Safdar Jang's Tomb and Lodi Garden

 Another day, another spectacular monument. Was at the entrance at 7 am sharp. The entry was Rs 25, but there was no token, ticket or receipt. Just had to hand over the cash to the watchman. There was nobody there except for a dog, that followed me around! 

The garden was full of birds, and I even saw a ginormous eagle and a peacock sitting on the same tree! 

Then I crossed the road and headed to Lodi garden. Right near the entrance is the tomb of Muhammad Shah Sayyid. The garden was full of people taking their morning walks and doing yoga. I walked into a pair of people doing shavasan and was startled lol. It was difficult to get the monument without people around, but I hid them behind the bushes and waited for others to leave. 

Up next was the Bada Gumbad, which is also a mosque. 

Then comes the Shish Gumbad. There were no mirrors, I checked. 

Then came the Sikandar Lodi tomb, which was closed. 

Then there was like a duck pond with geese, parrots, pigeons, crows and of course, ducks! 

I was dead tired by this time, my back was aching. But I had to travel by metro to get an 8K video recording. I walked through Khan Market, and got into the wrong direction lol. Realised three stops later, switched the direction. Was finding it difficult to stand in the Metro. Fortunately, there was a free seat which I occupied. By the time I reached Neheru Place, my back was killing me. I was finding it painful to even sit. I somehow managed to get home, plonked myself down on the bed. I filed my review by around 1:30, an hour after the embargo lifted and then fell sound asleep. Twice. I checked in the night and found that I had walked for 10 hours and 30 kilometres in 3 days. OOF. Was feeling feverish by evening. I would have written down more details, but this will have to do, I am dead tired. 

Have decided to not do this to my body, pace myself out, and only visit one monument a week from now on hahaha.  

Tomb of Humayun

 Another colossal tomb complex is the Tomb of Humayun. It is located right next to the Nizamuddin Railway Station.  

There was no entry ticket! The entry was free. I walked in around 7:00 AM. Location is right opposite Sundar Nursery. 

There was some monument to the right, but the gates were closed so I went straight ahead. To the left was a small structure, turned out to be the Bu Halima Tomb. Bu Halima was the wet nurse of Humayun. It is believed to be older than Humayun's tomb, but little is historically recorded about this person. 

Then you pass through the gate of Bu Halima, to see the vast quadrangular Humayun's Tomb looming up ahead of you. Since there were guards outside the gate, this is a view of it from the other side. 

Which brings us to the Tomb of Humayun itself, there are actually four other tombs in the periphery. Here are views of the monument from different directions. 

Then comes Babur's Tomb, which is much more modest. Babur was Humayun's father. 

Up next, on it's own little corner and closest to the railway station, is the Nila Gumbad. 

Then you have to head back towards the entrance, which has a pair of structures, Afsarwala's Tomb and Afsarwala's Mosque. 

Then there is the Arab Ki Serai, which is a caravanserai. It does not look large enough to house an entire caravan, but haven't seen the top floors. It is not a gate, although it looks like one. Maybe the area behind the gateway was the caravanserai. For the first time, I saw a peacock take flight, and it was a long, spectacular flight that I was quite surprised by. It is a myth that peacocks don't fly! 

A few lucky construction workers live in the complex. 

Finally, coming back to the monument that was closed at 7:00 am. It was 9:00 am now, and the place was open. This is the tomb of Isa Khan. 

Then, right at the entrance of the road to the complex is the Sabz Burj. It was a tiring morning, so I waited here for my Uber Auto. Had tea from some of the locals, I was the first customer for the day. 

While I was exiting the complex, I began to see the vendors coming in and setting up their stalls. It was a good thing that I am visiting these places before they get crowded. 

