Aimless wanderings in the Egyptian heartland. Part Ten- The ancient labour room

Dendera is not often visited… this is a boon for an enterprising traveler… one… it allows you to visit this site without being accompanied by hordes of tourists… and two… it allows you to interact with simpleton Egyptians…

Visiting such a site can be an eye opener… after seeing Aswan, Luxor… you are exasperated by the pushy nature of people around… Dendera… without any pushy seller or tout is a breath of fresh air.

The temple at Dendera… is not as grand as one that I had seen in Luxor or Aswan… but then here at Dendera… you can just roam around… in peace and tranquility… and enjoy every relief, every work of art… at your own pace… without being reminded by a guide… about the dynasty, which build the monument… about the era when it was built… and the finer aspects of the monument.

I remember, years ago, while visiting Tajmahal… I was stuck with a pushy guide… who was hell bent on giving me all sorts of trivia about the Tajmahal… And despite all those trivia, I just could not connect with the beauty of this great monument… till during my forlorn strides, I came across a small window carved out of a single marble piece… I was overwhelmed by its beauty and artistry.

Beauty and awe needs a personal connection… and no amount of tutoring can bring that.

Dendera is devoted to the deity of Hathor…and Isis. I was assisted by a Temple doorman to see the entire place… he could not speak English… and I could, but partly understand his Arabic. The Saeedi accent is a bit different from the Cairo's accent.

When you enter the place… you are led to a place called Birth Chamber… it is believed that Isis (the Sun God) was born over here… with the times to come… this birth house became a sacred labour-room… expectant mothers of royal lineage were brought to this place to deliver infants. (One could actually see the image of the patron Goddess … a mother in labour… on one of the walls of the Birth House). The Birth house itself is a hall like structure… supported on a number of huge pillars, which are adorned by a number of relief…

Standing in midst of the pillars… all by myself… I sensed a strange fear running down my spine… I could sense a hiatus of thousands of years… labour pains… and religious rituals.

The doorman then took me to a place where there is an underground crypt. I actually went inside a crypt… it ran for about 50 meters and then closed down… the doorman told me that Dendera has several such crypts… most of them closed down… and the one I entered was the smallest and the safest… it appears that these crypts were used by the priests to offer offerings to the deity.

There is nothing beyond the birth house to be seen, inside the building… I came to the first floor… there are some chambers… with diminishing relief. Lack of tourists, it seems, had made Dendera a not-so-well-kept destination.

Outside the building, however, there is a small pond called sacred lake. Sacred lake used to have a huge significance in the Pharaonic rituals. This one is dry… so you can actually take couple of steps down and reach the bottom of the lake… and then imagine this place filled with water… and the crocodiles.

A couple of steps ahead is an interesting place… a old pharaonic temple… which was first converted into a Greeco-Roman temple and then into a Coptic chapel. The signs of all the three religions are very much visible in the temple. It signifies… the dramatic and gradual changeover the Egyptian civilization underwent. People have always questioned what happened to the great Pharaonic civilizations…. Answer perhaps lies over here… great civilizations don’t die… they mutate… and then form another civilization…. We sitting at today's vantage point… view number of years as mere numbers… but forget the power of time… about how long a year is… how long a decade is… how long a century is… and how long a millennium is. Similar such questions are often raised about the great Harappan civilization… where did it disappear…it might not have disappeared at all… it could have mutated… over 2500 years… 2500 years is a long time… it’s the time duration between the Gupta period… and today's India…. it is like asking… why all of a sudden the great Hindu kingdom transformed into a secular state… hahaha

While coming out of Dendera… a girl beckoned me… a beautiful Egyptian girl… she asked me for the water bottle I was carrying. I gave it to her… she thanked me and asked where I was from… I told her that I am from India… she smiled and said Aishwarya Rai…. This was the second time… I was hearing Aishwarya's name… she is on the way to become a global celebrity.

My next stop was going to be Balyana…. I retraced my steps… went back to the main road… and then to the bus stand… overlooking the Nile… Nile is at its most beautiful facet… in this part of Egypt…. I took a service taxi to Balyana… to the most magnificent Abydos.

En route… the taxi hit a dog… it died… and the taxi stopped for almost 10-15 minutes… In the Egyptian culture dog is not a very important animal… for us Indian it is a very important animal… I thought it was inauspicious… and how inauspicious it was… unfolded in few hours…

I landed at Balyana… it was about noon time… I tried searching for Yousuf… but couldn’t find him… then met a policeman and asked for the directions of Abydos…

Abydos is located a few kilometers from the mainroad… one needs to take another taxi to reach Abydos… I took it… to reach a place that seemed to be quite touristy…

Abydos unlike Dendera… sees a number of tourists coming from either Luxor on guided tours (these tours don’t come to Dendera) or on a guided tour from Assiyut, the third largest Egyptian city and my next stop.

