Children in India

In the mornings as I am driven through Delhi's streets to JNU, I pass hundreds of uniformed school children on their way to school. Each school has its own color combination: Blue blazers, maroon blazers, green sweaters, traditional kurta-style uniforms in navy and white, and on and on; the boys have short, neat haircuts, girls have tightly braided hair. Some ride to school 8 or 9 to a van, some ride big yellow school buses, some ride crammed 2 or 3 boys behind their father on a motorcycle. Most of the ones I see are walking to school, and it's a lovely sight.

But as in most poor countries, some children in India don't go to school and have to live in makeshift "housing." Many work hard for a living; many don't have shoes or pants or a hair comb.

For many weeks, I watched a family living on the sidewalk on the commute between the Adelaide and Owen's school and the university. They were camping out in the midst of the city, two tents side by side on a wide section of sidewalk. In the mornings, the mother would be squatting on her heels near the opening of her tent, making tea over a small fire. Three or four children would be waking up and stretching in the adjacent tent, the 6- or 7-year old girl tending to the little ones. After a heavy rain a week ago, I worried about them. We couldn't pass their sidewalk on the day of the rain because the street was flooded. When we passed by the next day, the tents were sagging and few pieces of cloth (or clothing?) were hung on the fence railing. The next day, the family was gone altogether and some dogs were asleep in the sagging tent.

Another family seems to live on the corner of Africa Marg and Olaf Palme Marg on my ride home. They don't have a tent, just some thin blankets (not mats or mattresses, as many do). There is a baby in the family, a small one who can sit up but not walk yet. The baby seems to stay put, seated on the sidewalk while the adults (3 women and a man, I believe) sit or squat nearby and talk to one another. Friday, the baby was sitting with a small thin branch in his hand, tapping the sidewalk. The adults were asleep. Today again, three adults were asleep at about 4:00 in the afternoon, and the baby was sitting there, alone, with six lanes of traffic whizzing by.

On the JNU campus, there are many campsites of construction workers. I understand that many of them are from the poor state of Bihar. They are building a new structure at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication. The women work on the construction site wear saris and plastic sandals. Each seems to have a gold nose-ring or two and perhaps some gold bangles. Their job is to mix sand and a reddish dirt for mortar and carry it in baskets on their heads to the bricklayers. When the bricklayers need a new shipment of bricks, the women in their saris carry bricks on their heads, 9 to a load, up the wooden ladders to the men. Children are on the worksite, with no one paying particular attention. This morning at 8:30, two little toddlers (walking or not quite yet) were positioned on a bench, playing with the flowering bush behind the bench. The adults were busy on the worksite and apparently expected the toddlers to stay put where they were placed.

Older children work, whether as street beggars, street performer/beggars, car-to-car vendors of books and magazines and trinkets, food sellers, ice cream sellders, or animal tenders.

The beggars are typically barefooted, dusty, and wild-haired. The street performer/beggars may have some black face makeup on and might have on bright (but dirty) clothes while they perform some acrobatics or drumming. They work in heavy traffic, coming out to the cars during the red lights and darting back to the median when the light turns green. They work in groups, most often groups of sisters, who might range in age from 3 to 10. The oldest sister often carries a little one on her hip.

It's very tempting to hand a few rupees to these children. They are taught to smile and be persistent. Some of them enact the fact that they are hungry; some indicate that their baby sister is hungry. We don't want to encourage the children to make a living on the streets, and we certainly don't want to encourage the parents to allow their children to make a living running in and out of traffic for them. So, 3 times out of 4 I ignore the child beggars, and about every fourth time I give in and hand out a few rupees.

Like children everywhere, they smile and laugh at the coin in their hands, then run off to "play" some more.

Workaday Delhi

Today was another work day in Delhi--for some. Nehru University, where I'm teaching, was on strike today as it was one day last week. The university students are known to "embrace the culture of protest." The object of their protest this time is the JNU administration which they allege is paying its maintenance workers less than the minimum wage. 10 student leaders were suspended last week in regards to their protest activity, so the strikers now oppose the payment policy as well as the suspensions.


