Blessing the Chariot

I went out to buy some milk this evening, taking the shortcut down the alley past the Hindu Temple. A pandit (priest wearing the Nehru jacket) was chanting prayers while he anointed a couple’s new scooter with sandalwood paste. Using his index finger, he painted a swastika design below the headlamp, putting a dot in each…

Jashn-e-Rekhta

Recently, at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, there was a three-day extravaganza rejoicing in the “spirit and eloquence, the beauty and versatility of Urdu”. The festival celebrated everything Urdu – art, poetry, drama, music, cinema and literature. The ancient name for Urdu is Rekhta (which means scattered and mixed). Most people who…

Vintage and Classic Car Rally

The Statesman is holding the 51st Classic Car Rally in Delhi this weekend. In the words of the advertising poster, “Let these beauties charm you one more time, For, these are classic and sublime.” I happened to be walking past Modern School, just off Connaught Place early this afternoon when a poster grabbed my attention.…

Cycling Through the Galis of Old Delhi

It was pitch black when we emerged from Chawri Bazar metro station at 6:15am on a Sunday morning. There are no street lights in the Walled City of Shahjahanabad. But people were awake, huddling around braziers to get some warmth into their bodies before starting the day’s toil. I led my intrepid colleagues down the…

Midnight Wedding

The noise was deafening. Even though firecrackers have been banned because of the poor air quality in Delhi, this didn’t stop a score from lighting up the sky. First of all, I went up to the roof, but I quickly saw that I needed to be on the street to get in on the action.…

Thursday Doors

A break from Old Delhi, how about some art instead? At the Indian Modern Art Festival last month in Delhi this surreal painting of a door looks like it has been cut into four slices. This looks like some of the doors I have been photographing in Old Delhi. This doorway looks more South East Asia, perhaps…

Red Fort

“Lal Quila” means Red Fort, because of the magnificent red sandstone walls. When it was constructed in the early 17th Century, it was known as the “Lal Mubarak”, or Blessed Fort. The Moghuls ruled their diminishing Indian Empire from the Fort for two hundred years before the disaster of the Mutiny in 1857 (known here…

Chhatarpur Temple Complex

Almost at the southern end of the Yellow Line on the Delhi Metro at Chhatarpur, there is a temple with a gigantic monkey god statue. I had to visit. Hanuman is one of my favourite gods. There are half a dozen different temples on the estate, covering 60 acres. Each temple has a different style.…

Jain Festival

There are about seven million followers of the Jain Dharma (religion) in India. It has been in decline since the 6th century AD. The central tenets are non-violence and respect for all creatures. To avoid stepping on ants, Jain monks and nuns sweep the street with fallen peacock feathers; to avoid inadvertently killing or eating bugs,…

Thursday Doors

Here are some fine doors from the Red Fort or Lal Quila, in Delhi, about which I must blog when I get time. The fort was designed by the same architect who built the Taj Mahal. It took 10 years to construct and the Moghul Emperor Shah Jahan moved his court there from Agra in…