I was ready to enter the Abydos… but had a problem.

Amidst the stars

I am in Allahabad these days… my home town...

Having lived in mega cities of Bombay, Delhi and Cairo… life in Allahabad appears to be boring… more so when… I don’t have a internet connection… when I am stranded in a city that barely has 6-8 hours of electricity supply… when there is no friend or foe remaining… and when my wife and son are in Delhi…

So yesterday I decided to go to the Anand Bhawan (the building of happiness)…

Anand Bhawan was the ancestral house of India’s first family… the Nehru-Gandhi family. India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was born in Allahabad… in the Anand Bhawan… then Indira Gandhi too was born is this same place.

Today, the place has been converted into a museum and houses a number of memories of the era bygone. A part of the building, called Swaraj Bhawan (the building of independence)… has been converted into a children activity centre. Every summers, couple of hundred kids from all over Allahabad join the center and learn… painting, photography, pottery, carpentry and what not… I remember, that when I was a kid… I used to go to Swaraj Bhawan and spend time reading comics and magazine… (I was first introduced to “Misha” the children magazine published by Mir Publishers of erstwhile Soviet Union… over there)… I also tried my hands at painting… and pottery… (In fact, there was a time when I could make clay pots, cups and saucers… may be one day I would relearn it all)

The museum… is a small one and yet engrossing. Every time, I go there I return with some thought to ponder over. This time while walking through the library of Nehru… I saw a book written by Veer Savarkar… on the “First War of Indian Independence”… it was an eye opener… a person like Nehru… a fiercely secular person… whose credentials cannot be challenged by any arm-chair secularist of the era we live in… chose to read Savarkar… whose basic philosophy was about creating a Hindu state. Now what does that mean… it means that Nehru was not rabidly opposed to any idea… and studied every idea, researched every idea… before forming his world view…. Much unlike… a number of pseudo intellectuals (Mostly leftist) of India… who detest the very mention of any rightist literature. The greatness of Nehru and his liberal pursuit of knowledge should be a lesson for them all.

Then there was a photographic exhibition going on… it had a photo of Nehru with Shankar… the great cartoonist… I am told both were good friends. Shankar was also a collector of dolls… he collected more than 2000 dolls from various countries in the world… and finally created a museum of dolls- called Shankar Doll Museum… located in Delhi, it is one of its kind.

A little ahead was a book shop… I remember last time when I visited (and that was about 15 years ago)… the shop used to sell books from National Book Trust… (NBT publishes a number of informative children books)… this time, however, most of the books were very very superficial… I asked the book-owner… what happened to those cheap and informative NBT books… he smiled… there are no takers…highly metaphoric… today there are no takers for the liberal humanist traditions of Nehru and Gandhi too.

Nevertheless, I bought “My experiments with truth” for nth time in my life… I have never had enough of this book… the message of this book is profound… it must be one of the two most profound books I have ever read… the other being “An autobiography of a Yogi”.

A couple of steps away from this place is the Jawahar Planetarium…. It was one of the first Planetariums to be built in India… first was in Kolkata and this was the second… built with the help of Soviet Union… it had delighted generations and generations of Allahabadites.

During my childhood, I used to regularly go there… I couldn’t understand much of it… but I was dazed by the sight of stars all around… and the air-conditioned environment inside. Going there was a picnic… of sorts.

I made up my mind to see a show over there… the show turned out to be a pleasant surprise… there were a number of kids from a local school that turned up to see the show. It was fascinating to see their enthusiasm to know about the cosmos around.

The Planetarium has two machines… one which gives a person’s weight on moon and one that gives a person’s weight in Jupiter… I remember… it used to be a source of mirth for us…imagine weighing just 7 kgs or weighing 700 kgs… that is the kind of weights that weighing machine used to give us.

I bought a solar clock for 10 rupees… today it was cloudy… I will try to use it tomorrow and smile… for I would unravel my childhood yet again with it.

The show was on stars… and how they are born…. Before that the show gave us primer on the movement of the stars… I could understand how zodiac signs are decided…

Then the discussion shifted to nebulae, to stars, to white dwarfs and to black holes… in half an hour show… I saw it all…

It’s strange but true… having read books like… Big Bang, A Brief History of Almost Everything, A brief history of Time, Cosmos… I still could learn something new from that rudimentary children star show…

I learnt one more thing… never close your eyes when some knowledge is being disbursed… howsoever elementary….

