Sarathi 2008: Part Iii

Ghare Baire, Home And the World Sharmi Mukherjee Home

It was almost five in the afternoon…the sun had mellowed down and it had started to feel chilly. I looked towards the group of women seated around me in a circle. Things should have started to get quiet around here by this time of the day but these women were still finishing up on exchanging last minute notes on the meeting. They talked in a hurried manner with Kasturi, the field worker from an NGO, my friend now works for. Kasturi was talking to them in the local dialect and translating most of it to my friend in Hindi, who was seated at a little distance away from the group. I looked up again towards the women. I was told they were anywhere between 20 year olds to 40, at most but each looking older by a decade. Their sun burnt bony faces and skinny bodies tell a story. I was visiting my friend in Alwar, a small town in eastern Rajasthan, about three hours from New Delhi. He has been working and researching for the NGO sector for the past five years. His focus is in microfinance and women issues in rural regions of India. My friend explained to me the goal that he and his small organization were trying to achieve out there… EMPOWER THE WOMEN. He has been working hard to implement 1Grameen Bank. A place still influenced by a rigid feudal society structure, he had chosen Rajasthan as his ‘Karambhoomi’. He told me it was one of the most challenging areas in India to work in, when it comes to women issues. My plan was to spend some time together with him and backpack through Rajasthan on a quest for selfrealization… see rural India and then move on to see Jaisalmer – the city with the Golden Fort, a place of many of my childhood fantasies. I had been to many places in eastern Rajasthan, mostly the touristy ones 1

Grameen Bank – by Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Yunus

quite a few years back when I was in my teens. Rajasthan had mesmerized me even then and when I returned back to the land after so many years it seemed to inspire the same sort of wonder and thrill. Guess growing up with someone like my father, who is a lifelong student of history, I would hear so many tales of kings and queens and conquests and wars that places like these stir up emotions in me like no other. At home or in the rest of the world (Ghare Bairey), the same passion chases me around. Left: Sam Dunes in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan – 60 km from India-Pakistan Border. My rented camels. Whether I am in Rajsthan or I am in Italy – I still keep looking for things that stir up these stories of my childhood. However this time, my trip to Rajasthan was short and focused – I would visit places which are not as exotic and where no tourists would go to – I was on a journey of self-realization. I never knew before I had embarked upon this journey that it would be such a life enriching experience for me… one that would, at times make me feel guilty to be privileged... privileged enough to choose what I want to eat today or not and at times would make me marvel at the human spirit of endurance and hope. From my friend’s home in Alwar, we visited a few surrounding villages and also found an opportunity to see the idyllic life in a sleepy town like Alwar. The center of the town has a gorgeous palace which has seen better days. It is now completely in ruins. No one maintains the place. There’s a huge water fountain in front surrounded by a pool – the water is stagnant there probably being the reason of many illnesses around there. The locals still call the place “rajbari” (house of the king). After a couple of days around in Alwar, we took the overnight train to Jaisalmer. Early in the morning, my friend woke me up and told me that the train is going to stop much longer than its scheduled stop at Pokhran – Pokhran yes, the place where India test fires its nuclear bombs. I ventured my head out in to the desert wind and was immediately greeted by sands. The place is as remote as it could get, as dry as it probably is in Western Rajasthan. There were no houses, huts, or people even to see in a long distance. I got off the train and ventured out into the station. The only living thing I could find was a group of Indian soldiers around walking up and down the station – kind of gave away the fact about who controls the place pretty much. Jaisalmer is a couple of hours from Pokhran. As the train neared the desert city, I went near the door and looked into the horizon – sure enough there it was “Sonar Kella” – the golden fort. I had remembered this exact moment from my favorite Phelu da movie… of the same name. Jaisalmer was fascinating – everything around was built with yellow limestone – palaces and small houses alike. Many of these palaces have been converted into heritage hotels. Tourists could get a feel of the royal lifestyle here. We walked through the city, to many of its famous locales and took auto rickshaw to the palace and the famous Jain temple. From Jaisalmer, we went to visit the sand dunes close to the Indian Pakistan border, through the desert where I had my first experience of a camel ride. We had set camp in one of the public camps that you could rent. Our camp was the last one in the long lines of these campsites. It was pretty much as far as you could go on the Indian soil. Based off our camps, we had set off with our backpacks for two days through some of

