My new status. Unlike the more circumspect Thai and Cambodian men, Banaresi men look boldly at unaccompanied Western women. This is never followed by comments (as it would be in Philly) except when I’m being asked, not in a leering way, though some rickshaw-wallahs are hard to shake, if I want a rickshaw ride. The look suggests my too available status. Unaccompanied women running around loose are a traditional peril in India, emblematized in the now virtually extinct (and never as prevalent as the British claimed, a topic for another time) practice of suttee. If men happen to learn that I have no kids (the first question) and on top of that no husband (the second), I become truly incomprehensible. In rickshaws I present myself as a married mother of two to avoid the hassle, though the visible absence of a husband is still a problem to be wrestled with.
Specifically, an unaccompanied woman may not climb the minaret to look over Delhi at Jama Masjid mosque, the largest in India, built by Shah Jahan, the fourth Mughal emperor and builder of the Taj Mahal. Jama Masjid was his last great project before his son Aurangzeb, a devout Sunni depicted as one of the great villains of Indian-- and even more, Banarsi--history, imprisoned him for the rest of his life (9 years) across the river from the Taj, then set in motion an animosity between Hindus and Muslims, on whose rough mutual alliance the stability of the Mughal empire had depended, by anti-Hindu policies, especially the notorious jizya tax. This was a tax paid by Hindu men because they were not liable for military service in a jihad. The disunity sowed by Aurangzeb’s efforts helped lose the empire to the British, who had been waiting 150 years for just such an opportunistic crack in Mughal power.
Aurangzeb destroyed the Hindu temples of Banaras to replace them with mosques, a pre-emptive strike against a city whose centrality as a place of study for Hindus made it a strategic threat, and against lingam worship, a particular abomination from the Mughal point of view: all those licked and worshiped phalluses. It was the second time the Muslims did in Banaras, the first during the original Muslim invasions of the 11th and 12 centuries. So the oldest standing structures here date from the 18th century. Banaras never quite recovered its former architectural glory as the “Athens of the East” in one European description, attained under another great Mughal emperor in this line, Akbar, who tolerated Hinduism and permitted temple building.
The most beautiful thing I saw in Delhi was Humayan’s tomb. The Mughal dynasty from 1400 to 1800 goes Babur, Humayun, Shah Jahan, Akbar, Jahangir, Aurangzeb. Humayun was Shah Jahan’s grandfather His tomb was built by his wife, the pretty remarkable Hamideh Banu, now become an unaccompanied woman herself, who camped nine years on the site to make sure it was done right. She met Humayan when she was 13. They were married on an aupicious date the groom, a mystic and astrologer, calculated with his astrolabe.
Hamaideh was the great Akbar’s mother, his name chosen from a dream Humayun had. Given her son's legacy as a great builder and religiously tolerant leader, she seems to have raised him right. When he was off on his military campaigns, he left her in charge of the empire. The tomb she built is the design precursor of the Taj Mahal. It’s based on Persian garden design (Hamideh was from Persian royalty).
To go there is to see something very special. I went on what turned out to be a monsoon day—the monsoon was late this year and has not delivered the usual amount of water (though floods are swamping Delhi as I write), as it has not for the last several years, another global warming indicator. Monsoon tourism is absolutely the way to go. The temperature is cool, other tourists stay away, the grass is green, green, slurping up all the rain, the sandstone is red, red, and there’s ozone in the air to make you feel good. As is often the case with deceptively simple things, photographs do not convey the sculptural seductiveness of those pure geometrical forms. Red standstone inlaid with black and white marble. The first onion dome in India, indeed the first Indian garden tomb. Its high central ogive ogive arch is also the first in Muslim architecture. The “roof" of the first floor is a gorgeous marble terrace, a kind of plaza surrounding the main tomb structure. Nothing sits on it except the occasional small marble sarcophagus containing the occasional small relative. The lovely gateway into the gardens frames the receding arch beyond, the entrance to the tomb itself. Passing through it, you are faced immediately with high marble steps to the roof terrace. The octagonal structure that forms the bulk of the building sits on that terrace. Humayun’s still, marble sarcophagus lies all alone in the center of the tomb facing east. To be in the middle of all this grand symmetry is nothing but beauty and calm. One of the best things I've ever seen. The formal gardens are landscaped with mulberry, African mahogany, teakwood and banyan trees, laid out in traditional Persian charbagh design divided by water channels or walking paths into four parts (char- four, bargh- garden). There are 8 areas so divided for a total of 32. A dominating north south flowing water channel runs from the tomb to the entrance. It reminds me a bit of the reflecting pool on the National Mall, which I have to think is a modern descendant of Islamic garden landscaping by way of the French. Beyond the margins are two lesser but beautiful structures, also tombs. One for the emperor’s trusted barber,the daily holder of a razor to his throat, and one for Isa Khan, one of his powerful generals. Surveying the gardens from the terrace, I thought of Monte Alban in Oaxaca, an enormous fortified stone plateau from which the Zapotecs could see the surrounding valley and, ringing them 360 degrees, the sacred mountain landscape. You could SEE the thunder god approach. Or any hostile human forces on the ground. Humayan’s (infinitely smaller) roof terrace is not unlike that in its idea, though what it surveys is not wild sacred nature, but nature dominated into the unambiguously civilized, a religious and political work of art.