Qutb complex

 Woke up early in the morning and headed to the Qutb complex in Moharli. I took an uber rickshaw to the spot, and arrived there at 6:50 am. The place officially opens at 7:00 am, but they let me in before that. Except for a couple of guards and cleaners, I had the whole place to myself! So I made the best of the opportunity, and went through the complex, photographing the Qutb Minar first and then to the Iron Pillar behind it. Strewn around the complex are many spare stones and pieces of ancient Jain and Hindu temples, even older than the Qutb Minar. Behind the structure, and idea for framing the monuments are the remains of giant screens, some with preserved arches. To the left is the dilapidated Madrassa of Alauddin Khalki, home now to parrots, mynahs, pigeons and squirrels. It also houses his tomb. To the right is the more elaborate tomb of Iltutmish, which has some birds resting in the holes high above the arch. Parallel to the Qutb Minar is the unfinished base of Alai Minar, which would have been an even larger structure had it been finished. Back towards the front is the tomb of Imam Zamin which has some very intricate screen works, almost like clay was wielded like metal. Towards the front of the complex is Smith's Folly, which is under the process of restoration. This was for a short period of time, a sixth storey on top of the minar. In the middle of the garden is a memorial to Gordon Sanderson, the chief of the ASI, which is a nice small marble sundial. There is just so much history of this place. 

There was only one other couple that had come from south India that early in the morning, I took some photos for them. Apart from that, had the whole place to myself for a good forty minutes. After I had done my first tour, a watchman who had seen me photographing, came up to me and took me through the whole complex again, pointing out good locations to shoot from, telling me more about the history of the place, and even telling me about the exact shooting locations in various Hindi film movies. 

I was actually testing out the performance of the camera on the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, so not sharing all the images here till the Embargo on the review lifts. Here are some shots taken from my iPhone though. I took a lot of photographs. 

After the adventure at the Qutb complex, I walked over to the nearby Bhool Bhulaiya, where a local artist was practicing a play performance in the wonderful acoustics. Some homeless people were still fast asleep, locals were jogging circles around the structure, and some tourists were taking a rest on the front steps. It was covered in graffitti. This was the tomb of Adam khan. The capital of the country is like a graveyard of the invaders, and I am surprised that Delhi is not called "City of Tombs" or something like that. 

Then I'm going to be embedding some YouTube videos below that showcase this beautiful complex. The guard made me interested in checking out these locations in the songs, but unfortunately, none of the spots that he mentioned lined up with any of the shooting locations! He went on for quite a while on how he gets to see the best locations for capturing photos based on the choices of cinematographers during the shoots, over the past 15 years. Seems like he just knew the best spots through his own experience, and was still boasting about the bollywood cinematographers for more credibility. Apparently, Raveena Tandon and Sanjay Dutt had just wrapped a shoot for Ghudhchadi two days prior to my visit. 

In Fanaa it's shown pretty prominently. The National Rail Museum and Purana Qilla are the other Delhi locations in the song, which I intend to visit. 

In this song from Kurbaan, the whole minar is not shown completely, but closeups of the complex and base of the minar are. They probably got a bench just for the shoot, which is not there at the location. Most of the clear shots of the complex are towards the end of the song. The main location is Humayun's tomb. 

This song from Jannat 2 gives a lot of footage to the location, and perhaps has the framing and shot locations closest to what I picked. If there is one movie that showcases the location to the max, then it is Jannat 2, and in this song, Tu Hi Mera.

Har Kisi Ko from Boss, the one with Shiv and Aditi, not Sona and Akki, has the location from about 1:44. This one is one of the few songs to capture the whole minar! It also has gives plenty of footage to the location towards the end of the song. 

Dil Ka Bhanwar Kare Pukar from Guide starts off at the top of the Minar, which has some excellent shots of the entire complex. The rest of the song takes place with Dev Anand and Waheeda Rehman descending the staircase, but in a replica set. 

Okay so the playbook for a song based in Delhi seems to be Purana Qilla, Humayun's Tomb, Lal Qilla and Qutb Complex for songs set in Delhi. This is a beautiful location lol deserves to have more movies shot here. Part 2 of this experience is coming up. 

The Tombs of Bade Khan and Chote Kahn

 I planned to step out at around 4:00 pm, but had an awesome mid-afternoon nap with a dream that I did not document. 