the most remote villages on Indian soil – places which seemed to have stood still in time, the villages where basic necessities in life are considered a luxury. I had no idea what rural India holds out for women even to this day. When my friend had described to me in his various emails and phone calls about the fierce poverty in the rural areas of Rajasthan and horrific women issues out there, I had wanted to help in any way I could but had no sense of the situation a woman could be in. Such are women issues here in these parts of India that it is almost humiliating to think of my country as one of the fastest growing developing nations in the world, priding itself in the glory of having a large educated and technologically skilled working class. Don’t get me wrong, I take pride in the same facts too and yet, now that I have experienced it first hand, cannot help but think of the plight of those women and their likes, I had met back in the winter of 2005. No schools, No hospitals, No sanitary system in place, No electricity, No heating in their mud huts in the pinching winter cold of the desert air … and throw on top of that, women issues like “getting beaten up at the hands of their alcoholic husbands every night”, “teenage pregnancies”, “gang rape”, “illiteracy”, “death from child birth” and so on and so forth. It had seemed to me like a place forgotten in time in the otherwise promising times for the rest of India today. I could not even believe all the horrifying circumstances that most of these rural women would find themselves in almost on a daily basis. Being at some of those “focus group meetings” in the remote villages, that I would sit through while accompanying my friend and his co workers on their field visits, a sense of despair and empathy for these women would fill me up. I would be depressed to think of the status of women in these societies. But amongst all that seemed to be only lending a sense of frustration, I also saw something that made my heart fill with hope. I had seen Borfi, the group leader for one such focus group, using chalk marks on the ground to calculate the balance in their vault – the little aluminum trunk that is their entire bank in the community. The only bank, which my friend told me, would lend money to one of these women, in these areas. Borfi, like others in her focus group is illiterate. Being the soul earners in their families, these women do not have time to learn to read or write. They work in fields by the day, coming back home by sundown to do household chores and trying to find enough to cook for the night and the next day. Being blessed with a life that could not even possibly be a distant dream for these women, I had no parallels in my life to draw from to try to understand them. The women I met were a world apart from me in so many ways. Yet, I had felt a strange connection - they have the same desire to improve their lives in a positive manner that I have and a more fierce willingness than me, probably, to fight against all odds. They also laugh and sing and dance and show high spirit whenever such opportunities arise. To me these women in Rajasthan were no less independent minded or no less ready to live life than I was. They were thinking for themselves. They had risen far above what their environment would pin them down to, in expressing their desire to fight for their rights as a human being. Their wish to improve their lives and those of their children has made them walk that extra mile. Be it learning from a few NGO efforts around in these areas, about the benefit of a community fund or trying to help each other in need financially as well as socially or to let their children, boys and girls alike, be not illiterate like them, from trying to attend classes that Kasturi and her coworkers organize teaching them about feminine hygiene to child birth, these women have come a long way – “They used to wear “ghunghats” well up to their waist, forget even agreeing to talk to any man outside their family. They would not even talk to Kasturi, to begin with”, my friend had told me. Two years later, these women meet on a regular basis to discuss community development, and have started

their own bank, have gathered up the courage and confidence to organize an effort to go to the local MLA asking for building a school and a community hall in the village. They have managed to save enough money to build the foundation of their would-be school building and went to the MLA to let him know their desire to get help from the government to build upon the structure and have the school built. “Letting them know what rights they have and what they need to ask for is the biggest challenge of all” – Kasturi had told me. But, I had seen, in the bony faces and the skinny ill-fed bodies of those women, a shadow of strength that I had no ways to measure…I had seen in them a desire to take the fight head on. I had remembered looking at them one of Swami Vivekananda’s saying …” Women must be put in a position to solve their own problems in their own way. No one can or ought to do this for them. And our Indian women are as capable of doing it as any in the world.” And I had thought to myself, that these women, with a little help, are capable of achieving what they desire for themselves as any other in India, including me.

