A Tour of Delhi...Old and New

The Indian capital--Delhi--has both an old and new part, divided by a stone wall built during Mughal times. New Delhi was built in the 1930s in a final paroxysm of British imperial arrogance (the Brits left India less than a decade after the new city's completion). Old Delhi was built primarily by the Mughals, though Delhi has been the site of eight diferrent distinct cities over the course of its nearly four millenia as the subcontinent's flag-bearer.




The city's most famous site is undoubtedly the Red Fort, built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jehan (the same guy behind the Taj Mahal). This is a shot of Jenna and I outside the Red Fort's main entrance. It is mightily impressive on the outside, though a keen lack of upkeep has left the inside rather dilapidated.





An elepant on the busy road outside the Red Fort. No big whoop.









Further south in Delhi is the magnificent and wholly overlooked Humayun's Tomb. Westerners have never heard of this gem, but this gigantic mausoleum--which houses the tombs of Emperor Humayan and 99 other Mughal officials--is argued to be the inspiration for the Taj Mahal. The picture shows why. Humayan, incidentally, died after falling from a steep staircase in his personal library.


My dad treats his vacations like assignments for National Geographic--snapping pictures from artistic angles and getting 27 just-right shots of famous landmarks. This is a picture of him in action, stomping across the base of Humayun's Tomb, intent on sniffing out the next Pulitzer image.

Yet further south in the city, on the outskirts of the main town is the awe-inspring Qutb Minar. This 243-foot tower was built by Muslim conquerors in the late 1100s after they invaded the subcontinent and defeated the Hindus who had held power before them. The crumbling remains of another tower--planned to be twice as tall as this one--are inthe same complex, but it stands forlornly incomplete at only 30 feet tall.

More Taj Mahal

Today's post reviews more of our time at the Taj Mahal. This first picture is of the family outside the main gate of the Taj (a strucutral marvel itself). In Mughal times, courtesans would shower royal visitors with flower petals as they passed through the gate and musicians would bang ceremonial drums and blow trumpets. All we were greeted with were jostling Indian and Chinese tourists elbowing us out of the way so they could take pictures of the Taj in the distance.

This is me getting ready to mount the giant marble plinth on which the Taj sits. For purposes of preservation, all visitors are required to either take off their shoes or wear cloth booties over their feet when they step up to the Taj. My dad promptly ripped his booties trying to get them on and subsequently had to drag himself around the Taj flat-footed so they would not fall off his shoes.

One of two giant red-standstone mosques to either side of the Taj. One was used as a working mosque in its day. This one, however, was never used and still sits empty and dormant. It was built for the express purpose of 'balancing' the real mosque on the other side, so that the entire complex retained its precise architectural symmetry. I hope they didn't tell the men who built this mosque that it was essentially useless.



This image of us in front of the Taj is our front-runner for next year's Christmas card.

Our guide Ashu, who did a superb job taking us around both the Taj Mahal and the nearby Agra Fort. He runs an IT business but does the guide work as a rather lucrative 'hobby'.



Jenna in the Agra Fort. The doorway over her left shoulder is the door that--as legend has it--Mumtaz Mahal walked through when she was spied by Emperor Shah Jehan for the first time. The legend goes that he instantly fell in love with her and then, of course, upon her death several years later commissioned the building of the Taj Mahal. (Legend leaves out Shah Jehan's other wives, his courtesans, and his apparent bouts of incest with his daughter.)


This picture was taken from the eastern terraces of Agra Fort overlooking the Yamuna River. In between my mom and Jenna, if you strain your eyes, you can see the Taj Mahal in the distance.

Pictures (Finally!)

Again, because we stupidly forgot our adapter cord on our vacation trip we were not able to upload pictures while we traveled this past week. We will hopefully be unveiling a few pictures every day for the next week or so, chronicling Jack and Karol Palmer's conquest of the Gangetic Plain. It starts, of course, with the Taj Mahal in Agra--site of Mughal Emperor Shah Jehan's timeless monument to his "favorite" wife Mumtaz Mahal. (An interesting footnote: our guide talked breathlessly about the classic love between Shah Jehan and Mumtaz Mahal, but historical records point to the fact that the emperor had hundreds of courtesans in his palace and there are rumors he even had intimate relations with one of his daughters. Oh well, the building is still beautiful.)