I woke up at 5:15 pm, rushed outside the house to the ATM which debited 2k but gave me no cash after irritatingly making the noise of vending the cash... twice. Anyway, I just googled "monument" on Google maps and picked a nearby cluster of three. 

Went to a place that was peppered with tombs of royalty from the Lodi dynasty. They are the Gunbads of Bade Khan, Chote Khan, Kale Khan and Darya Khan. On Google Maps, the names are Bade Khan Ka Gumbad, Chote Khan Tomb, Kale Khan Ka Makbara, and Darya Khan's Tomb. 

Kale Khan, who was a courtier to Bahlol Lodi according to the inscription and died in 1481 ad. It is situated right on the road, where the rickhaw driver dropped me off, despite me wanting to go to the pair of tombs in the gully-gully. 

There was a labourer sleeping in one corner, one couple on the front steps, another on the side, and two dudes in the back rolling up who were scared of me. I pulled down my hoodie and smiled and they relaxed. Not much going on in here. It's surrounded by apartments. 

I walked inwards to the pair of tombs known of Bada Khan and Chota Khan, which reminds me of Mama-Bhanja in the hills near Thane, back home. It was a disorienting walk between residential complexes, with the IVF design school and Star Juice Centre which seemed a popular hangout for local kids. Headed inside the tomb complex then. First thing I noticed was there were three groups of tiktokers shooting videos. One mom was following her kid doing kid things with her camera. Another group of kids were running circles around the tomb. A pair of guys were walking in slow steady circles. There was a watchman, and another pair of guys sitting on the stairs, and on the back, a lone nepali guy talking on the phone. 

I started taking photos and the watchman noticed me, as well as my phone. So a very funny thing happened. I was taking photos of the interiors of Chote Khan, which was full of construction and restoration equipment. The watchman tells me to take the photos of the other one as it is more interesting. I say there are tiktokers there. We walk towards it, and I just circle around it seeing that the girls are still doing some dance and recording, not wanting to disturb them. When I come back around, the watchman is driving the girls away! 

I feel bad, but there is nothing I can do about it. He drove them away just for my convenience, and because I was an older guy and they were younger girls. TBH I got what I wanted at the same time, so felt simultaneously good as well. I was still kind to the poor fellow, and took a bunch of photos of the tomb interiors. He was impressed with it, and asked if it was an iPhone, I said no, it was the Samsung S22 Ultra. He thought that a flash was triggered even when it didn't. This is a photo from my iPhone, may post the ones from the Samsung device later. 

Anyway, I thanked him and left, past the juice centre towards the Darya Khan monument. That one is closed off, surrounded by a park. There are three structures with some ruins in the middle that looks like it could be a Nandi bull or a sphinx, but it is actually a partially collapsed rectangular base, with only the pillars and part of the dome standing. This one is in a dilapidated state, and access to the monuments was closed off when I went. There is no vantage point from the surrounding garden to get a clear view, let alone a clear photo. 

Instead I explored the veritably huge NBCC condominium complex, which had really nice three dimensional designs on the sides of its buildings. 

 

Dream Diary Vrooom Vrooom Edition

First of all it sucks that Blogger is the only service from Google that demands a sign in every single time you go to the page. 

Now then, just had an awesome dream! 

I am in high school, stuck in some bizarre he-said she-said situation between my teacher, a girl, my mother and me. My mom and my teacher are having an argument, over me making videos on school property. Their disagreement is over some point about rules and policy, and has little to do with me. I apologise separately both to my mom and my teacher, and to the girl as well. Teacher just tells me, I did not know you were shooting videos! You should continue to do it, then argues with my mom again about shooting videos on school property without informing other students or taking permission. 