World: ITALIA 2008 – EIGHT DAYS EIGHT CITIES Our flight touched the tarmac at Fiumicino, popularly knows as Leonardo Da Vinci International airport at Rome an hour before noon time in Italy. With only about eight days on hand we knew we had a lot of ground to cover. I had planned all our routes, travel times, potential stops beforehand and we knew we had no time to lose if we want to touch as many of the famous sites here as well as soak in the Italian spirit as much as we could. We had taken the train from the airport to enter the city to its main train station – Roma Termini. Roma Termini is connected to the subway or the underground metro train system. It was quick and easy. As we found our way on to the Roman streets from the underground station, jetlagged and tired and feeling a bit lost in trying to figure out which direction our hotel might be, an elderly man walking down the street came to us asking if we need help with anything. As much as we were prepared not to expect much help in a non English speaking country or be aware of pick-pockets and unsocial elements in Rome, we were pleasantly taken by surprise at the man’s offer to help us without even us asking for it - an experience that we were to encounter a few more times during our travel through Italy. Day 1: Roma Our first interaction with Italian way of life was food - we wanted to have something light and quick and what could be a better option than to snack on pizza we thought. Right outside our hotel we found a pizzeria and it immediately struck me was that the pizzas were all square or rectangular shaped and sold by weight. Also another thing that stood out was how less meat or fish would be used in food in Italy. We walked in the various streets of Rome, took the metro, and then the bus around. The city was amazing, with villas all around that had such character about them. It had got dark by the time we took the metro and reached Colosseo station. As we came out of the station, there it was looming right in front of us, lit up against the dark sky, standing tall proclaiming the height of Roman Engineering achievement and yet laying out the horrific tale of human penchant for violence and cruel specter – we were standing in front of the Colosseum, where a staggering number of people fought to their death all in the name of entertainment. Day 2: Tour of Rome We returned early next morning to the Colosseum. Once inside, we were even more aware of the colossal construction that had taken place some 1900 years ago (70-80 AD) to build this structure dedicated just to entertain the Roman populous. I had goose bumps remembering all the stories I would hear from my “world-history” major dad growing up about the gladiators fight inside this arena and here I was

experiencing the stage firsthand. We had decided to take a mile long walk through the heart of Rome from near the Pantheon to the Spanish steps and Fontana de trevi (the fountain where legend goes that if you throw a coin the city calls you back). We realized it would be such a wonderful way to see and feel Rome. The Pantheon - the dome is 142 ft high and wide was Europe's biggest until the Renaissance. It is a living testimony to the splendor of Rome and one of antiquity's best preserved structures. We wandered in the narrow streets of Rome, visiting many monumental sites and stopping for some cappuccino and Tiramisus. Day 3: Venezia We arrived into Venice, the queen of Adriatic, the city built on hundred islands and canals very early in the morning on my birthday. That was indeed the plan – to spend my birthday in this city of eternal romance. As we walked out of the station, the sun was just about to rise over the Grand Canal. Venice looked like a young noble lady dressed in old shabby clothes waking up with first rays of the sun…the city is clearly in decay but still revels in its old grandeur. The unforgettable way to transport around Venice is by using waterways or walking. The most common form of public transportation is the Vaporetto (water bus) where you get to travel with the locals on their way to work, school, shopping and daily activities – there’s no car in Venice, believe it!!! As we were riding the Vaporetto, for a moment I had thought - Is this city flooded? Then I told myself that I was in Venice…

