MAHAL

I was going to write about my time visiting the Taj Mahal but then I thought I would let the pictures tell the story. They speak for themselves:

This is the walk way that leads to the courtyard just outside the gate which leads to the garden in front of the Taj Mahal... I know...

The building in this picture is actually the gate that you pass through to enter the garden in front of the Taj Mahal. You can see by the size of the people that the Moguls did not play around when they built gates.

Here is a closer view of the main gate itself. Around the outside of the gate in a "square horseshoe" shape are some strange looking markings creating a sort of border around the entrance. They are quotes from the Koran, and look Arabic but they Urdu. I am told that even though the lines on this "border" look straight, they are actually wider at the top, creating an optical illussion for those standing underneath it. Making it wider at the top makes it look straight from bottom to top. The eleven domes across the top represent the eleven years it took to construct the main part of the Tomb. Symetry and Symbolism...

This is a close up of the walkway through the gate with the entrance to the Taj just beyond the gate. The flowers and vines that you see just above the entrance are cut stone that has been fitted perfectly into the white marble for decoration. I will show you a close up in a little bit.

This is the Taj Mahal as seen from inside the building that is the gate between the outer court and within the walls surrounding the garden in front of the Taj

My view of the Taj Mahal as I stood directly in front of it on the otherside of the gate. This is the garden. It does not look like what most of us think of when we think of a garden. There are trees and pools, and stone work-a-plenty. The designers were very careful to make everything symetrical.

I walked off to the side to get a view from a different angle. To the left you will see a building make with red stone, the same as the gate. That building is a mosque. It is used on Friday evenings for prayer and that is about it. I was there on a Saturday so there was no chance of seeing it in action. From this angle you can see how the Taj is built up on a platform. You may also notice that the towers at the four corners of the platform are leaning slightly.


Here is the front gate to the Taj Mahal. You will see the same Urdu lettering up and down the sides and along the top as on the gate. I am not sure what verse it is but it is from the Koran. The same ornate flowers and vines decorate the top part of the entrance. And the white Marble is what sets the whole thing apart from the rest of the structures around it.

Here is a close up of the lettering that looks Arabic but is actually Urdu.


This is hand carved out of the white granite wall in the entrance way into the Taj. This extremely detailed work is hundreds of years old.

Each of these shapes, the vine, the flowers, the gold hook looking things, are cut stone about two or three milimeters thick. Each one is individualy cut to fit into its spot in the wall. and a place is cut specifically for it as well. That is my tour guides finger in the lower left hand corner. If you were to blindfold someone and have them run there fingers acorss the surface, it would likely feel like on peice of granite that has not been touched with tools of any kind.

Pictures are not allowed inside the Taj so this next photo is from the other side of the Taj, the "back porch". This minerete looking tower is on the river side of the Taj as you can tell from the lower left side of the pic. These towers actually lean away from the main structure of the Taj so that if there were some kind of catastrophic event like an earthquake the towers would topple and crash away from the the building.

Inside the Taj Mahal lays the tombs of two individuals. Here is a brief synopsis. Shah Jahan was the fifth emperor of the Mughal Empire in the first half of the 1600's. It was a time of great prosperity. He took two other wives in the interveneing years but Mumtaz Mahal was always his favorite. They were married for ninteen years and she bore him 14 children. She died giving birth to the fourteenth child. As she was dying she asked Jahan to build a building in her memory.

And so out of love and devotion to her he began to assemble a team to build a magnificent building for his beloved wife to demonstrate and reflect his love for her. The buiding is called the Taj Mahal, you can see her name in the name of the building. The word Mahal means palace... That is what he built. Today her tomb is at rest beneath the floor of the Taj, but there is a replica tomb inside that you can see when you walk througth the building.

This is called the moonlight garden. Shah Jahan was going to build another mosoleum on the other side of the river. A black Taj Mahal for himself, but he never got to build it. He was arrested and thrown in to prison by his son who took over in a coup.

Off in the distance of this picture you can make out a complex that is called Agra Fort. It was in this for that Shah Jahan was imprisoned by his son. He could look out his window and see the Taj that he had built, He could see the tomb of his beloved wife, but he could not be near her.

The next building that you are seeing here is a red stone building that serves no purpose other than to provide balance and symytry to the who Taj Mahal layout. The building on the other side is a functioning mosque but this one is simply for looks.

One last look at the Taj before I head out...

WEDDING

Well, one of the professors at the school I was staying at has a daughter. This daughter was getting married. This professor was teaching his classes like a good professor and looking after us Americans while he was planning and preparing for said wedding.

The tall guy in the middle with the white shirt is the happy groom, I am the slightly shorter guy on the left with the white shirt. The guy immediately to right of the groom in the light blue shirt is the father of the bride and the professor I talked with who gave me the official invitation.

He had a lot on his plate, not to mention whatever emotional stuff he must have been going through at the time as well. I was fortunate enough to have the timing of the wedding line up with the timing of my departure from Delhi, so I received an official invitation. I was officially invited to this Indian wedding.

This is the church where the wedding was held. It was built in the 1930's during a time when Muslims were in power in this area of Delhi so the building reflects the Muslim influenced architecture could be seen in many buildings constructed during that time.

I left the college where I had been living for almost six weeks at four in the morning. It had been my home away from home during that time. I was surprised, therefore, that when I left there were no tears of leaving. It’s not that I was glad to be leaving or anything, just that I was glad to be one step closer to my real home… my wife and son. On previous trips over the past ten years or so, I have had a chance to build strong bonds with the people I was working with. On this trip the people I was working with (the Americans) were already gone; and there were so many students, and so many classes I ended up teaching that I did not really get a chance to form bonds with any one group of kids… So leaving was not difficult.