Ramadan Kareem

Ramadan Kareem….

I must have seen 30 Ramadans before I arrived in Cairo… at least 30… I was born on an Eid-ul-Fitr, just after a Ramadan.

To me Ramadan in India… was a passive thing… that happened to Muslims… though; it meant that after the Ramadan would be Eid… when I can go to the houses of my Muslim friends and have a bowlful of delicious "siwai"- dipped in molasses. The taste and aroma of the siwai was absolutely heavenly… it was the oriental meeting with the Arab… Arabs, too, make something like siwai… but often it is not dipped in molasses… when that dish came to India… perhaps, somebody invented siwai dipped in molasses… and as they say the rest was history… today Eid-ul-Fitr is often referred as "Siwaiyon wali Eid" that is the Eid in which siwai is cooked… or referred to as Mithee Eid… the sweet Eid.

When I was about 16, I befriended a Muslim friend… who went on to become one of my best friends… his association made me a bit more involved in the process of Ramadan and Eid…

However it took Egypt… to engulf me with the spirit of Ramadan.

There is something magical about Ramadans in Egypt… if you meet somebody… he greets you with a Ramadan Kareem… and then you reply… Allahu-Akram. (Literally translated… Ramadan is benevolent and you reply that God is the most benevolent).

Everybody fasts and feasts during Ramadan… everybody. From the rich to the poor … from the elderly to the young … and that I think displays the egalitarian message of Islam.

During the second year of my stay in Egypt, I tried fasting… in fact I did it for four days (no big achievement, people tend to fast for 30 to 31 days at a stretch)… it was difficult… waking up in the morning and having something… my wife was not around, so I didn’t have anybody to cook for me… and I being a lethargic cook could only make some cheese sandwich for myself…

Anyway… let's get down to the unique features of an Egyptian Ramadan… and as a disclaimer, let me confess that I haven’t seen any other Muslim country so as to say that Egyptian Ramadan is unique… I haven’t even lived in Indian Muslim localities so as to compare Egypt to India.

The day I woke up in the morning to take the pre-dawn breakfast… I heard a drum beat… the sound grew larger and larger… and then fainter and fainter… somebody was passing by my street beating the drum…. It is a unique feature of Egyptian Ramadan… a drummer, who alarms people, wakes them up to have their pre-dawn meal…

For most of the people… a pre-dawn meal is a lavish affair… but for many others it’s a modest affair… they tend to quote from the life of the Prophet, who lived a modest life… and from a purely medical point of view, I am told, the latter are correct.

People generally go to sleep after having their pre-dawn meal…

They wake up again at around 9 and then there is a mad scramble to reach their places of work… a very very mad scramble… tempers runs high… I have seen occasional fights and altercations during the first few days of the Ramadan… they tend to become fewer and fewer, with the passage of time…

Somebody told me… that Ramadan is a test… God wants to test the patience and devotion of the people… and he gives them the strength to go through the ordeal of this one month.

During the Ramadan days… the restaurant are empty… though Egyptians don’t mind people eating in front of them… but it is often advisable and considerate that one should refrain from eating in front of a fasting Muslim. I refrained.

It is said that the essence of Ramadan is to feel the pain of hunger… and to avoid gluttony… according to a teaching… the food for 2 people is enough for 3 and the food for 3 is enough for 4… it is a noble thought, indeed. Probably this is the reason… every religion has prescribed one form of fasting or the other. Fasting cleanses your system… gives you empathy towards the poor… and also builds your patience levels.

And then towards the evening… there is another mad scramble to reach homes… to have a breakfast together… among the near and dear ones… this time of the day is often considered very important. People don’t want to miss being close to their family members during this time.

And even if one is stuck… you would find people offering others dates, food plates. It’s a bonanza time for the poor… all the big hotels of the city offer free buffet at this time of the day… I am witness to one of them… the Marriot in Zamalek… whose buffest is considered out of this world… and often even not so poor line up to have a taste of it.

Around this time… all the streets are full with tables and chairs… and people are offered food… best they can have, ever. In a way… it is a time… when poor actually get good food.

And then there are beautiful decorations.... tents… one glimpse of them and you would think that you have entered a festivity zone.

On the lighter side… I realized that the number of marriages suddenly jump manifolds just after the Ramadan… I asked if there was any religious significance of this… (In Hinduism, certain days are considered auspicious for marriage)… my friend laughed. He reminded me that during Ramadan days… one not only refrains from food… but also sex.

Ramadan in Egypt was a unique experience… it made me feel a part of the tradition despite being a non-Muslim.

Of Robots and Humans

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