Day 4: Firenze & Pisa Early in the following morning we took the train for our journey to the heart of Tuscany. We wanted to spend most of our time in Florence and take side trips to Pisa and Sienna. As we neared Florence, from our train itself the vision of Tuscany slowly emerged in front of our eyes. Place of many an imagination and pictures that I had painted in my mind of the Tuscan sun and the rolling hills and valleys, the food and the drinks, the character of the place, the culture, the splendor of the art and the architecture, it did totally live up to it. When Europe emerged from the dark ages, Florence became the great epicenter of the evolution of society into today’s modern world. Florence served as the cradle of Renaissance, the workplace of so many of the Italian masters like Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Dante, Botticelli, Raphael, Galileo to name a few. You don’t have to even go to museums or galleries to experience these masters and their legacies – walking through the streets of Florence you could experience the vibrancy of their artistic and architectural endeavors all around you. Pisa is less than an hour away by train from Florence and is famous for its leaning tower. Campo de Miracoli or Field of Miracles in Pisa houses the Duomo, the batistery and the leaning tower – the main attractions here. Although this is the only city where we stayed for the shortest time, we also had the best spaghetti-marinara here – just spaghetti and marinara made from the freshest of the tomatoes. It was a roadside restaurant with plastic chairs, right outside the Field of Miracles, run by some smiling and very friendly students studying in the nearby University of Pisa. Day 5: Siena Early next morning we set out for Siena, just an hour train ride away from Florence. Once again as the train rolled in through the valleys and hills of Tuscany, reaching Siena and then on our bus ride to the city’s center from the station, I kept on clicking my camera only to realize later that my photos did not do justice

to the scenery that I saw. Siena could easily be one of the cutest towns in Europe, nestled in the rolling hills of Italy. The city center or Piazza del Campo is closed to traffic and it was amazing to see how people, couples hand in hand, young families with kids playing around, young adults, all were lazing around in the square even on a weekday. It just seemed unrealistic to me - how can people have so much time to sit in a square idly and relax? No one seemed to be in any great rush to reach anywhere... well guess when the settings around you are so pretty, you should take time to appreciate it as much as you could – the “Sienese” people seemed to be wasting no opportunity at that.

Day 6: Tour of Firenze We decided to completely dedicate this day to the city of Florence. Our early morning schedule began with the visit to the Uffizi Gallery which houses the greatest collection of Italian paintings anywhere - works of Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Raphael to name a few. Our day of art exploration would end at the Academia where Michelangelo’s “David” is housed, the sculpture that shot Michelangelo into eternal fame. A long line forms outside any famous monument any time of the day any time of the year. In Florence, you have to expect and accept it. I had read somewhere that there’s no better way to experience a city than on your legs and it could not be any truer than in Florence. Also, walking meant interacting with people which in so many respects characterized our trip as well. We found strangers willing to help us in giving directions and pointing us to the right bus route and stops, even if they spoke in broken English or none at all and hence would use sign language to communicate with us. I probably should mention here that Florence is the home and headquarter of Gucci, the famous design house of Italy and many others and in my opinion the city is one of the best places in Europe for people watching – women and men alike were impeccably dressed and you could see their attention to details when it came to fashion. I would sit outside the steps of Duomo (the famous building dominating the skyline of Florence) happily licking the gelatos and do people watching…and yes, another important piece of Florence’s appeal is its food, wine and dessert which includes the gelatos or Italian ice cream You could choose from Tiramisu flavor to the ones made with real fruit, the trick is not to mix the two flavors – gelatos are not just another dessert here but considered an art form. Ohhhhh I loved Florence, every bit of it. Day 7: Pompeii-Naples Our travel books on Italy had given us quite an idea of what to expect in Naples. But as our train rolled into the Napoli Centrale Station, I was amazed to see the abrupt change in scenery and settings. The aristocratic and sophisticated taste of the North was replaced by a much rougher and shabbier look all around. We took a cab from the station to our hotel and as we drove through the streets of Naples it immediately reminded me of Bombay (or Mumbai), congested, chaotic yet boasting some beautiful grand buildings. Later in the day when we had a chance to walk through the streets of Naples, a very familiar picture would arise in my mind – Naples in many ways also reminded me of Calcutta. People around the main squares of the city, seem to be standing and chatting in the middle of the day, bursting into laughter every now and then, ready to strike up a

