ou sont les super nechands?
i arrived back in delhi at 6.30am after a particularly bumpy night's sleep, or lack thereof, on the bus. i checked in and crashed out, with my only plan to doze in bed all day and generally do very little. unfortunately, the compressed nature of the last fortnight means that i constantly feel that i have to be doing stuff, so by 11am i was out on the roads of new delhi.new delhi is the administrative capital of india, yet it is uncomfortably distant from the nation that it is supposed to signify. designed by an european, lutyens, the rajpath commences at the president's house, goes past parliament, and culminates at india gate. what is immediately noticeable is the lack of cars on this road, which then serves to highlight how broad and spacious the thoroughfare is, with parks and fountains flanking it all the way. solitude and space, totally anomalous with modern india: it makes you wonder how effectively the individuals working within this bubble can represent the inhabitants of the desi landscapes that voted them in. as i started heading down rajpath, the sound of a muezzin's call arose: again, the sound of one religion so suddenly dominating the air around the heartbeat of this secular nation was unsettlingly discordant.
anyway, as it was just after noon the sun was at its most intense, and i was a bit tired from all my mincey thoughts, so i ducked into the national museum. what should have been a 30 minute rest stop turned into a two hour exploration, with plenty of open mouthed moments en route. the quality of some of the ancient sculpture and carvings on display, lifted from various temple sites, was breathtaking. how a country founded on various civilizations that all uniformly sought to valorise the sexual beauty of the female form, and female sexuality within, can now be so subsumed within an ideology of repression is shameful. more to the point, all the statues of apsaras had cracking norks: i did a bit of research during the afternoon and these appear to have disappeared. is there some kind of secret brown girl boob reduction program to prevent moustachioed side parted youths getting overexcited? i think we should be told.
from the museum i walked down to humayun's tomb, an early example of the mughal architecture that peaked with the taj mahal, and a world heritage sight in its own right. the monument itself was very impressive, but my travails at getting in left a bit of a sour taste. i had to argue long and hard to convince the pen pusher selling tickets that i was indian and not foreign. the reason i was so eager to make this (admittedly untrue) distinction was the difference in price: 10r for indian, 250r for tourists! it had been the same in the museum, entry/ camera was 10r/20r or 150r/330r, but art staff are much too lazy to worry about stuff like money so asked no questions.i don't mind paying a bit more, but the sheer magnitude of the mark up made me seeth. i blagged it ok, but i really felt for the other, white, young travellers, who were probably just as skint as me, that were being extorted. the indian tourist board seems intent on alienating as many visitors as possible: cretins.
either way, all the walking had knackered me out, and i was getting funny looks from lots of the brown girls i was conducting my research on. so, stopping only for a cheeky chicken roll, i headed back. i'm now off to watch the football (liverpool v sunderland) and rugby (aus v sa) with ryan, who's just putting rachel on the train. happy days.
posted by bicrom @ 12:34 pm
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