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Published: June 23rd 2008
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entrance to Humayun
Humayun was the second of the Mughal rulers (about 1530-56) and his tomb is in Delhi Hello everyone.
Things are starting to get settled here in Lucknow. I apologize for the lateness of this message, I had no idea it would take this long to set into any sort of regular routine. But anyway, what should I say…(I promise the rest of my posts will not be as long as this)
The journey to arrive first in Delhi then in Lucknow was long (30 hours total spent sitting on planes within a four day period) as I went from Chicago to Boston to DC to Chicago again then to Delhi and finally Lucknow. My two days in Delhi were full of orientation activities, and a highlight would have to be when the gentleman in charge of security for official American diplomatic interests in India spoke to our group about matters related to safe living and travel (“there are terrorists everywhere in India”). He was hilarious, and looked and spoke like he came straight from some suburban American town. I did venture out a bit and visited two remarkable sites: a complex of shrines that houses the graves of the famous poets Mirza Ghalib and Amir Khusraw along with the Sufi spiritual figure Nizam-ud-Din Auliya, and
Humayun's tomb
walking up to the second gate of the tomb the tomb of Mughal ruler Humayun, a structure that many believe the Taj Mahal was based on.
A quick word about the weather—apparently right before we arrived the summer heat was very intense, but now that the monsoon rains have broke things are actually pleasant much of the time. Don’t get me wrong—it is hot (in my house, the temperature is generally 85 or so degrees) but when it rains everything cools off. It is not raining all of the time—maybe once in the morning or afternoon we will get a downpour of rain in a short time, and that will be it.
Arriving in Lucknow, I was first struck by how green and perfectly simple it is as compared to Delhi. And right outside of the airport one is greeted by several cows and water buffaloes grazing in the parking lot greenery. For the first few days we stayed at a guest house that was, well, sort of the dilapidated side of things. The hosts cooked for us and that was great, but I was very afraid to keep using the bathroom after I leaned on the sink and accidentally pulled it away from the wall. Having
the tomb
after the second gate, you are finally there to share a room with three other students full of the same complaints as I had didn’t help matters much! Oh—it was also here that I was at my sickest—lets just say I had a horrible case of gastro-intestinal issues for two days straight. That has cleared up by now thankfully, and things are looking up. But I know you are not reading this to learn about all of my ‘ish since arriving, right?
So I am very happy with the school and the way classes have progressed thus far. Classes are Monday thru Friday from 9 am to 1 pm, and each section generally lasts an hour. The subjects differ from reading a newspaper article, reading a dialogue about buying cloth in the market, listening comprehension, grammar, vocabulary, watching a TV serial and going through the conversation, and free-style conversation about being in Lucknow. My favorite part of the week is when I have ‘personal tutorial’, which is an hour that I am able to have one-on-one conversation with a teacher about any subject I’d like assistance with. Today I had such a tutorial with Sabih, who trained at a renowned Islamic educational institution in Lucknow (nadwat al-ulema).
tomb
sorry, I tried to take a steady picture but this is the best I could do! First we talked about the ideas and writing of Muhammad Iqbal, a famous South Asian Muslim philosopher and poet, and later I told him some of my background and research interests, including a little about my masters thesis on the Muslim American comedians. He was skeptical on the subject of how jokes and Muslims relate to each other, so I promised him next time I would be able to explain all about the project and the comedy. Tomorrow I look forward to another personal tutorial where we will focus on Urdu literature, which is a new genre for me.
So, while it took so long to arrive and so long to be settled in my house for the summer (more on that next time), I’m very happy to be here and very happy to be able to use the skills I’ve been working on the past year with my neighbors, the market sellers, my teachers, and my landlord! More to come later…
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Monkeys
Aidan suggests the names "Han" and "Don" :)