conversation with an unknown stranger– probably such are the social settings in a less economically prosperous city but I had no choice but to love the spirit of the place. It is a place where you will immediately be aware of keeping a tab on your purse and belongings but it was also a place where a man standing at the bus station with his family, saw us fiddling through our change for the bus fare (we had only some big bills and could not get change nearby), approached us and offered to help us somehow managing to speak in English. He eventually paid for our bus fare and when we were struggling with figuring out how to pay him back, he politely said that he is sure we would have also helped him the same way he did help us. His wife standing beside him, nodded approvingly and his two kids smiled innocently at us. Pompeii is an hour train ride from Naples- the ruins of a prosperous city destroyed by the wrath of the volcano Vesuvius, which loomed menacingly across the bay from Naples and towering right over Pompeii. The place seemed to me as a rather touristy place. However, exploring the ruins I could not help but wonder about the archeologists who so meticulously dug this city out literally from ashes to tell the world the stories of these unfortunate people who did not seem to know even what had hit them. Day 8: The Vatican We planned on ending this Italy trip of ours with one of the most intriguing, interesting and grand setting of all – the Vatican City, a city which is a country in itself guarded like a fortress distinctly marked out with high boundary walls on the face of Rome. Make no mistake- The Vatican Museum and St. Peter’s Basilica are built to impress. The museum is 4 mile long house of art and is in the top 3 or 4 art houses in Europe in terms of its collection from Greece, Egypt, and Mesopotamia to ancient Italy to modern times, from artwork of Raphael and Michelangelo to paintings of Van Gogh and Salvador Dali donated to the museum in later years. It takes more than one day to cover the entire museum at The Vatican. Our museum tour was obviously topped by the Raphael room and finally the Sistine Chapel. Raphael’s room is an all time masterpiece of Italian Frescos that could perhaps only be topped by Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. Both these masters were arch competitors, who lived and worked at the same time and place. When we came down to the Sistine Chapel, we sat there looking at the massive ceiling and walls all around us… it was a sobering and yet ecstatic experience at the same time, humbling too at the knowledge of the great man whose hands created this art, who apparently did not want to paint because he felt he was a much better sculptor than a painter. St. Peter’s Basilica: Larger than most, richest and the most impressive church on earth. From Bernini’s seven story high bronze canopy over St. Peter’s tomb at the middle of the church, to the dome above designed by none other but Michelangelo and his famous sculpture Pieta, which he had completed before he had turned 25, and even to the other marble statues inside the basilica of lesser known artists, it is one “holy” place of worship in more ways than one… No tour of the Vatican would be complete without walking up to the dome of the St. Peter’s Basilica. Seeing the frescos of Michelangelo from as close quarters as possible and then standing on top of the skyline of Rome (by law no building in Rome could stand taller than the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica), looking down on St. Peter’s square (which is really a circle or an ellipse than a square, if you have any doubt look at the photo on the right) I thought the claustrophobic walk up some hundreds of stairs was totally worthwhile. For the art & architecture, the incredible colors, the gelatos and the desserts, the food (never had I known that a simple pizza with cheese and tomato-basil could be this DELICIOUS...), the touch of ancient history all around, I would go back to Italy again to the home of the Renaissance Masters. (Photo Credits- Photography by my husband –Jay (Online: Artinaz photos at artzy.smugmug.com/Travel/Italy 2008)

