January 27 Holy Places and Hospitality

Note to readers: One of my previous posts, No Lions...., was incomplete and error filled. It's now been corrected to be much more readable. I was trying to beat the clock and am not good when speed typing! We drive through Delhi, past the Red Fort and through the government area, but we are unable to approach either the Presidential Palace or the Parliament building as they are blockaded for security reasons. We stop at India Gate, a memorial to WWI's Indian soldiers, 90 thousand of whom died in Flanders Field. Sadly, we do not appear to have learned much since then. There is a ceremony here so we hear a trumpet salute and see the head of the Indian Air Force greeting a visiting dignitary. We go on to the Gandhi Smitri, site of Mahatma Gandhi's last days and assassination. We spend a few hours here at the museum and are struck by the sacred feeling surrounding the place. Next is a beautiful Sikh temple to learn about this religion and to experience the life going on there. Each Sikh temple must contain food for the traveler, a way for the traveler to wash, and a place for the traveler to rest. Any person may avail himself of these benefits and no payment is required. We enter the grounds of the temple and go to a room where we all don a kerchief worn in the style I'd adopted when riding on Ron's motorcycle. No temple socks are permitted so thank God Joan and I could proudly display our pedis. We approach a patio area on which many people are seated and being led in prayers. At the signal, they rise as one and file into a huge hall where they site on long runners and await a meal of naan and dal (lentils and bread). Our group helps serve - there are a few hundred people and I go up and down the rows with a huge bucket of dal, careful to use only my right hand on the scoop. The diners exit, the floor is quickly cleaned, and the next group comes in. It continues like this until all are fed. When we are done serving, we go in to the kitchen and see the biggest pot and ladle I've even laid eyes on. There's a man standing on a platform filling the large pots, another man operating a maching into which he feeds naan dough and several women both making naan by hand and frying it. I think it's like lefse for us Norwegians. We eat some right off the grill. Delicious! We enter the temple and it is very beautiful. Silence is maintained and we sit for a few moments to meditate. This is a place that shows such kindness to so many. We finish the afternoon at a Hindu temple used by his family when Sujay was young. It is very small and is open on the sides with a roof on top. We step shoeless into the temple and see the honored god sitting in an enclosed room. The priest comes and blesses the bottle of whiskey that we've brought, pouring a goodly amount right onto the god. We're all allowed into the room to receive an orange dot on our foreheads and then several enjoy the blessed whiskey en route back to the hotel. For dinner, we are in two groups, one going to the home of our cooking teacher and the other (including Joan and I) to the family home of a wonderful young couple who'd had an arranged marriage. His parents live on the ground floor and they on the second. We liked hearing their stories and seeing their wedding and reception photos. They had 600 guests which is not uncommon. The photos would have been several hundred dollars in the U.S. Good food, too!