The Idea of India
asim.rafiqui@gmail.com
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Project Updates: No Words To Describe It Or A Daily Reality That Is Also A Daily Fear, February 6th 2010
There are words to describe an inability to find words. Speechless, dumbstruck, dumbfounded, silent, bereft of speech, tongue-tied, inarticulate, mute, dumb, voiceless, and probably others.
But what words describe when you can’t find images?
And what words describe when you keep missing them?
There are no words really to describe this state of being, and the feelings that [...]
Project Updates: Towards The City Of Illusion & Past The Mists Of Memory, January 31st 2010
It is one of my most vivid childhood memories and it now returns to me with the clarity of a stereopticon as I sit here on cold winter’s dawn on a Delhi railway platform waiting to take the 6:00 am Shatabdi Express to Lucknow.
It is the winter of 1972 and my scout troop, returning from [...]
Project Updates: On The Graves Of History, 28th January 2010
I buy a postcard.
It shows a black and white picture of a large group of local Keralan villagers standing around two tall, confident looking men who clearly do not belong to the local community. The two men, in shirts and pants, look back at the camera with confidence. The villagers however look at the camera [...]
Project Updates: On The Milky Way To A Mosque, January 22nd 2010
The words are beginning to dance in my head, and I can’t stop them from doing so. I am standing at the site of what is purported to be the first mosque built on Indian soil – the Cheraman mosque in the city of Kodungallur, but all that is running through my head is this [...]
Project Updates: The Omnipresent Baba, January 22nd 2010
Baba Farid’s reputation and influence spreads from the regions of Punjab all the way down to the Southern tips of Tamil Nadu.
I visited his main shrine in Pakpattan in what is now Pakistan while pursuing the story of one of the Mumbai attackers Ajmal Kasab
Kasab ironically comes from the land of the people of the [...]
Project Updates: The Trinity Of The Gods, January 14th 2010
The Chandanakudam festival will not begin until December of this year, but I am heading to this small town because it is site of this unique event. The festival is the only known event where Hindus, Muslims and Christians celebrate and perform the festival rituals together, and explicitly take offerings to and receiving blessings from [...]
Project Updates: Where Muslim Warriors Defend & Protect Hindu Gods, January 10th 2010
It is perhaps one of the more unique Hindu pilgrimages in India. Its circuit takes the pilgrims through the domains of two Muslim men – a saint and a warrior, who are considered companions and protectors of the deity Ayyappa.
The shrine to Ayyappa lies at the top of a mountain in Sabarimala, but the pilgrims [...]
Project Update: The Search For The Bent Cross, January 7th 2010
I am searching for the Chapel of the Bent Cross in Cochin’s Matancherry district.
The story goes that in 1635 the Syrian Christians who had forcibly been converted to Roman Catholicism declared their return to their original faith. The Kunan Kurisu Revolt as this is known marked the final divide between the Jacobites and the Catholics. [...]
Breathing Life And Death Into Gods And Men
In the world there are invisible ladders,
leading step by step to the summit of heaven.
There is a different ladder for every group,
a different heaven for every path.
Each one is ignorant of the other’s condition in this wide kingdom which
has no end or beginning.
This [...]