I bunk class being disillusioned with everything, and go to the ground, where I have a smuggled quarter of white rum mixed in seven up. (This reminds me in BMM where we used to do this regularly. Once during a trip to Silvasa, teacher thought I had a mixed disguised drink and asked to taste it. I gave it to him, he found nothing mixed, and chugged quite a bit. He later caught me drinking cough syrup, then told me "you are drinking it or is it drinking you?"). Anyway, so I am in this field, and people are playing, and I seek out my friend, who suggests I go drinking. I tell him but all the bars are closed because of the pandemic, and he gives me directions to one that is open. 

I bunk the remaining classes, worried about failing the course and affecting my perfect score, and having to go through the final three years of high school without my friends, and with the irritating juniors. I'm contemplating all this while following my friend's directions and heading to the bar.  

I already had a quarter and I am dreading having more and making all these calculations about how many I should order and in what quantities, while I navigate around an empty shopping centre, its the Amrapali arcade, till I come across a tiny wine shop/bar sandwiched between a medical shop and general store. 

It is the kind of bar found in Karnataka. There is a big line outside, and the crowd is tightly packed. I navigate through the people and find that there are tables inside. Go in, and we were all tightly packed in together, with all the seats filled up, shoulder to shoulder. It's like US soldiers in a helicopter, and we are going in a war against alcohol. 

One guy comes in and makes the seating arrangements. I am made to sit between two people. There are two man seats where three people are sitting, with a table in between them. I am in the last row with the urinal to my left, then a person sitting on a bench. There are two rows of benches on the side where people are sitting without a table in between. Their drinks are being served on plastic chairs or tools. One guy, is sitting in the middle of the two rows on a plastic stool. 

Someone comments, "this is nothing, it is going to get even more crowded". I look to the left and the right. I inform the guy to my right that I smoke. That guy looks dazed already, and he says "arre yaar" or "oh no". I look to the guy sitting to his right and see him holding a cigarette, and tell the guy sitting next to me that, "why don't you swap with the next guy, we are both smokers". He is basically too lazy to move, and just one of those guys who likes to complain. He looks at me for a long time, considering it, decides not to swap, and says, "just give me 2-3 puffs, the very ends of the cigarettes". I say okay. 

One of the guys sitting across me is like one of the gunda types. He is sitting with only one other person on his bench. He is staring at me with bloodshot eyes, head tilted to the side, observing and contemplating. When he catches my eye, he tells me in particular, "why are you sitting like this, go inside, there are more benches and tables." I respond with a "It's fine, I am comfortable here." 

I look around, they have started serving the drinks. No one is coming to get my order. I am apprehensive if the bar has white rum. There is cheering, and everyone is generally talkative and happy. They turn on the TV, which starts playing low budget local hip hop productions (I am very sure there will eventually be a tv channel for this). I comment to nobody in particular, just enjoying the crowd, "I haven't been to something so crowded before the pandemic." I then remove my mask, bravely. 

A seat is placed in front of me, and a plastic stool behind that, where another guy sits. The guy who said its going to get even more crowded is right. The staff is adding benches and tables, which is also getting filled in in another room, behind the general goods store to the right, of us, as well as to the right of the urinal. 

Finally, the waiter comes in with the orders. He is holding a glass of hard drinks, a thumbs up, a strong beer and some other things. The strong beer gets taken away from his hand by someone and he yells out "aye" at him, but shakes his head as he is probably accustomed to that behavior. He then plonks the hard drink down, but before he can add the ice and thumbs up, the guy to my right straight up downs it. The waiter is flabbergasted and says, "arre yaar, at least eat some chakna now, it is early in the morning, start with some prasad" and he shows the complementary sheera and farsan. I am amused and I go cheers to the guy, which makes a bunch of people around us laugh, because we are saying cheers after drinking, or rather drinking before saying cheers like true alcoholics. The guy again thinks for a while, then says cheers. 

It's a jovial mood. There is some song playing on the tv, where a girl has a speedometer on her back. Someone from the neighboring table asks if there is a girl with a speedometer on her back. Someone else says yes. The guy who spoke first asks, "why?". At this point, me and the guy sitting on the stool opposite to me catch each others eyes, we are thinking the same thing at the same time. We both go, loudly, "vroom vroom", then laugh and give each other a high five. While high fiving, he has his middle finger folded over to give in extra punch. 

