Chandigarh Miscellany

Since it is basically a government town, Chandigarh was pretty deserted on Sunday. It came alive on Monday.

Outside the official offices for the Union Territory of Chandigarh was a block-long set-up of notaries and advocates (lawyers). Here you could get basic legal work done: wills, birth/marriage/death certificate applications, notarized documents. All was being done with manual typewriters at desks set up outdoors.

I spent part of the afternoon in the hotel lobby while Lon was in his meetings in a hotel conference room. And found out why the elevator was "undergoing maintenance. Please excuse the inconvenience." It was being used as a platform to dust inaccessible parts of the lobby atrium.

And finally, from the airport:

You gotta love a city that flies "Alchemist Airways"!

Chandigarh Museums and Rose Garden

Lon had to go to Chandigarh on business, so we made a weekend trip of it (weekends meaning Sunday). Chandigarh is an interesting place. It is a planned city to replace the capital of the Indian state of Punjab after Partition and Independence. (The capital had been Lahore, but that city went to Pakistan.) Since then, Punjab has been split into two states: Punjab and Haryana. Chandigarh is the capital of both.

The final plan for Chandigarh was set by the French architect Le Corbusier and is a set of rectangular "sectors" that are separated by major thoroughfares. All structures are reinforced concrete and have that 1950s-60s aesthetic that hasn't worn particularly well. India's extremes of heat, moisture, and "dust" have also taken their toll. But the city has plenty of green space, and the interior of the sectors is reasonably pedestrian-friendly.

The layout of Chandigarh is found on every manhole cover in the city.

On Sunday, we visited the Government Museums. The art museum has a nice collection of antiquities (stone and brass), miniature paintings, textiles, and some contemporary art. The architectural museum is really a "History of Chandigarh" and told the story of its planning and construction. The natural history museum is an eclectic mixture of natural history art, fossils (esp. dinosaurs), and evolution of man artifacts.

The textiles gallery had a nice collection of pachisi ("Parcheesi") "boards" -- highly decorated textiles that could be easily stored in a small space. Pachisi has been played in India since at least 500 CE.

The natural history museum had a large gallery of these bird embroideries. Think a hundred Audubon-style bird portraits embroidered rather than painted. The detail was astounding.

Monday morning we walked through the 30-acre Rose Garden that was just across the main thoroughfare from our hotel. The Rose Garden is part of the greenway that surrounds one of the small rivers in Chandigarh.

The Rose Garden. Our hotel is the building on the other side of the street.

Another view of the Rose Garden.

Rose-ringed parakeets and a pigeon avail themselves of food set out for them. Squirrels were helping themselves to the grain as well.

Back to Vapi

We just got back from a short two-day trip to Chandigarh. More about that in the next few posts. But in the meantime, Vapi has not been standing still!

I'll start with electrical items. Unpredictable electricity is one of the frustrations of life in India. For example, while I was trying on clothes in Fabindia in Chandigarh on Sunday, the power went off no less than 5 times in 20 minutes. The flashlight feature on my phone came in handy!

I suspect that this damaged power pole along Gunjan Road in Vapi was the cause of one of our recent outages. Repair work has started with the typical vegetation "traffic cones".

I'm not sure if this is a failure of the concrete in the pole, or was the result of a vehicle encounter. Nonetheless, the rebar did a nice job of holding the pole together.

I took this picture three weeks earlier -- directly across the street from the power pole photo above. It's not unusual to see electrical line splices protected with this type of "insulation".

From electrical safety to fire safety.

This is the standard fire suppression equipment at Indian petrol stations. I'm not sure how well four buckets of sand would do against a major gasoline fire. This was also the sole type of fire protection in the museums we visited in Chandigarh -- just a rack of sand buckets in the galleries.

And finally, the world of American fast food in India. For better or worse, American fast food is rapidly expanding in India. Vapi alone has Pizza Hut, Dominoes Pizza, Subway, and (two!) McDonald's. Of course, the menu adapts to Indian sensibilities. For example, the only animal protein available is chicken and eggs. (Milk products are considered "veg" in India. "Pure veg" even.)

This photo is not from Vapi -- I think Lon took it in Baroda --  but all McDonald's have two kitchens, so that their veg food is not contaminated with oil and equipment used to cook non-veg food.

Dominoes delivers -- with motorcycles.

Kolkata

Monday, 23 February 2015

We docked in Kolkata (Calcutta) just before midnight. We had to wait until low tide to be able to go beneath three bridges.

We had a morning city tour of colonial Kolkata. Before the British made Calcutta the capital of the British Raj, it was a rather small backwater town. The colonial buildings are an interesting synthesis of architectural styles that became known as Indo-Saracenic: not really Indian, not really Mughal, not really European. Mostly they seem ostentatious and musty.

You can find many pictures of these buildings online -- even in my earlier blog postings. (See Kolkata, Kolkata Part 2, and Kolkata Miscellany.) So I'll omit the over-worked shots and concentrate on more unusual (or amusing) sights.

I'll start with morning fog/haze/smog on the river.

Early morning looking upstream (to the west): Two ships anchored nearby and a power plant on the opposite bank just barely visible.

An hour and a half later, the fog had mostly lifted, but the smoke remains.

Same early morning hour, this time looking downstream (east).

An hour and a half later. More detail, but still extremely hazy.

Waiting in a toll-booth traffic jam gave me the opportunity to take this photo of a tailor at work.

A moving marble sculpture in St. John's Church.

Organ pipes in St. John's Church. Classic Victorian floral design, but so dingy with "dust" that they are difficult to truly appreciate.

Crows taking advantage of the view atop a lion at the gate of the Victoria Memorial.

Right at our dock, where much laundry and bathing were taking place all day. The cow is eating a floral garland.

And the sign above the cow and trash proclaims "Keeping the Ganga clean". Looks like there's a lot of work to do!

And now it's all over. We disembarked after lunch and headed to the airport and home.

A tulsi ("Holy Basil") plant is found in the bow of just about every ship on the water. Most homes in India, especially Hindu homes, have a tulsi plant outside the door or in the courtyard. The leaves are used medicinally, as an herbal tea, and in Hindu worship.

Even though tulsi is usually at the front of a house (or ship), I'll use the tulsi plant to end my postings from our "Journey on the Ganges".

Along the Hooghly: Mayapur to Kolkata

Sunday, 22 February 2015

As we got closer to Kolkata, the pollution and abuse of the river became ever more apparent. Rivers might be considered the "Mother of India" and a goddess, but they are not respected.

One of the largest brick-making sites we saw. While this one is not firing kilns at the moment, brick factories typically put out thick black smoke.

As we approached Kolkata, power plants became more numerous. They were consistently among the most visible polluters.

Smoke is a constant along the Hooghly. Even the trash along the banks is set on fire to minimize its volume, reducing one problem, but creating another.

Abandonned watercraft add to navigation hazards.

But life goes on. Waterfront property is always desirable.

Some of these houses are raised on stilts.

Even close to Kolkata, ferries are still the main way to cross the river.

Portuguese church. Kolkata has seen the Portuguese, French, Dutch, and British establish colonies in the area.

French area.

Sunset on the Hooghly.

More Temples

Sunday, 22 February 2015

Across the road from the 108 Shiva Temples is another walled complex of temples. This complex contains six main structures, and it would have taken a good bit longer than the time we had available to see them all.

Three of the structures in this temple complex. These are the ones we didn't have time to visit. The structures we did see are to the right of this photo.

The Pratapeshwar Temple -- the smallest, but the most finely detailed of the structures.

An example of the detailed terra cotta plaques that cover the Pratapeshwar Temple.

Another terra-cotta detail from the Pratapeshwar Temple.

The next temple we visited is the Lalji Mandir, which is in its own walled compound. There are actually 4 structures here. Behind me is an interesting shrine unlike anything else on the site (next 2 photos). The main building of the Lalji Temple is in the background. In front of it are one large mandupa (audience hall), that is connected to the temple by a small mandupa. The whole compound is so tight that it is difficult to get good photos of the buildings.

An odd shrine in front of the Lalji Mandir. It has the traditional Bengal four-slope roof, but it is covered with rounded stones into which are set a number of mythological creatures.

A closer view of the roof.

Flowers for the deities.

More offerings.

Krishna and Radha sitting on their throne in the temple.

The Lalji Mandir has both terra-cotta and stucco ornamentation.

Terra-cotta figures.

An example of looting. This portion of the temple corner was stolen within the last two weeks. Most likely it is now on the underground art market.

Similar in size and structure to the Lalji Mandir is the Krishnachandra Mandir.