Skip to main content

Fatehpur Sikri







Male Grave

Female Grave

And what about the middle.




A guy put a chaddar over my head and starting chanting something about banishing 'Kala Saitan'. 'No, No, not the Kala Shaitan. Not the Chaddar,' I wanted to shout. The poet Guide repeated for the nth time: AKBAR THREE WIFE. ONE HINDU. ONE CHRISTIAN. ONE MISLIM. NO SON. AKBAR GOT SALIM ONLY BECAUSE OF SALIM CHISTI. NO SALIM CHISTI. NO SALIM. NO FATEHPUR SIKRI. NO TAJ MAHAL. In that instant, I realized what had happened. One moment, I was checking out a Chaddar portfolio with pictures of Tina Ambani, Shahid Kapoor and likes, and the next moment I was owner of a Chaddar sold in the name of poor women, not necessarily Muslim ( I was promisingly informed) who can't afford to get married.

The scene was later repeated at the grave of Salim Chisti's kid son. SON CONVINCED SALIM CHISTI TO HELP AKBAR. YOUNG KID. TOO YOUNG TO TALK. BUT STARTED TALKING. DIVINE. AND THEN DIED. NO SON. NO AKBAR"S SON. NO SALIM. NO TAJ MAHAL.NO. THIS ONE ONLY FOR 150.




The dark spot on the wall is proof of years spent demonstrating 'Akbar's Drum'.


Getting ready for Namaaz at Jama Masjid





Vendors running away with their ware in hands as policemen arrive just at the end of Namaaz to enforce protection.

A young kid offers to jump down from a 50 feet wall down into the water tank, just for Rs 20. And then offers to recite Sher-o-Shayeri. He has a scar running down from his left temple down to his jaw line.





-0-

Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. Beth Loves BollywoodJul 22, 2011, 8:25:00 AM

    Any idea of the story behind the horseshoes on that door?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Vinayak RazdanJul 22, 2011, 12:38:00 PM

    That's actually called Horseshoe Door. Horse shoe is supposed to be lucky, a sort of protection charm. The guide made it a point to inform that the bigger horse shoe at the upper end of the door belong to big horses of Angreez log.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I always like to hear back :)
However, irrelevant comments and irrelevant links will not be published. Needless to say, same goes for abusive comment and spam. Leaving back links related to the topic is encouraged. I know it can be tempting but try not to leave your email ids, phone nos and CVs in the comment.

Popular posts from this blog

Famous Old Faces of Doordarshan

Some people recall the faces and some people recall the names. Here are images of some of the famous readers and presenters of Doordarshan down the years. If you recognize any of them, leave a comment. [ Update 1 : Most of the faces now have names thanks to helpful comments by olio-gallimaufry ] [ Update 2 : Included image of one of the earliest presenters, Gopal Kaul. Send in generously from personal collection by son, Ashutosh Kaul. Sept, 2010.] [ Major Update 3: Got a tip-off about a documentary about the famous faces of Doordarshan from the makers   of     “The Golden Trail , DD@50 :Special feature on Golden Jubilee of Doordarshan ” from which these caps were taken. I managed to catch the incredible documentary and am adding some more faces/name and part of the docu here. New ones can be found after the image of  Narotam Puri. 30th Oct, 2010]  Pratima Puri. Believed to be the first Doordarshan reader.
175 comments
Read more

Indian Cigarette Vintage Ads

He put a cigarette in his mouth and, as a matter of silent routine, offered one to Gwyn, who said ‘No thanks.”Richard looked at him.”I packed it in.”"You what?”"I stopped. Three days ago. Cold. That’s it. You just make the life choice.” Richard looked up and inhaled needfully. He gazed at his cigarette. He didn’t really want to smoke it. He wanted to eat it. Almost the only thing that he still liked about Gwyn was that he still smoked…Paradoxically, he no longer wanted to give up smoking: what he wanted to do was take up smoking. Not so much to fill the little gaps between cigarettes with cigarettes (there wouldn’t be time, anyway) or to smoke two cigarettes at once. It was more that he felt the desire to smoke a cigarette even when he was smoking a cigarette. The need was and wasn’t being met… While it would always be true and fair to say that Richard felt like a cigarette, it would now be doubly true and fair to say it. He felt like a cigarette. And he felt like a cig...
21 comments
Read more

Kishore Kumar, Yodel-ay-ee-oooo Songs, A List

*Updated with corrections pointed out by Bart Plantenga , author of some incredible book on Yodeling including Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World. -0- Kishore Kumar 's brother Anoop Kumar, who we basically know for the line ' O manu tera toh hua ab mera kya hoga ', used to own lots of Austrian music records. And from these records, Kishore Kumar picked up the art of Yodel singing, an art perfected in bathroom and then introduced by him to the world of Hindi film music. According to his biography 'Kishore Kumar: method in madness‎ ' by Derek Bose, "Kishore was a fan of the Swiss singer Tex Norton [* Tex Morton, an Australian cowboy born in New Zealand who sang  in the gene autry / Jimmie Rodgers style ] and the Australian Jimmy Rogers [* Jimmie Rodgers , perhaps the most American and one of the most famous yodelers in the world, famous for his blue yodels ] as well." Although most of these songs by Kishore Kumar are t...
18 comments
Read more