The Taj as an architectural model is no joke and it is not overhyped. It is as breathtaking and awe-inspiring as all the guide books make it out to be. If you ever come to In

dia, this is a MUST. As you walk through the main gate you can see the Taj in the distance through an archway. If you stand directly in the center of the archway you get a view of the entire structure, including the four decorative minarets (or towers) in the corners of the gigantic plinth that supports the Taj. If you take two steps to the right, the view is perfectly divided in half. It is the same if you step over to the left. Wondrous symmetry.

As with most white people in India, my parents eventually got cornered by a group of curious Indian teenagers. On the giant marble plinth that holds up the Taj, my parents found themselves taking a series of pictures with these star-struck students

from the Indian state of Gujarat (on the Pakistani border). Of course, my dad--as evidenced by this picture--did most of the talking.

Home (Er) Sweet Home

We have returned to Tirur today. Not exactly ‘Home Sweet Home’, but a home that is welcoming enough. To see familiar faces and be greeted with a smile and a question (“Where have you been?”) makes me feel settled.

I realized today that I missed the clean air and clear blue sky of Kerala. The muggy temperature, too, is a relief from the surprising bitterness of Delhi’s winter. (I walked around the city in flip-flops with temperatures sometimes in the low 40s.) I also realized that I had missed the simple pleasure of belonging. It struck me when we hailed an auto-rickshaw today outside the Tirur train station and saying, “Payannangadi” (our neighborhood) and having the driver nod affirmatively made me feel unexpectedly as if I was home.

On the other hand, I did not miss the slack-jawed stares the Kerala natives offer up to anyone who does not talk, look, or dress like them. Walking around Tirur’s market today was nearly as discomfiting as our first few days here back in October. Passers-by turn their heads blatantly and watch us as we walk down the street. They sidle up to us and simply look at us without engaging us in conversation. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch other people who stop whatever it is they are doing—shopping, drinking chai, talking to a friend, hailing a bus—so they can stare, as if we have stepped off the set of Star Trek: The Next Generation dressed as Klingons.

Delhi, the cosmopolitan capital of India that it is, had been a respite from this phenomenon. My parents, Jenna and I garnered no more attention then a pair of Chinese tourists or a gaggle of German pleasure-seekers or the half-naked sadhus or the lathi-toting Indian Army guards. We just simply blended in to the bustling background.

Tomorrow, we begin the second half of our commitment to JM Higher Secondary School. We have eight weeks left in our time here. In all honesty, the week off made us anxious to once again travel (which is what we plan to do in the months of March and April). It is not as if we are looking forward to our teaching being done, but we are certainly eager to get back on the road and experience more parts of India. Tirur has its charm, but you know the old axiom about the country girl who sees the bright lights of the big city.

The Palmers in India...in 500 Words or Less

It would be impossible to summarize the week that was with Jack and Karol in India in just one post. Following over the next week will be more detailed descriptions of my parents' visit to Kerala and Delhi. In a whirlwind nine-day tour, we saw Fort Cochin, attended midnight Christmas Eve mass, spent a night on a houseboat in the Keralan backwaters, survived the vagaries of Indian Airlines, gaped at the Taj Mahal, ran around Delhi for a day, and celebrated New Year's by sleeping through a fireworks show in India's capitol city.

All in all, a most memorable trip. We apologize for the dearth of new entries over the past week-and-a-half. Internet access was spotty and we wanted to focus our attention on my loving parents, who flew literally around the world to see us and our Indian life.

Happy New Year's! And check back later for stories about the Palmers' trip to India accompanied by pictures.

The Palmers Take India

Jack and Karol Palmer safely arrived in India in the middle of Wednesday night. Unfortunately, a bag was lost on the flight, so we are still waiting to hear from Continental Airlines. (There is a certain desperation to the search, since the missing luggage contains the peanut butter and toilet paper they brought us.)