It was so hot in the church that they actually had guys walking up and down the isles offering water to people sitting in the pews. I, being the smart American traveler who knows what to eat and drink and what not to chose to sit in my sweat without relief.

Anyways, this wedding was a Christian wedding, so it did not have all the trappings of Hindu tradition, otherwise the celebration would still be going on. Their ceremonies last a long time, and everything is pretty formal. There are usually four or five ministers present at the wedding, and each have a specific role in the service. For this wedding there were three sermons… yeah three. I arrived a little late because my ride got stuck in the Delhi traffic. After finding out what I missed I was sort of okay with being late.

The bride and groom just after they exchange vows. Thought the bride looked angelic in this shot.

Some parts of the wedding will be different depending on where in India you are from. I was fortunate that the father of the bride is a little progressive in his perspective on things as he was educated in America. So a service that in some places in India will be as long as five hours, was only two and some change. The reception was interesting in that the Bride and Groom sit on a platform and smile for hours as all (that word I just typed is not to be taken figuratively) All the guests line up and approach the platform with their wedding gift. Once on the platform they pose and smile for the photographer and then hug and walk off the platform. This process goes on for almost the entire duration of the reception.

The happy couple after the ceremony. I am pretty sure they are smiling because they are finally able to step outside where it is at least ten or fifteen degrees cooler. Also, their wedding ceremony is the most amount of time they have ever spent together.

The bride and groom hand out little favors to each guest and say thanks for coming, and the guests pose and smile… even me… yup, I had never met them before but I got my picture taken with them. (Top photo) One other unique thing about this couple that American’s would find appalling: this particular couple had met for one hour about month before they were married and that was it. That is right arraigned marriages are alive and well in India. This couple was fortunate to get an hour; most are much less, and some never meet beforehand.

BHAGWANPUR

I went to another school in a town called Bhagwanpur. This is a very overcrowded school now and it has a short but impressive history. It started as just a three room school not too far from its current location with just twenty three students. Two rooms were classrooms and one was an office for the teachers. After just three years the school became packed with just over 60 students crammed into their two small rooms. With an increasing demand to take more students they needed to find a new facility.

Their current building became available to rent and so they took the opportunity to move into the new location which had ten or twelve rooms that could be used as class rooms as well as a few offices. The school currently is running around 500 students form K through 8th grade. Their current class size is about forty to fifty students per class.

The Indian people value education so much so that if there is a chance their student can attend classes in a non-government school they do anything they can to get their kids in. It just so happens that the schools that are run by Christian organizations have the best reputation for education so they are the most sought after schools. This one is so full that they are in need of moving again and they have only been in existence for six years.

They have purchased a plot of land that is about two acres in total. The plan is to build something similar to what was built in Pathrie. A large three story complex with classrooms and some offices. And then build some housing for teachers and administrators as well.

One thing that set this school apart from Pathrie however is that this school also has an orphanage as part of the ministry to the community. They only have room for 30 kids. They actually call it a children's home. Each group of six to ten kids has an adult couple that cares for them. The idea is that each couple acts like parents to these kids and each kid is like a sibling to the other in their "family". They try to create some semblance of a family for these little ones.

I walked into one of the rooms while the kids were in class as part of a tour I was getting of the facilities and started crying. (No one else was around me). I don't know who the kids are who slept in that room, I don't know their stories, I could not point them out in a crowd, or if they were standing in front of me, but I cried for them. No child should ever be thrown away. What does it do to a child and later on as an adult to know that some one cared just enough to not abort them but not enough to care for them personally. I know that this is not the case for many of the students but it for some. I have personally heard enough stories to imagine what some of the stories in this room might be like.

This is the land that was purchased for the new facility. It is a field today, but hopefully in another year or two they will have the money to build at least the first floor of their dream.

I walked out of the building not wanting to leave. I really wanted to see the kids when they got out of school and give them a hug, and tell them that even if no one else loved them, that Jesus loved them. But I the reality is that two minutes with me is not going to change things for them. It might make me feel better, but it does nothing for them. The heroes here are the couples who have dedicated themselves to bringing up kids who are not theirs to understand the love of God.

This is one of the bedrooms at the Children's home. It is right next to the school. You notice their beds are neatly made and on one of the beds, (it is hard to tell) there is a Bible sitting there. These kids have very few if any personal possessions. To have your own book is a big deal especially if it is a Bible.

No one else in their society is concerned about showing them this kind of love. Not even their own family members. At least the Muslims will care for extended family when they are in need; even the Sikhs, a Hindu reform group which started about 600 years ago will care for extended family who have fallen on hard times. But if you are a Hindu and you fall on hard times it is because you deserve it. And children sometimes pay a high price for this. I am so thankful for the people in these schools and homes who are dedicated to the next generation of Indians.

I don't remember his name, even if I did, I would not be able to pronounce it or spell it, but this man is a teacher in the school and he is one of the house parents as well. He and his wife have two kids, plus the children in the home. I don't know his name but he is a hero to me.

DADDY

I am a dad...
There is another person on planet earth who is completely dependent on me. This is what I have learned so far:

• He prefers being held to being put down.
• He cannot clean himself up and needs me to do that.
• Sometimes he poops while I am holding him.
• He has peed on me while I was cleaning him.
• Neither of the previous two scared me away, I still loved him and cleaned him up and held him afterwords.
  
• He is the cutest baby I have ever seen (because he looks a little like me and mostly like my wife) yeah, he bears my image.
  
• He is incapable of earning my affection because he already has it.
• He has nothing to offer me that I need, but I can't get enough of him.
• His value is not in what he does (pee and poop) his value is in the fact that he is mine.
• I love it when he looks at me.
• It breaks my heart when he cries.
• I love this time but I also look forward to the day when he will talk to me.
  

Suddenly I understand the love of God a little better.

Just a meandering thought...