48 Hours in Shiraz, Iran Ranjita Bhagwan, Kanishka Lahiri December 2006 Sleep deprived, two days behind schedule, too tired to be excited, we were met at Tehran’s spanking, sprawling new Imam Khomeni airport (which apparently has taken 30 years to build) by the pretty Mona from the travel agency at 4 am. To find her, we had to ask for help from a complete stranger, Imran Khan, who already, with typical Iranian hospitality, had invited us to his house at 4 in the morning! Mona and an avuncular driver drove us from Imam Khomenei airport to the older, more congested Mehrabad airport for our connecting flight to Shiraz. We spent about an hour driving on a desolate highway talking about Bollywood films (with Mona) and Sai Baba and Salim Chisti (with the avuncular driver), needless to say, feeling quite out of our depths in the latter case. More than a little money changed hands at Mehrabad Airport (equivalent to Bangalore’s HAL airport for Tehran residents), and we got a first glimpse of life in Iran while waiting for the early morning flight to Shiraz. Mehrabad Airport has separate entrances for men and women. The level of pandemonium strikes a familiar chord for South Asians. The waiting room is a little like the old HAL Airport - each gate acts as a multiplexor for multiple departing flights - but perhaps 3 to 4 times larger. Huge pictures of Ayatollahs Khomenei and Ali Khamenei proclaiming Iran to be the first Islamic Republic hang alongside large billboards from Hitachi, Samsung, and other Europian/Asian multi-nationals. A religious sermon on a giant flat screen TV generated droning vocal music, while competing rather unsuccessfully for attention with another screen showing a Mr Bean episode. We spent our first Rials buying some bottled water, and nearly got ripped off a couple thousand Rial (which isn’t much, really). We spent a lot of time observing Iranian women, each for different reasons. For one of us, it was entirely pleasure-driven, while for another, it was a tutorial on how to balance a sense of fashion with Hijab. The flight itself was just okay, a lot like Indian Airlines a decade ago, complete with an old plane (a Boeing 727), a ramshackle interior, some pushing and shoving to get on board, and boiled sweets at take off.

The approach to Shiraz was spectacular, hugging snow covered mountains glistening in the early morning sun. Shiraz is surrounded by rugged mountains, while the city itself is quite flat. The setting is a little bit like Las Vegas, only the mountains are higher, snow covered, and starker.

Of course, no casinos or alcohol here. We were met by Reza and his wife, set up for us by Mona, who drove us to our hotel in the commercial heart of the city - Karim Khan-e Zand Blvd. Most of Shiraz is low rise, and the modern architecture is far from inspiring. Once in a while though, a spectacular mosque, or castle, or garden comes into view. We spent most of the first day in Iran sleeping (I slept a total of 16 out of 24 hours, though Ranjita was not so lucky). This was not such a bad idea, because being Friday (Iran’s Sunday), almost everything was closed anyway. We finally stepped out in the evening, and made our way past Karim Khan’s castle where a period drama was being shot, with donkeys, horse-drawn carriages, World War I type vehicles, soldiers, and costumed actors. We also ran into a streetsmart dude who spoke good English, and gave a little more free advice than we wanted about how to spend our time in Shiraz. He kept us company for a while, but when he wanted to know how he could illegally enter India, we decided to give him the cold shoulder. Dinner was at a spectacular bath house-turned restaurant called Hamaam-e-Vakil, which was excellent in all respects: superb food (chelo kabab – the real thing!), unique, traditional interior, with seating around a “bath”, and fabulous live music on the violin, vocals, a santoor like instrument and a dholak-like percussion instrument. It was quite an immersive local experience, with no tourists as far as we could make out, and many families (some of them quite large) just out to have a good time. The only negative was the slight hesitation our waiter seemed to have serving us and the somewhat iffy service, which we attributed to the language barrier. The meal came to quite a bit more than we expected (IRR 145,000 or $16), and we embarrassingly found ourselves short of Rial. Luckily, the greenback saved our backs. We headed back to the hotel, walking past the movie set, and the illuminated castle with the tilted tower, feeling contented with our first day in Iran.