Otherwise, they are happy if not overwhelmed. They spent much of Wednesday recovering from the 30-hour journey. Jenna and I arrived Thursday afternoon to an emotional reunion in Kochi. The four of us walked around the historic Fort Cochin area and ate dinner at a place called The Courtyard, a restaurant Jenna and I had sampled on our previous trip to Kochi.

Just as we were when we first arrived, my parents are a bit dazed and overwhelmed, none of us still really believing that we are together again (and on the other side of the world to boot).

We have made plans to visit a famous waterfall in Kerala (the "Niagara of India") and also stop by an elephant training ground. Unfortunately, I forgot the adapter cord that allows me to download pictures onto Jenna's laptop, so no pictures of my parents' visit can be posted until after our return to Tirur. But we will give daily updates of my parents' progress in India.

Cookie Monsters

Santosh enjoying a 'Christmas special' cookie. "Verrry excellent!" he said.

A bit of Christmas came to JM Higher Secondary this week in the form of peanut butter and chocolate cookies, date-filled Pinwheels, Southern Lassies, and stocking-shaped sugar cookies. On the day after Thanksgiving, my mother and grandmother had baked enough Christmas cookies to feed the state of Bihar. My mom then mailed me two sizeable boxes full of the treats, which arrived in Kerala late last week.

Jenna and I took two platefuls of the cookies to school on Monday, wrapped in tinfoil. I took one plate to the upper campus, where I teach on Mondays and Tuesdays. Jenna took her plate to the lower campus. As I walked in, the silvery foil caught the light and garnered the staff’s attention.

“What is this?” a few teachers asked.

“Treats,” I said simply. I waited until morning tea was served after second period to peel off the foil and reveal the platter of goodies. The Southern Lassies stood in the middle, guarded by a circle of the other cookies, leaning against each other. The staff ooohhed and awwwed. They leaned forward to get a better look. They squinted and furrowed their brows. One teacher even poked the cookies with a tentative finger, as if she was testing to see whether the cookies were alive and would jump off the plate if provoked.

The staff at the upper campus has a bit better English, in general, than the one at the lower campus, where

Jenna was at this moment, yet not good enough to intimate to me their first impressions of the cookies with any real clarity. They spoke to each other in Malayalam and then they all sat around at the table, drinking tea. The plate of cookies sat untouched in the center of the table.

I began to worry. Was something wrong? Did the cookies not look appetizing to them? I waited a few awkward moments, the growing silence of the staff room weighing down on me. Then, a woman—who must have seen my growing anxiety plainly written on my face—motioned to me with a wave of her hand.

“Waiting for knife,” she said. She made a motion as if to cut the cookies.

“Oh,” I said. “But you can just eat them whole.”

Vinod, who had the best English of the teachers at JM, interjected: “But we want to cut them up so that everyone can sample each kind of cookie.”

Now it dawned on me. I was used to the fend-for-yourself snack breaks at Hogg Middle School. On Friday mornings at Hogg, teachers would pitch in and bring breakfast treats—donuts, coffee cake, kolaches, homemade egg-and-sausage casserole. At those morning events, staff would filter in whenever there was a free moment and take however much could fit on a small wobbly paper plate. If you waited too long, you ran the danger of not getting anything.

At JM, on this morning, two of the women teachers watchfully guarded the plate of Christmas cookies and shooed

away any male teachers who came along and tried to snatch one. Eventually, a knife did appeared and the women took to slicing up each cookie into halves or even quarters. Another staff member ripped up squares of newspaper, and the women arranged a sampling of each type of cookie on to each square. By the end, a dozen or so squares of newspaper filled the table, each topped with a handful of crumbling, colorful Christmas cookies.

Each staff member dutifully took a square of newspaper and began to eat.

“Mmmmm. Delicious.”

“Superb!”

“Tasty!”

Their limited English vocabulary was accented by the sounds they made as they stuffed the cookies hurriedly into their mouths before the next period began.