Reflections

I was watching a National Geographic programme on the Haj pilgrimage on TV yesterday. It was moving to see how a couple of million pilgrims from around 120 countries come together for a pilgrimage that has been happening for the past 1400 years. In fact the pilgrimage to Mecca had been going on for many years before Prophet Mohammad made it one of the cornerstones of Islam. Similar pilgrimages exist in all lands and in all religions. But there is no country that epitomizes pilgrimages as well as India. India is the land of pilgrimages. People have been going on pilgrimages to holy temples, rivers and mountains for well over 2500 years. There are pilgrimages all over the land. Some of them were arduous in the past, but now modern facilities, and roads have made them easy of access. One such must be the temple of Jagannath in Puri which has attracted pilgrims from all over the Indian Subcontinent for aeons. As recently as the nineteenth century, the pilgrimage to Puri from the heartla...

Bundelkhand is one of my favourite parts of India. It is unfortunately one of the most neglected parts of India as well and drought and a chronic hunger stalk the land. This does not detract from its beauty and the grandeur of a land that was once the home of the Chandela Kings who built the Khajuraho temples. It is also the home of several rivers that are in many ways unique. These include the Chambal River and the Ken both of which have carved some of the moist scenic gorges. The rivers are also the home of some of the largest populations of the Gharial, now decimated by a mysterious illness, probably related to pollution in the river. The story goes that the Moon god seduced a Brahmin girl when she had gone to the river to bathe. After the birth of her son, the young unmarried mother had to take refuge in the forests of Central India and this son, Chandravarman, grew up to found the Chandela dynasty. He started the building of temples in Khajuraho, successive rulers adding to the n...

The Malaysian philharmonic Orchestra is housed at the Petronas Philharmonic hall at the Twin Towers of Kuala Lumpur. I visited it for the first time this week. It was a weekday concert, short, about an hour, and they played Terry Riley, an American modern composer. He has been heavily influenced by Indian classical traditions and this was evident in the composition. The MPO was accompanied by a large contingent from the Malaysian Youth Philharmonic Orchestra as well. I am really not very competent to comment on the quality of the music played. However, even to my inexperienced ears, the standard did not seem to be very high. However they played with competence and I enjoyed the evening, this was my first exposure to live Western music played by a full scale Orchestra. But as always in Malaysia, the infrastructure was superb. This hall sponsored by the inexhaustible oil revenues of Petronas, is built on a grand scale, the high ceiling, the backdrop and the seats were all, at least to m...

I was flying to Jakarta for the second time in less than a month. This time I was at a window seat and the sky was clear. Under such circumstances the flight can be really enjoyable as you can see the islands of the Indonesian archipelago floating, as it were, on a turquoise sea. There are over three thousand islands, I gather, that make up Indonesia, many of them stamp sized and often uninhabited. You can see several of them as you fly down to Java, one of the principal islands and the site of its capital Jakarta. The countryside (as seen from the air) around Jakarta is very familiar. There are cultivated fields, large waterbodies all very reminiscent of Bengal. Jakarta airport is like most South East Asian airports modern, efficient, but not so crowded. The visa on arrival process took all of three minutes and I was waved into Indonesia with a smile. The luggage took ages to arrive, and I always suffer from agonies of apprehension if my luggage is a little late to arrive, wondering ...