Qutub Minar on a sunday!

Most of us, or so I'd like to believe, are strangers to our own cities and towns. Having lived and grown up in one place, we know the roads and the bylanes, the markets and the restaurants, but still sometimes remain ignorant of its charms.

My husband Anuj and I have long thought about why we've never visited the big tourist attractions of New Delhi and still could never come up with a suitably satisfying answer. Maybe because we took them for granted...maybe that's why it took me 23 years to see Taj Mahal!

Well having decided to be tourists in our own home, we planned on visiting Qutub Minar, a place we'd both been to as children and therefore wanted to look at it from a fresh perspective. Maybe we'd like to visit it more often?

The last of the beautiful Sundays at hand (summer is HERE!), having woken up sufficiently early, breakfast packed, camera checked, off we went prepared to be wooed.

And were we wooed! One look at the serenely imposing minar and we were bowled over. No childhood memory had prepared us for the eternal magnetism of the monument. The weather was so good at 8 a.m. that even Kabir- our 13 month old- was having a good time.

This time we took a good look around. The Alai Darwaza, the iron pillar, the mosque, the precinct and of course the Qutub Minar itself, took on a new meaning. As a child you miss out the grandeur of things. The construction of such monuments and for that matter forts and palaces leaves you wondering about the technique and art of construction in the times where nothing was easy- no electricity, let alone sophisticated weapons of mass construction!!! Maybe that's why everybody took their job so seriously and maybe that's why these palaces and forts are still standing compared to modern housing which leaks and crumbles at every weather change!
(And yes if the famous iron pillar shows some signs of rust at the bottom, it's taken some hundred years to do that...so please don't complain)

And while you are still wondering about the quality of the stuff, one more question pops into your head- it sure popped into mine- who were these architects who thought of such amazing structures and executed their making? We always read about such and such king who built such and such historic monument, but the architects almost always remain unsung!


Coming back to the subject-that of visiting the Qutub Minar, the grounds are well maintained, they even have ramps for people with babies in strollers and the disabled!
The only thing I miss is the challenge to hug the iron pillar backwards in an attempt to prove you can do it- the claim being that no one can! To prevent insensitive people from scribbling their names and generally dirtying it, a railing has been put around it.

To cut a long story short, it is definately worth one's while to head down there and spend some time getting acquinated or as in our case reacquainted with our own history. It certainly would do some good!

Bhakti Utsav

It's been almost a month since we went for this unique series of concerts organised by the Delhi government and Sehar. In fact we went for the first and the last day and I must say we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
More than us, our year old baby, Kabir, loved being out in the park with excellent music to dance and play to.

Out of all the excellent performances, Sanjeev Abhayankar's rendition of Krishna bhajans was superlative and set the tone for other brilliant performers. Two more set of musicians whose respective performances went straight to the soul were: Ustad Chand Afazal with Gurbani and the sufis of Dargah Yusufain from Hyderabad. The latter were rather unceremoniously asked to step down as the concert was running a bit late- when will Indian comperes learn to be more humble and graceful?

Overall, it was a commendable attempt in a long series of many more, by the Delhi govt to make music accessible to all, and much more importantly, to make Indian classical music maestros take their inimitable art to the general public, thus reviving what could otherwise be a dying interest in a musical tradition as old as our history!

The Tenant

Just saw this 1976 Polanski film. Must say as far as psycho-thrillers go, it was pretty good. It even had me watching it without the sound (without the soud, most horror movies appear quite harmless or should I say 'horrorless'!)

It reminded me of a spanish film I'd seen as part of a spanish film fest at the Habitat Centre quite some years ago.
A new tenant, a dead by suicide previous owner, oppressive and apparently maniachal neighbours, the new tenant little by little losing his grip on reality- all make for a decently thrilling couple of hours. But contrary to my expectations, and maybe others' as well; I'd guessed the end of the film at the end of the first fifteen minutes. Still not a bad movie to watch if its thrills and suspense one is after. Isabelle Adjani, also one of the actors in the movie is a delight to watch, not just for her acting skills- which don't really get displayed but also for her really young pretty presence.