never been there. I had that sensation in both Berlin and Prague. The old memories are packed away, only loosely connected to their setting any more, which has changed partly beyond recognition anyway.

Now I’m back. Unlike Phileas Fogg, I didn’t return a day earlier than I thought I did (we have a stronger awareness of the International Date Line). But I did manage to miss the no one-likes-it spring transition to daylight savings time, just another little bonus of the trip.

The Lesson: Go Look at the Elephant Yourself

Posted on October 10, 2023 by admin

“Shop epic deals influencers love,” says an ad I saw today, one associated with an online retail behemoth oddly named for a major tropical river. Instantly I found a use for that Reagan-era phrase: just say no.

Influencers would be about as useful for finding worthwhile goods as the blind men in describing the elephant.

I didn’t know until today that the inestimable Natalie Merchant set the poem “The Blind Men and the Elephant” to music. That comes of rummaging around the Internet about blind men and elephants. She might have sung it at Ravinia in 2012, since the recording would have been fairly new then, but I don’t remember.

The poem by John Godfrey Saxe is much older, of Victorian vintage. I didn’t know much about the poet, so I looked into some of his other work. His rhymes tend not to be dense with complex images, as far as I can tell. One begins:

Come, listen all unto my song;
It is no silly fable;
‘Tis all about the mighty cord
They call the Atlantic Cable.

That’s from “How Cyrus Laid the Cable.” I have to like a poem about early communications infrastructure, though I don’t think Natalie has set it to music.

The parable of the blind men and the elephant is much older than the 19th century, of course, a dash of ancient wisdom from the Subcontinent. I might have first heard about it in one of my Eastern religion classes. Or perhaps when I bought the record Waist Deep in the Big Muddy and Other Love Songs in the mid-80s, the disk that kicked my admiration for Pete Seeger into high gear. On that record, he performs a comic spoken version of the parable — the second spoken interlude during a song called “Seek and You Shall Find.”

I like all of the stories. Especially the first one, which is about boiling all the world’s wisdom down into one book, then one sentence, then one word. A re-telling for our time wouldn’t involve a king and wise men, but perhaps a tech mogul and his AI specialists. Eventually, sophisticated AI boils all the world’s wisdom down into a single word, and the result is the same. Maybe.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Tag Archives: India