Not so controlled and domesticated the day I was there, were wraith like women who seemed to live in or at least haunt the otherwise empty chambers containing and surrounding the sarcophagus, save for the bats on the ceiling. The effect was eerie. They had wild hair, their skin chalky with dust and poverty, their saris much lived in. They were very thin and gliding in and out of the rooms to see who was there and beg for change--unaccompanied women taking shelter in a deserted (as it was on that day) structure built from heartbreak (but also strategically to claim the future for her son) by another unaccompanied woman.
Specifically, an unaccompanied woman may not climb the minaret to look over Delhi at Jama Masjid mosque, the largest in India, built by Shah Jahan, the fourth Mughal emperor and builder of the Taj Mahal. Jama Masjid was his last great project before his son Aurangzeb, a devout Sunni depicted as one of the great villains of Indian-- and even more, Banarsi--history, imprisoned him for the rest of his life (9 years) across the river from the Taj, then set in motion an animosity between Hindus and Muslims, on whose rough mutual alliance the stability of the Mughal empire had depended, by anti-Hindu policies, especially the notorious jizya tax. This was a tax paid by Hindu men because they were not liable for military service in a jihad. The disunity sowed by Aurangzeb’s efforts helped lose the empire to the British, who had been waiting 150 years for just such an opportunistic crack in Mughal power.
Aurangzeb destroyed the Hindu temples of Banaras to replace them with mosques, a pre-emptive strike against a city whose centrality as a place of study for Hindus made it a strategic threat, and against lingam worship, a particular abomination from the Mughal point of view: all those licked and worshiped phalluses. It was the second time the Muslims did in Banaras, the first during the original Muslim invasions of the 11th and 12 centuries. So the oldest standing structures here date from the 18th century. Banaras never quite recovered its former architectural glory as the “Athens of the East” in one European description, attained under another great Mughal emperor in this line, Akbar, who tolerated Hinduism and permitted temple building.
The most beautiful thing I saw in Delhi was Humayan’s tomb. The Mughal dynasty from 1400 to 1800 goes Babur, Humayun, Shah Jahan, Akbar, Jahangir, Aurangzeb. Humayun was Shah Jahan’s grandfather His tomb was built by his wife, the pretty remarkable Hamideh Banu, now become an unaccompanied woman herself, who camped nine years on the site to make sure it was done right. She met Humayan when she was 13. They were married on an aupicious date the groom, a mystic and astrologer, calculated with his astrolabe.
Hamaideh was the great Akbar’s mother, his name chosen from a dream Humayun had. Given her son's legacy as a great builder and religiously tolerant leader, she seems to have raised him right. When he was off on his military campaigns, he left her in charge of the empire. The tomb she built is the design precursor of the Taj Mahal. It’s based on Persian garden design (Hamideh was from Persian royalty).
To go there is to see something very special. I went on what turned out to be a monsoon day—the monsoon was late this year and has not delivered the usual amount of water (though floods are swamping Delhi as I write), as it has not for the last several years, another global warming indicator. Monsoon tourism is absolutely the way to go. The temperature is cool, other tourists stay away, the grass is green, green, slurping up all the rain, the sandstone is red, red, and there’s ozone in the air to make you feel good. As is often the case with deceptively simple things, photographs do not convey the sculptural seductiveness of those pure geometrical forms. Red standstone inlaid with black and white marble. The first onion dome in India, indeed the first Indian garden tomb. Its high central ogive ogive arch is also the first in Muslim architecture. The “roof" of the first floor is a gorgeous marble terrace, a kind of plaza surrounding the main tomb structure. Nothing sits on it except the occasional small marble sarcophagus containing the occasional small relative. The lovely gateway into the gardens frames the receding arch beyond, the entrance to the tomb itself. Passing through it, you are faced immediately with high marble steps to the roof terrace. The octagonal structure that forms the bulk of the building sits on that terrace. Humayun’s still, marble sarcophagus lies all alone in the center of the tomb facing east. To be in the middle of all this grand symmetry is nothing but beauty and calm. One of the best things I've ever seen. The formal gardens are landscaped with mulberry, African mahogany, teakwood and banyan trees, laid out in traditional Persian charbagh design divided by water channels or walking paths into four parts (char- four, bargh- garden). There are 8 areas so divided for a total of 32. A dominating north south flowing water channel runs from the tomb to the entrance. It reminds me a bit of the reflecting pool on the National Mall, which I have to think is a modern descendant of Islamic garden landscaping by way of the French. Beyond the margins are two lesser but beautiful structures, also tombs. One for the emperor’s trusted barber,the daily holder of a razor to his throat, and one for Isa Khan, one of his powerful generals. Surveying the gardens from the terrace, I thought of Monte Alban in Oaxaca, an enormous fortified stone plateau from which the Zapotecs could see the surrounding valley and, ringing them 360 degrees, the sacred mountain landscape. You could SEE the thunder god approach. Or any hostile human forces on the ground. Humayan’s (infinitely smaller) roof terrace is not unlike that in its idea, though what it surveys is not wild sacred nature, but nature dominated into the unambiguously civilized, a religious and political work of art.
Not so controlled and domesticated the day I was there, were wraith like women who seemed to live in or at least haunt the otherwise empty chambers containing and surrounding the sarcophagus, save for the bats on the ceiling. The effect was eerie. They had wild hair, their skin chalky with dust and poverty, their saris much lived in. They were very thin and gliding in and out of the rooms to see who was there and beg for change--unaccompanied women taking shelter in a deserted (as it was on that day) structure built from heartbreak (but also strategically to claim the future for her son) by another unaccompanied woman.
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