News That Stays News

“What doth it profit to argue about hidden and dark things?” March 18, 2013

On a day full of possibility, I woke to find myself in the shiny new Indira Gandhi Airport.  As I made my way to the shiny new airport metro, through vast halls of wordless, polished stone, I realized I was surprised not to see advertising.  There was a twinge of fear as I stepped out in my t-shirt, into a world of blankets and scarves, but also a little satisfaction, and anticipation.  My things found their way to a hotel room, and I back onto the metro, a bit slow since they can only frisk one person at a time, but easy and direct.  I found some good Thali before the old Delhi railroad station, and I ate it, and then I wandered off to the Emperor’s avenue, and took in the great sandstone walls of the red fort, maybe 15 meters thick, and maybe half again that height.  There was some stuff inside, including a building which informs ‘if there is a paradise on earth, then it is here’.  I left.

The man at the entrance to the Jammu Masjid did not mention that the Rs 300 entry fee is only to enter with a camera. He just demanded it. I sat for a minute to internalize the idea that those forced to treat continually with tourists will cheat them even at the entrance to a place of worship. Time well spent.

If there are visions of paradise on earth, then the courtyard of the Jammu Masjid, a few blocks southwest of the Red Fort, is one of them.  The floor, a vast open-air expanse of square tile, like some renaissance italian study of perspective.  A square pool in the center, where men and women sit in groups, and splash each other a little.  Trellises that suggest to my heart the old flaking white-painted wood that bore my grandparent’s grape vines, and to my mind a place to hang a tarpaulin to shelter the faithful from rain or fierce sunlight.  A woman, to my left, sitting cross-legged in an alcove and smiling.  The vast red sandstone walls that define a subspace, their flame merlons, their gates with the typical inward-outward curved arches (see sketch from Hyderabad).   Groups walking, conversing like old wise men from some fresco.  Little boys running about, throwing rocks at each other’s feet (a bit they leave out of the paintings).  The great, towering mosque, with its minarets.  I went up in one of those minarets, maybe thirty meters of cold, regular, spiraling stone.  I reached the top, beautiful but no longer sheltered from the world.  Others followed.  We achieved neutron degeneracy pressure, and I bounced back down the tower.

Some time later, I met an old acquaintance for dinner in the Khan Market, an outdoor mall of amusing extravagance.  I thought of my grandmother, dipped my toast in olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and ordered a wonderful mushroom linguine with cheese.  Chatted about her life, her pregnancy.  Speculated about the curious disconnect between male sexual aggression and sexual assertiveness, about prostitution, about the potential unsanctioned sexual  implications of  socially accepted public male physical intimacy.  Bantered about the futility of planning here, the historical roots of the granularity of income segregation, and higher education.  I slept early.