New Delhi Sightseeing

Tuesday 6/21 ~ Sightseeing in New Delhi: Qutub Minar, Lotus Baha’i Temple, and Humayun’s Tomb

Our second day of orientation. After having an early lunch, we headed via taxi to Qutub Minar. The site where Qutub Minar was built is a sort of holy land that has been used for over a millenium by different religious groups. Before the first Muslim ruler of Delhi started construction of Qutub Minar in 1193, the site housed many Hindu and Jain temples. Unlike most of the other UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Delhi, you’ll see Islamic architecture at Qutub Minar, rather than the Mughal architecture that combined both Islamic and Hindu architectural styles and is aptly referred to as Islamic-Hindu architecture. The reason is that Qutub Minar was built before the Mughals conquered India.

Being there with the other volunteers was fun, but there is a kind of personal state that I can never experience while with others that I missed. Even with Peggy, who I am very comfortable with, it is difficult for me to get into this kind of pensive and meditative state, where I feel very connected with my surroundings. In this state, my imagination is free to fill the empty stone structures surrounding me with life.

At the Lotus Temple, I tried to connect to “God”. I do not subscribe to any particular religion, and I am hesitant to say that I am agnostic. However, I do believe in some harmonious something underlying everything and that, I sometimes refer to as God. Perhaps what I speak of resonates with the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Thales', principle of water as everything or water is everything or water in everything ... I don't think anyone knows precisely what he meant. Anyway, for a brief moment in history, I felt connected, and wow … it was breathtaking.

Humayun’s Tomb is a mausoleum and an indirect predecessor of the Taj Mahal. The emperor buried there, Humayun, was the 2nd Mughal emporer and was succeeded by Shah Jahan, the 4th Mughal emporer, who was buried in the Taj Mahal, after serving a sentence of 8 years in prison given by his own tyrant son, Aurangzeb, the 6th and last Mughal emporer. The gate to enter the premises was unrepresentatively modest. Actually, the other volunteers wanted rather to stay outside and wait for Peggy and me than go in. I felt that they missed out. The mausoleum, a beautiful palace built with similar Mughal Islamic-Hindu architecture as the Taj Mahal, stood quietly and nobly. He gave us permission to enter, but injected a sense of disrespect in me when I treated him as an exhibit, snapping away photos of his now barren interior. The greatness of those buried there was palpable.