I was one of three faculty members I saw at work today--I promised the strikers I would not teach class--so the professors are either in accord with the students and laborers, or are taking a holiday. You decide.


Below are some of my favorite protest posters here at JNU. Most are virulently anti-American, as you will see. I definitely have a mission to accomplish here!

Anti-globalization is a theme, and opposition to the "UK-US-Israeli Axis of Imperialism."





Note the large poster showing a US gunship lobbing cans of Coke and TV sets on frightened, brown-skinned people. You can pick out logos of Disney, Shell Oil, Nike, Windows, and McDonald's, as well a Coca-Cola.

The Pictures Say it All

We arrived at the Taj Mahal at 6:15 a.m. It was still dark, hushed, and misty.

When we left at 8:30, the sun was up and the colors were bright.

Magical, mystical Taj.

More About Agra

After our tour of the Agra Fort (complete with "secret" tour of the Mirrored Palace!) we got back in our taxi to cross over the river to the Baby Taj. Crossing the river turned out to be quite an experience. The bridge consists of two narrow lanes suspended under a railway crossing. Three-wheelers loaded with up to 8 or 9 passengers, horsedrawn carts, overloaded trucks, daring cyclists, zigzagging motorcycles, and taxis full of tourists all vie for space in these two lanes. Staying on the correct side of the rode is only for timid drivers. The assertive ones push their way through traffic very opportunistically!

The Baby Taj Mahal is a tomb in the Mughal style, burial site of many members of the royal family.

The intricacy of the marble inlaid stonework is breathtaking. Chamber after chamber is decorated from the tiled floors to the arched ceilings.

The grounds of the Baby Taj are a pleasant garden.

Like all parks and monuments we've visited in India, a small entry fee guarantees a small crowd and no beggars or vendors. Burial monuments require that one remove one's footwear, and there is quite a lucrative little trade carried out by the Shoe Watchers. All in all, the Baby Taj and its grounds were a green and welcoming oasis after the immensity of the Agra Fort complex and the madness of the bridge crossing.

Finally, our driver took us to an lookout point on the riverbank where we could view the Taj Mahal by sunset. Here, with no entry fee charged, were both hawkers and beggars, but not too, too many. The sun was obscured by a cloud at this point so we didn't have the best viewing conditions, but I think that even in a monsoon, that view of the Taj would be magnificent.

On our second day in Agra we decided to visit Fahtepur Sikri, about 30 miles away. Fahtepur Sikri was built by Akbar as his trophy city (some people have trophy homes; he had a trophy city in mind). Perched on a ridgeline overlooking the fertile Gangetic plain, Fahtepur Sikri--palace, religious buildings, housing for 3 wives and 300 concubines and 5000 harem girls--was a great success...but only for 15 years. Then a drought and bad ground water made it evident that Akbar had invested poorly. The capital had to be relocated to Agra, and Fahtepur Sikri was abandoned and more or less forgotten. Thank goodness it was fairly out-of-the-way, since it remained fairly unscathed by the years. It's now a World Heritage Site (our fourth in India!).

The drive to Fahtepur Sikri was interesting on many accounts. The driver that day was particularly cautious (not a professional taxi driver, we figured out by the end of the day) and our progress was markedly slow. The road was in dreadful condition, yet it serves as the main link between Agra and Jaipur, two key stops on the tourist circuit. The villages were humming with activity--cows, goats, pigs, camels all part of the mix. We did in fact see several camel-drawn trucks hauling goods up and down this particular highway!

Our final stop on the second day was to Akbar's Tomb. As we learned by heart after several tour guides instructed us, there were 6 great Mughal kings: Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and the evil Aurangzeb. Akbar was the first really, really great king, and of course Shah Jahan was the Taj builder. Akbar's Tomb is a lovely yet immense structure (what were they thinking?? If everyone had a tomb like that...??) set in serene parkland. There are plenty of monkeys roaming about as well as some very interesting antelopes with spiral-curved horns. The pictures (soon, I promise) will show Owen feeding both the Good Monkeys and the Bad Monkeys. Luckily, the Bad Monkey was satisfied with the banana he received and didn't exhibit his bad side.

