In almost every country I visit, including my own, I relax as I pull away from a large city. It's ironic that I live in such a dense urban area as Glendale. I often think I'd be happier in the countryside, despite the lack of cultural options. The same was true in India. Smaller cities like Gwalior and small towns such as Orcha are easier to digest, though foreign tourists definitely draw more attention in these places.
In Gwalior we visited an ancient hilltop fort, sometimes referred to as the Gibraltar of India. On the road up to the fort there are ancient Jain carvings, suggesting that Gwalior was one of the first centers of Jain worship. The are remarkably similar to Buddhist scultures of the same time period and later eras. Later, we saw a first-class hotel in the former home of the last Maharaja of Gwalior during the British Raj period. All were fascinating. Gwalior occupies a strategic location in the low hills in northern India and has been taken by many empires. The fort its
elf sits on a rock outcropping well above the city and drainages below and is so old that it was built by Hindus but later occupied and expanded by Muslim invaders, including Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal and Agra's Red Fort. The great Mughal emperor Babur reportedly thought of Gwalior Fort as the jewel of all Hindu forts. The audacity of the massive fort and the expansiveness of it's grand stone rooms and underground halls call to mind the palaces depicted in Raiders of the Lost Ark. I didn't realize that such a place really existed, with its multiple levels of underground chambers, secret passages, stone carvings, complex water channels, and seemingly miles of solid stone fortifications. Remnants of colorful paintings and decorative detail are peeling away. The stonework can only be described as monumental. Architectural references are a mix of Hindu elephants, Islamic arches, and Greco-Roman insipired columns. The subterranean women's room, a place of safe-keeping for the queen and harem during battles, used stone shafts carved to the surface and then focused by diamonds for illumination. This room was turned into a very effective dungeoun by the Mughal invaders.On the train from Jhansi to Bhopal I had a nice talk with a man from Bhopal. He works for a subsidiary of Tata, India's dominant automobile manufacturer. His branch does telecom infrastructure. Like many middle class and wealthy Indians, he is well-educated, with degrees in engineering and an MBA. His wife is a math teacher in the Indian equivalent of high school and together they have a five-year old son. Obviously proud of his country, he suggested all the places our tour guide should take us that we are not scheduled to see. Having no power to change the itinerary of my tour, I forgot all of his suggestions straight away. Still it was very nice to meet him and chat about his country. Bhopal was described as booming economically and "very developed" by our guide. While we only spent a night there, it didn't look developed by Western standards. This is in stark contrast to the economic expansion I saw first hand in China in 2003. Neither Delhi nor Bhopal appeared to have a single office tower or skyscraper, whereas China has so many and is building so many more than I predict a massive economic retreat, even a collapse, in China when they realize they've overbuilt. Nothing like that in India. No rooftop, rotating restaurants here.
Out the bus window today I saw small girls in traditional saris doing homework on wet ground outside of mud huts as a fiery sun set the puddles to glimmering. I saw men with long, wiry physiques and fantastically thick black hair walking and sitting everywhere. All were shiny clean in their western-style dress shirts and carefully combed hair. They must shave every day.
Every bus, every truck honks as they pass on the right. The noise is insane. The back end of trucks is often painted with "Honk Horn Please." There's seemingly no need to ask.
In Orcha yesterday we saw the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh arrive at the temple for a visit. His strutting entrance with his entourage was grand in a way that U.S. politicians can only envy since they are carefully locked in automobiles whenever they arrive anywhere. See if you can find any women in this video.
This is typical of many Indian street scenes and public places. I have not seen a single woman waiting tables, driving a car, or staffing a shop. Women are hard to find unless you are wandering near homes. Before visiting India I had no idea how limited the role of women is in the average household. I knew that India had elected women such as Indira Gandhi to the highest political offices so I assumed a kind of elightened attitude about feminism. This is a terrible mistake. It can be dangerous to be a daughter-in-law in India. According to news reports and the testimony of our female Indian tour guide, dowry-related killings continue to be reported in the thousands each year. Many other mother-in-laws simply torment and harrass their daughters-in-law. Of course most women are not so badly abused (or abused at all) but dowries are still common, despite being technically illegal, and the role of women is incredibly limited in public. Our guide, for example, can only hope that the man her father and mother choose for her will let her continue to work.
