Loveletters

So I owe you one last post about my travels in India. Our Last station was the state of Maharashtra. This was where our friend, my colleague was getting married and grew up. His family were farmers and had just recently moved to the city of Sholapur. For the wedding they had rented a big roofed structure that easily contained 2000 guests. We were always kind of the exotic guests. I realized just how little of german culture my colleague had experienced during his PhD. Not that stuff with the art and architecture, but that culture where you see what people eat and drink, how they sleep and live. Fortunately we had that time with him in India. We were included in all the ceremonies, I got henna on my hands, and we were invited by the dean of the local university to come visit and have a look. Really our Universities are excellent here in Germany.

The best part though was where the groom and his new bride took us on a day trip to visit the countryside where he had grown up. In advance he had always said that the cities are really a lot like europe and the country very different. Of course he knew better. Just a few kilometers away from a city center the people were living in very poor conditions, with running water only from the pump and cooking over a wood fire. It was interesting to see how our host reacted to our inquiries about the way of life. It was somewhere between defiant pride and a little unsureness for such poor conditions. Pride that he had made it, with his fathers support, and unsureness about wether we would censure him.

Life there happens in much closer quarters than here, but if you have to work the fields all day, then you really don`t care too much about privacy and entertainment. You do care about shoes, something rather lacking for most people. Animals kind of run around just like in the cities, but they actually belong to someone and the dogs are dangerous. Their purpose is to protect the family and livestock from the wolves. Not from tigers… anymore.

After those few interessting days in Sholapur, we took the bus a little north to Aurangabad. This is another city that was a political center during the mugal empire. In it the ruler Aurangzeb built a mausoleum that is very nice on its own but looks rather shabby when compared to the Taj Mahal. This invariably happens, because Aurangzeb tried to copy that places style. What is really special though is the Dekkan architecture of the region.

During many thousands of years many religious groups like buddhists, hindu and jain built temples and monastaries directly into the stone of the mountainside. This was then plastered and colored. In this flickr set you can see some pictures I took.

Our last stop was Mumbai, as our plane was to leave from here. It is a city that is very shocking in its englishness. There are big representative vicorian buildings and wide roads. No animals live opnely on the streets and people are constantly in a rush. It was sudden and unexpected. But in the end we were glad to come home.

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