Day 2: Shiraz and Persepolis Breakfast was at the Sarv-e-Nazar restaurant at the lobby level of our hotel. The menu, eggs over and easy, lentils, spinached scrambled eggs, sausage, sweet toasted bread, biscuits (something like naan-khatai), cereal, milk, cucumbers, tomato and a very strong feta cheese. After having a nutritious breakfast followed up by some kissan squash-style orange juice, we met up with Reza, our driver and guide. He struck me as the typical handy-man kind: always talking to someone on his mobile phone. Of all the Iranians we have met so far, he seems to speak the best English because he had lived eight years in the UK and America. We set out for Persepolis around 10 am. The site of Persepolis, also called Taqht-e-Jamshid, is about 55 km from Shiraz. The drive took about 45 minutes, so that gave us an opportunity to talk with Reza. Reza’s opinions were very liberal. If what he said is true, about 75% of Iran’s population is not at all typically religious as we, products of Western education, are led to believe. It is very easy to agree with Reza’s comment because the people on the road or in the restaurants seemed very similar in manner and body language to us Indians (except for the fact that the women are horrendously good-looking). Reza claimed that in the previous elections, everybody had actually voted for Refsanjani. The Islamic council brought the relative unknown Ahmedinejad to power, overruling the decision of the masses. Reza also

showed us a mosque that was built in the middle of nowhere. He claimed it was just an attempt by the Government to show the world that Iran is an Islamic country, and serves no practical purpose. We reached Persepolis around 10 am, bought our tickets for 5,000 rials each and 10,000 rials for parking. It was nice to see the site fairly empty in spite of the gigantic parking lot. Reza said that in spring and summer, the parking lot gets completely full. It was a brilliant day and the first sight was that of the gateway to Persepolis, quite impressive with the face of Darius on two huge pillars. Unfortunately, whatever had not been destroyed already by Alexander had met with the additional destruction meted out by the Arabs who believed that no sculptures should depict human faces. Darius’s face is almost all destroyed except for in some places, thanks to the hardiness of the Granite that he had brought in to build Persepolis.

The site is surrounded by a limestone wall carved out of the neighboring hills, while the buildings themselves are made of fine, dark granite. The entrance, consisting of four pillars placed in a rectangle, itself has carvings, apparently made by famous tourists such as Marco Polo and Stanley. One J. Bhagat Singh, who visited in 1921, had also seemingly left his mark. It was interesting to see tourist vandalism itself becoming part of the exhibit. One of the few untouched statues was that of a griffin, with its two eagle-like heads. We took a lot of photographs around this area. Reza led us up a very shallow staircase: each step was only about 8 cm thick, apparently to facilitate the movement of animals up and down. Once up the stairs, we were “inside” the building. We saw how the big granite blocks were at one time held together by iron girders. Apadana palace, where important guests were received, was one of the first rooms we saw. One of the more impressive reliefs within the ruins is that of representatives from 28 countries bringing gifts for Darius, along one side of a staircase leading to this palace. Up the staircase, the richest and most important tributaries, like the Medes, started the procession, while tailing the procession, at the bottom of the staircase, were the least important to the king, the Ethiopians. Each figure in the relief was characterized by some differences in facial features and attire, with meticulous detail up to every accessory that he wore, such as shoelaces. India figured near the bottom of the pile a few levels above the Ethiopians. Reza then showed us Xerxes palace which is the most thoroughly destroyed. Alexander destroyed Persepolis apparently as revenge for the destruction of the Acropolis by Xerxes and left hardly anything of Xerxes’ palace. While in the other rooms, there still exist tall columns, there is not one stone left of the columns in this palace.

