August 27, 2010

Friday August 27: I went on two field trips today. The first one was to Teen Murti Bhavan for my India since Independence class. It housed the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, now it is a museum about Nehru and the fight for India's independence. There is also a nice library and planetarium. I really liked reading information about Nehru's life, as well as his daughter's life (Indira Gandhi- she was also prime minister of India at one time). There was also information about the creation of India once it became independent as well as information about other people in the fight for independence such as Gandhiji and Bhagat Singh. We also saw his office, the room that he died in and Indira Gandhi's bedroom.

After eating lunch at the cafeteria, which was really good food, as always, we went to Tughlaqabad Fort for my Cities of Delhi class. Tughlaqabad is a ruined fort in Delhi, stretching across 6.5 km, built by Ghiyas-ud-din Tughlaq, the founder of Tughlaq dynasty, of the Delhi Sultanate of India in 1321, which was later abandoned in 1327. Ghias-ud-din was so passionate about his dream fort that he issued a dictate that all labourers in Delhi must work on his fort. Saint Nizamuddin Auliya, a Sufi mystic, got incensed as the work on his well was stopped. The saint uttered a curse which was to resonate throughout history right until today: may it [the fort] remain unoccupied/infertile, or else the herdsmen may live here). This is why there a lot of cows and hardly any people at the Fort and surrounding area. Ghias-ud-din's tomb is also near the Fort. There was a pathway that connected the tomb and the fort but it was broken apart because there is a major highway that one has to cross to get to the Tomb from the Fort.