And so ended day 2 in Agra. I will finish with the description of our actual trip to the Taj Mahal tomorrow! I have so many pictures of Fahtepur Sikri that I'll have to put them on a separate page.

The Quintessential India: A Weekend at the Taj Mahal

We have just returned home to Delhi from a long weekend in Agra. John planned our travels to see the Taj Mahal and surrounding sights, and he did a super job! Friday we arrived with plenty of time to visit the Agra Fort and the Baby Taj, then see the sunset view of the Taj Mahal from the opposite side of the Yamuna River.

The Agra Fort is a misnomer--although it does still serve a military function, it is a splendid complex of 16 different Mughal palaces.

(As best we can tell, Mughal, Moghul, and Mogul are all the same term with different spellings.) Thanks to our friendly and helpful taxi driver who took care of all of our getting-around from Friday through Monday, we also made contact with a guide to the Agra Fort who had 35 years' experience at the site. He really made it come alive for us.

The architecture is magnificent, the tales of palace intrigue are exciting, and the image it evokes of Mughal splendor are vivid. We also were able to see the Glass (or Mirrored) Palace, the bathing place of Mumtaz, the queen whose tomb is the Taj Mahal. With a little bakshish to the man with the right keys, we were hustled into the locked Glass Palace. It consists of three chambers completely lined with small, intricate mirrored panels. Each chamber has a bathing pool (hot, cold, and rose-scented) and a place for dancing girls to dance and musicians to play music. By the light of flickering candles reflected thousands of times over, it must have been an overwhelming sensory experience for Mumtaz to take a bath!

Latin Salsa Hip Hop in Delhi

Yes, you read the title correctly. On Tuesday night I went with my mom to see Ozomatli, a "Latin Salsa Hip Hop Band" (according to the ticket) from Los Angeles.

My mom had heard about the concert in an email from the Fulbright office. Admission was free; all we had to do was pick up the tickets from the American Center. Though I had never heard of "Latin Salsa Hip Hop" much less Ozomatli, I thought it was not an opportunity to pass up. My brother and my dad were skeptical and ended up staying home so Owen could study for a chemistry test. They sure missed out!


When we arrived at the Ashok Hotel, the concert had already begun. We were scanned for bombs or guns or somethings, and I had to turn my cell phone and camera off and on once before the guard would let us in. Inside the tented concert area we discovered an eclectic mix of people. Part Americans, part Indians, some high school or college age and some who looked old enough to be grandparents. Some people wore sarees or Indian dress while others were in jeans and t-shirts.


After a short period of hesitation, my mom and I joined the dancing. The music was, unlike what they play at homecoming and such, smooth and easy to dance to. I guess most people would have felt a little strange at a concert, dancing with their mother, but I just had a good time.


My favorite part of the show was the grand finale when the band came off of the stage and into the crowd. They brought the instruments with them and formed a cross between a soul train and a congo line snaking through the audience. It was fun to see the band up close. In face they stopped right next to us to play one song.


All in all an unexpectedly fun night. I'm planning to get the CD soon!

Festival Time!

This Saturday we attended the Cathedral's Garden Fete in central Delhi. It turned out to be a very soggy day indeed. We went along at the invitation our friend Christopher Raj who is both my colleague at JNU and an Anglican priest at the Cathedral. Owen played each game of skill and chance until he'd won a prize at each. Adelaide and I sampled the vegetarian goodies and baked treats until we'd tried one of each! John just sampled everything, period. After that, we came back to the apartment to dry off, read books, and drink tea for the whole afternoon.

Sunday, John's friend Scott from Norway was in town. We invited him along to the Suraj Kund Mele Festival just outside of Delhi. It threatened to rain all afternoon but did not. We enjoyed the spectacle of folk dancing, acrobats, costumed performers, and singers. Oh, and yes, we shopped in about 147 different handicraft stalls. A picture is worth a thousand words, so here a few thousand: