Keith's & Karen's Photos: The Ten Biggest Surprises

Maybe I misnamed these blog posts. Some of these things weren't really surprises, because I'd seen pictures. So let's think of it as "The Ten Most Take-Your-Breath-Away Things."

6. Artisanship

Whether we were in Kathmandu's Durbar Square (occupied since the 3rd Century, CE) or Jaipur's Birla Mandir (1988), the quality of the artisanship across the centuries was inspiring. You may be looking at an inanimate object, but if you listen some craftsperson is speaking of beauty or truth. John Keats felt it when he gazed on that Grecian Urn, and I think a lot of us felt it on this trip.

Take this house in Kathmandu's Durbar Square. To my knowledge, it's not a special building; our Nepalese guide didn't point it out, and I saw no sign explaining its significance. It was just one of many we passed as we were walking to the points the guide particularly wanted to explain.

I enlarged the image of one carved post to show a detail. I also uploaded the photo at full resolution, so download it, make it as big as your monitor allows, and look at all those details. (Caution: Not safe for work!)

Isn't our species amazing, that we have this sort of drive to create and express ourselves? Do you suppose the long-dead Nepalese craftsman, if he could see across the centuries, would be surprised that we're looking at those bawdy images and smiling the same way he did? I love this sort of human-to-human connection across space, time, and cultures!

Emperor Qutbuddin Aibak, from central Asia, conquered the area around Delhi in 1192. He wanted to communicate power and authority with a tall minaret, but would he have been satisfied with a plain pole? Did the artisans have nothing more to say than "TALL" ? Of course not. So we have these fabulous details on the five-level tower that is the Qutb Minar.

Aibak also wanted to thank Allah for his success, so he had a mosque built in 1193. This archway leaves no doubt he and his artisans felt the same awe, peace, gratitude, and humility that we feel we we turn our attention to the Divine.

An architectural expression of peace and eternal rest at Humayun's tomb (1565)

An expression of how we feel about our daughters, in the Agra Fort rooms Shah Jahan built for his daughters (late 1500s).

Shah Man Jai Singh and his successors held private audience in this room where the walls and ceiling have so many mirrors, it is said a single candle transforms the room into a starry sky. Amber Fort, 1600s.

View from the Shah's residence area toward his private mosque inside the Red Fort in Delhi. Begun in 1639, the Red Fort was a royal residence up to 1857, when it was taken over as British military barracks.

And these are not lost arts! We visited a handcraft shop in Agra where these marble arts are still practiced. The craftsman coats a slab of white marble with red ochre; scratches in the design; grinds small pieces of semi-precious stone (jade, carnelian, lapis lazuli, etc) to the shapes and sizes needed; chisels out pockets in the surface of the marble in which to seat the colored stones, then polishes the surface.

A serving platter in progress. The technique, known as parchinkari in India, originated in Italy, where it's called pietra dura.
I splurged and bought a platter for my Christmas present.

The center of a newly finished table top.

7. Building construction

In woods anywhere in the world, you see all stages of the life cycle. Saplings are side-by-side with mature trees, declining trees, and long-dead trees that have already returned most of their molecules to the soil.

Buildings in India are like that. New buildings, large and humble, seem to be made from recycled building materials, and partially complete structures have used bricks stacked on and around them. Several of us agreed it was often hard to tell, driving by, whether a structure was being built or dismantled.

Is the second floor being dismantled or rebuilt?

The use of wooden poles instead of steel for ladders and scaffolding was common. These handmade wooden ladders used by maintenance workers at the Hanuman Dhoka Palace in Kathmandu didn't seem out of place.

More puzzling was this use of wooden poles in the construction of concrete buildings, which we saw many times.

Downright alarming: this hand-lashed wood-pole scaffolding on even tall urban buildings.

Finally, the unregulated free-market wiring was a wonder to behold. Our guides said these hornets' nests were a result of every cable, telephone, and electric company installing and maintaining its own wiring and freely competing for business.

8. Small-business economy

Shortly before we'd left for India, I saw the film The Economics of Happiness. Among other things, the film followed an anthropologist to an isolated village in the Andes. When she first arrived, she asked villagers to identify the poorest among them and was told everyone had everything he or she needed. No one was poor. Nor could they identify unhappy people. The anthropologist visited again ten years later, after the global economy had reached the village, shipped in cheap manufactured goods that put local craftsman out of work, and made everyone feel ashamed of their homespun possessions. Upon arrival, she was asked, "Please help. Everyone in this village is so poor."

So I've been taking a fresh look at the question of whether our economies should be judged exclusively on their production of material goods and financial wealth, or whether our ideas of economic value need to be expanded to include other measures such as human satisfaction. A lot of what we saw was very inefficient, speaking only in terms of material value-added for the effort. But I didn't reflexively dismiss that as undesirable, as some others in the group did.

Obviously, the global economy has permeated India, and I wasn't buttonholing the natives to ask "But are you happy?" I can tell you they didn't look anywhere near as glum or stressed out as the commuters in Chicago or New York.

From everything we could see, the global retail giants that sustain India's manufacture-for-export industry haven't yet taken over domestic distribution. India’s retail economy is still in the hands of small businesses and entrepreneurs. We didn't see any large chain stores, either in the city centers or the outskirts. Groceries and milk are supplied by small shops and street vendors.

Mini-mall, Delhi style

Double-decker small shops in downtown Jaipur. A vendor on the second level is selling orange grooms' turbans for the upcoming wedding season.

If the Taj Mahal was in the US, it would have a single visitor’s center with prerecorded information, a single cafeteria, and a single gift shop contracted to a single concessionaire. No other vendors would be allowed even in the parking lot. One or two owners or a group of stockholders would make all the profit, and everyone else would be employees.

In India, however, independent guides are available for hire to provide the explanation of each site, and food and souvenirs are provided by dozens of independent vendors who hang out at the entrances to the historic sites.

The arrangement has its drawbacks—the vendors swarmed like locusts around the entrance to each site. But we learned to deal with it. The Indian arrangement clearly offers more in the way of entrepreneurial opportunities, but I don’t know which arrangement offers the community more in the way of opportunities for steady-income employment.

Vendors' stalls in the gateway to Delhi's Red Fort.
Imagine this bazaar in the early 19th century!

Milk is brought in each morning from the countryside. It's not pasteurized, but will be cooked before use.

This is only a little of fabulous produce we saw for sale.

Independent, small-scale healthcare providers. If this storefront can afford to own an MRI and CT, the healthcare industry really is structured differently!

Even transportation of cargo seems often to be handled by the micro-business economy.