Our first Indian wedding

We spent our first, formative year out of college basically living with all our QMAP friends. At the time, living involved playing a lot of poker, talking incessantly about black holes, and frequenting a bar called Attic, which sadly exists no longer. It is odd, a little sad, and wonderful to watch each other grow up. 

It was entirely wonderful to see our friend get married in Delhi this February. Our friend is Kashmiri, and his family is now scattered -- some in the US, some in Delhi, and others in Doha or elsewhere in in India. A host of friends and relatives converged in a very posh Delhi hotel for two days of wedding festivities.

We got a lot of help in understanding what happened each day, but we are still likely to fumble our explanations a bit. Day one involved henna for the ladies...

...a fair amount of dancing, including an adorable routine by the younger cousins....

...and copious, delicious food. It also happened to be a dry day in Delhi, to mark upcoming elections, which meant our poor friends had to scramble a little for celebrations on their first night. Not to worry -- they set up a hotel room as a sort of bar, where guests converged every once in a while for drink.

The next day was the big event. It was outdoors, under canopies of honeysuckle and roses, complete with a bicycle for the groom's grand entrance. 

Parts of the wedding were surprising to us. Guests chatted as the ceremony went on -- luckily for us, chatting included careful explanations of what was happening. And a lot was happening: walnut crushing, mirror-looking, fire circling, some really serious vows in Sanskrit (with possibly wobbly English translation), and a variety of financial transactions knitting the families together. Friendly explanations were not the only talking going on. Here, the officiant takes a phone call mid-ceremony.

Amid the smells of honeysuckle, sizzling cheese, the crunch of walnuts, and the smoke of the fire, the important part seemed to be just about the same: our friends got married. 

We approved.

They celebrated that evening in a sort of outdoor fairy land, white lanterns in the trees, and elegant versions of Indian street-food lining a grassy courtyard. 

It was a gorgeous wedding. 

Humayun's Tomb

Humayun was a Mughul emperor whose wife built him an amazing garden and an enormous building to house his remains.  She must have liked him.  We were sufficiently impressed by the time we got to the gateway to the tomb. 

The building itself is spectacular. 

But even after just a few hours in Delhi the most exciting part of the monument was the expanse of silent, empty greenery.

Humayun isn't the only chap buried here -- his royal barber also gets a pretty spectacular monument!

Qutb Minnar

After a trip to South India (Chennai and Kerala) in October, we gave North India a try.  Why, as we were asked at passport control when leaving Abu Dhabi?  Well, for one, our friends were getting married in Delhi, and for another, we have been told that it is a completely different place than the south.  Different, yes.  Completely?  Depends on where you're coming from -- but the sights (and food!) are certainly spectacular.

We landed at night, took a deep breath, and found our way to our hotel.  We spent our first full day exploring New Delhi, an area which was built up by the British but which has monuments which span over 1000 years of Indian history.  First stop was one of the oldest, Qutb Minnar.  

Qutb Minnar construction began in 1193 by the first Muslim sultan of Delhi, supposedly in celebration of his victory over the Hindus.  It was an ambitious project: even now, the tower is the second tallest minaret in India. Like most buildings we saw on the trip, it took decades to complete. (We wonder how many stunningly elaborate projects had been started and abandoned.)  A beautiful mosque, finished in 1198, sits beside it. 

We were surprised at how frequently six (rather than eight) sided stars featured in the intricate cut-outs. You can just get a glimpse of them in the screen below.  We later learned that when Qutb Minnar was built, the all three monotheistic religions used six-sided stars as symbols.



The complex is massive -- besides the mosque, there are ruins of a university, as well as elaborate tombs.

Each and every stone is mesmerizing, with pink, golden, red, gray, and white hues of sandstone making up varied, intricate patterns.

And the parrots are lovely, too. 

After-India, Pre-Sri Lanka Syllabus

We're back from India, and we're behind on our reading. City of Djinns by William Dalrymple got us hooked on all things Delhi, Mughal, or otherwise tinged with red stones and political intrigue. The stack of books worth reading keeps growing. Here's our list so far.

India
City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi, William Dalrymple.
    Dalrymple chronicles a year in Delhi, as he pieces together the history of the buildings and world       around him. (Also on our long-term list, Dalyrmple's White Mughals and The Last Mughal.)

Slowly Down the Ganges, Eric Newby.
     A wonderfully comic account of a boat trip down the Ganges River, a long-time dream of ex-              fashion-designer Newby. Margaret has been going slowly through the book -- it's fun to pick up  
     every few months to watch Newby inch through India, one scraped boat-bottom at a time.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, Katherine Boo.
     Boo spent three years in a slum in Mumbai to research & write her non-fictional account. It's
     beloved by book clubs the world over, and -- better still -- friends recommended it. We haven't
     started yet, but soon....

And fiction, you ask? We should reread Rushdie, try out some more V.S. Naipaul, and crack open Amitav Ghosh's lightly fictionalized account of an Indian slave in the Middle East in the twelfth century, In an Antique Land. Nick should probably finish Gora. We'll get to it. But we're also headed to Sri Lanka soon....


Sri LankaRunning in the Family, Michael Ondaatje.
   Ondaatje visits Sri Lanka, and traces his Dutch-Celanese heritage.

A History of  Sri Lanka, K.M. de Silva.
   The standard history of Sri Lanka. At 780+ pages, we might skip around.

The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers, Gordon Weiss.
   An account of the Tamil-Sinhalese conflict, lauded by the Economist as "scrupulously fair." We're      halfway through, and it's a tough and sad read. 

The Bridge to Nowhere

Abu Dhabi is short on tracks. Abu Dhabi Striders, the local running group, often does its speed session in parking lots (last Sunday night, at least two people were felled by curbs). There's the formula 1 track, open most Tuesday nights for runners and bikers. If it's not Tuesday or Sunday, there's always a good old standby right out our front door, the Corniche.

And then there's the bridge to nowhere. Until recently, though, we stopped when we got to nowhere -- the island on the other side of the bridge. 

Big mistake. 

It turns out that nowhere is a really lovely place to be. 

The sand is firm enough for running, homicidal Ferraris are scarce, the scrub is lovely, and the views -- they are sensational. 

The birds love the island, too. 

 Including these distant flamingos.

And (Nick promises it's true) sometimes dolphins, too.