We then saw a palace with a 100 columns in it. It is not clear whether this is a dining room or a library. One little detail that Reza pointed out to us was the difference in the quality of the stone between what was buried until just a few decades back, and what had remained exposed for the last couple of centuries. The difference is quite startling. Centuries of wind and rain had significantly left their mark on the granite, while the lower portions of the walls and reliefs were still beautifully untouched. As we drove out of Persepolis, we spotted a few donkeys dotting the barren landscape. Just when I was wondering what the donkeys were doing there, Reza pointed out gypsies who apparently come in to Iran from Pakistan who move from farm to farm looking for labor-based jobs. We drove to Naqsh-eRustom, the site of Darius’s tomb. There were a total of four tombs there – those of Darius, Cyrus, Xerxes, and Darius II. While most Zoroastrians’ bodies were taken to the top of the towers of silence on their deaths, the kings were treated differently with tombs especially constructed for them. The tombs are high up in the face of a cliff with a small entrance almost impossible to get to without a ramp. Opposite the tombs we also saw what is considered to be a fire temple. After a thoroughly memorable trip to Taqht-e-Jamshid and Naqsh-e-Rustom, we headed back and reached the hotel at 1:20 pm. After resting for a while we decided to try some local Pizza. So lunch was at the Pars Pizza and Burger restaurant on Zand Boulevard. We ordered the “small pizza” – there was no choice of toppings – and a small salad. I drank a yoghurt drink that Kanishka hated. It claimed to be a “yoghurt drink with natural gas” or, as Bengalis would call it, “pocha doi”. But it went well with the pizza, which had a gallon of tomato ketchup, apart from really tasty capsicum, mushroom, chicken and meat. It was a good, cheap meal.

We walked over to the Bazaar-e-Vakil which looked a lot like Kolkata’s New Market, except that the roof was a set of inlayed domes. It was very pretty, especially the part selling rugs and table cloths. That’s when we met the “cool dude” who we had seen on the earlier day, sitting at a leather store. He took us to the Madrasa-e-Khan, and coolly ripped us off 80,000 rials for showing us around for 15 minutes (we

actually paid the money to an old caretaker, who we had seen smoking pot with his friend on our way in). We walked back to the Zand exchange where we changed 100 dollars of our money, bought some wonderfully spiced pistachios and headed back to the hotel for a good long nap. At 7:30, we contemplated going to the Yord restaurant, apparently run by nomads, but decided against it when the receptionist told us it would be a good 45 minutes away and didn’t look very encouraging. We walked over to Eram restaurant where we ate the “Caucasian Kabaab”, which tasted suspiciously similar to Chilli chicken. Dessert was Caramel custard and Jello and we headed back to the hotel at the end of a very relaxed fruitful day of Patel tourism. Next morning, our last day in Shiraz, we were greeted by tiny snowflakes, melting on impact when they hit the ground. We had a leisurely breakfast in the Sarv-e-Naaz, watching the snow become denser. Very soon it was coming down fast and hard, but still not enough to cause accumulation. We headed back to the room and watched some Iranian TV (the satellite connection and with it BBC were not available) where they were showing a strange dramatization of the Bush administration’s decision to go to war in Iraq. It was an American production, with bad acting, and was surprisingly pro-Bush. For the rest of the morning, we packed, read about Yazd, and generally twiddled our thumbs. Lunch was at the “Tourist Pizza and Sandwich” right across from the hotel, where there was no pizza to be had for love or ready money. However, the cutlet sandwiches served by the wonderfully made-up woman were not bad either. Reza drove us to the bus station, which was sufficiently chaotic to make desis feel at home. But the fact that signs, announcements and everything on the bus ticket is in Persian makes things a tiny bit disconcerting. Added to that the confusion about which bay the bus to Yazd would leave from did not help. After nearly boarding buses for Hamadan and Tehran, we finally had to make a dash for the bus to Yazd. The ride was peaceful but long. We slept most of the way, and watched some Iranian movies bringing the first leg of our Iranian Adventure to an end.