February 16
We then returned to the shop I mentioned in yesterdays entry to have a quick browse, which turned into about a 2 hour adventure in being sold “Kashmiri style.” There is no such word as no! There was an extraordinary wall hanging there that would fit perfect on the wall of our stairwell where the previous owner had hung a quilt which we still may purchase after doing some research. You can see the piece in the photo album hanging on the far back wall. After a quick lunch in the Hotel Cafe, we hired a car and went out to do a little sightseeing.
Our first stop was the Government Museum complex. which is a series of former British Government Building that have been turned into a collection of Historical Museums. As usual, we were running late and didn’t get to see as much as we would have liked. Today’s photo album contains a few pictures of some of the buildings that comprise the complex. We did get to see a very interesting collection of Archeological Artifacts. There were even some rudimentary tools that were found in the very first Civilizations of India; Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, which existed in the Indus River Valley as early as 2500 BC. Most of the statuary in the exhibit were religious, focusing mostly on Hindu, but there were some excellent examples of Buddhist sculptures as well.
Our next stop was Valluvar Kottam, a memorial to the Tamil Poet/Saint Thiruvalluvar. I am currently doing more research on this individual, and will post more as I find out more. In essence his collected works are called the Thrukkural, which loosely translated means Sacred Couplets. The poem consists of 1333 stanza’s broken into 133 chapters, all dealing with the philosophy of how to live one’s life. I have found one article which gives a much better overview then I can here. The memorial itself consists of an Auditorium, which has a walkway around it’s perimeter containing the entire volume of the Thrukkural carved into wall mounted plaques. This walkway also contains innumerable paintings which provide artistic representation of various couplets from the poem. Unfortunately the lighting was not adequate for capturing these paintings, as flash was required, and they were placed behind glass. The other major feature of the memorial is a sculpture of a temple chariot which stands over 37 meters tall, and depicts a life-sized statue of Thiruvalluvar.
Geetha pointed out that the walkway itself is probably the most “secluded” place that young Indian couples can visit… which held true, as this was perhaps the first place where I saw public displays of affection between young couples. It was really cute, oh the things we take for granted in the West! :-)
After our visit to the memorial, we decided to use the rest of our time in the hired car to do a driving tour of the city… Unfortunately, this never happened, as Geetha wanted to stop into a shop to check the pricing of the wall hanging I mentioned way back in the first paragraph of this entry! Well, we were in this shop for well over an hour, and in that time never had a chance to look at the wall hangings! We wound up spending our entire time in the shop looking at Kashmiri Wool Carpets… All of which were pulled from the walls and rolled out onto the floor for our review. We finally picked one and have yet to decide if we will purchase it. I have to admit, I almost walked out of that shop the proud owner of a carpet! If anyone out there reading this has any insight on Kashmir Carpets, or Oriental Carpets in general, please drop us a line so we can ask some questions regarding the pricing/quality! Gorgeous Carpet…
Well late as usual we returned to the hotel with just enough time for us to get ready… time to meet the parents!!! I won’t dwell, but I will say the Geetha’s parents were amazingly gracious, warm and welcoming. We struggled a bit with the language barrier, but even that eroded once we all relaxed a bit. So all is well and moving forward. PHEW. We had a great dinner at Peshawri, a Northwest Indian style restaurant. I ate my entire meal with my fingers and stumble through a few mispronounced words of Tamil, and everyone was happy… Enough said, all is good! (I’d love to say more, but I’m afraid I’d embarrass my very charming Saali, Usha! ;-) )
Well that’s it for today. You’ll notice I’ve added “captions” to the photo album, and be forewarned this one has a lot of images, and I’ve not tested the download times, it may take forever over dialup.