I take a panorama on my smartphone. I tell everyone to smile when the camera points at them. People ask me to send it to them, and I add everyone to a WhatsApp group called "right now". I send it to them all. While using the smartphones, I can see the phone numbers as well, they all start with a +91. Everyone is pleased with the panorama. My drink comes in. I drink it and wake up. 

Dream Diary High School games edition

This one involved playing a game in high school, where I got really angry with the whole class for playing a game three times in free period, but never really understanding the rules and messing up the game each time. Within the Dreamiverse, there were multiple games that had been inspired from each other. There was a game known as Red vs Blue, and also a name known as Grey Death. The one we were playing was similar to Werewolf in that it had a lot of roles, but here are some I remember: 

Princess 

Occultist

Necromancer

Capitalist 

Mason

Frontiersman 

Scapegoat

Outlaw

Vigilante

Extortionist

Bagman

There was a whole stack of roles from which players got a particular role. There was also two phases, in phase one was the discussion, where everyone had to enact their roles, and phase two was the hunt, where we had to play the roles while finding the baddie, who is the Bagman. It was also possible to kill the Princess and the bad team wins. 

During this dream, saw a physical amalgamation of two people, who behaved like a third person, so it was actually mixture of 3 people. Also saw my high school English teacher, who came in for class and asked what everyone was doing, and asked me why I was angry. I said it was because nobody played the second phase properly. She said that to counter the problem, in the original version of the game, the Capitalist, which was the most powerful role in the game, lost their role if they did not use their powers properly, progressively devolving to the less powerful available roles in the stack, while the next most powerful role got to step up to being the Capitalist. 

Now I want to make a game like this! The rough requirements are: 

1) Long list of roles. Abilities should be flexible enough for the creation of new roles. 

2) The roles have to be ranked in terms of strength. 

3) There are two teams. 

4) It may be possible to be assigned new roles and switch teams through the play-through. 

5) There are two phases. 

5) Roles are from medieval times and the Wild West. 

PS: I am really happy to be having such well fleshed out dreams again! 

PPS: Dreaming makes me hungry. 

Losing respect of shopkeeper

 We all know that expression from the shopkeeper when making the choice of a product and negotiating the price. That look of disappointment you see when you know you have gotten a female grandchild, or said female grandchild is opting for an intercaste love marriage. 

In Mumbai, you get that expression when going for the cheaper of two options, say an original Apple adapter and cable and a fake one, and you just chose the fake one. 

In Delhi though, things are different, you get that expression when you go for the more expensive option! Or, if you surprise the shopkeeper by not bargaining! You gain respect by going for the cheaper option. Needed a type-c adapter, instead went for a type-c cable that I could use with any USB drive. Despite perhaps getting a lower margin, shopkeeper was happy with, and understood my choice, and threw in a 50 bucks discount over the MRP of 250 on the adapter. He did not give me any discount on the adapter, which had an MRP of 800. 

Reminds me of another time, during my first few days here, when I had not learned to bargain yet. It was the first time I was getting tissues and toilet paper. The MRP of everything was 150. When I gave the shopkeeper 150 bucks, he waved the money at two other women customers and said, "look at this sir brother here, paying 150 rupees for goods that are worth 50". He felt bad taking the money that was printed on the package. The women also teased me saying you give the money and discount what we want to buy. 

Since then I have learned to bargain for everything in Delhi. 30 rupee string to make sure spectacles don't fall off can be brought down to 20. The only fixed prices are the share rickshaw rides and the metro fares. 

So the first time I got an extension cable it cost me 750 bucks, as per MRP. I got two more from the same guy, and the discount came down to 350, once I became a regular customer. Basically in Delhi, all products have boosted MRPs, meant for bargaining. If you don't bargain, you are a royal idiot. Things are not as simple as walk into the store, check the MRP, and pay for it. Start at 1/3rd the price of everything.