Transferring my Sarson ke Khet blog

I'm transferring my Sarson ke Khet blog from Blogger to WordPress, to take advantage of WP's enhanced feature set and ability to grow into more of a website-like experience in time. I also enjoy the mind-numbingly frustrating WP dashboard! This Blogger site will stay online for a little while, and if I'm happy with WP I'll discontinue this blog in time.

The new Sarson ke Khet blog is available here. Changes to the look of the blog will continue of a while!

I have also created a separate blog for my Delhi Metro posts, called Chasing the Metro, and it already has an all-new metro route map made by me!

Monastery and Pagoda at Sravasti

While at Sravasti I came across this interesting monastery, which I'm assuming was built around the 1950s/60s, and started by people from Korea or Japan. The architecture is a fascinating mix of colonial bungalow, typical residential embellishments from the 50s - which include a mix of watered-down art deco and watered-down modernism, Hindu temple elements, early-Buddhist elements, 'East Asian' pagodas and torans etc etc. I especially love the pagoda made of brick and concrete with an octagonal base that could be part of a government or residential building anywhere in India from that time. The 'temple' at the back is very interesting as well!

Monastery buildings




Pagoda




Temple at the back of the complex






Decorated ventilation/light opening

Sravasti

I got a chance to visit Sravasti, an important site pertaining to the life of Gautam Buddha. Of the ancient remains, there are mostly just plinths and foundations of stupas, temples and monasteries, set up in the centuries following the Buddha's life. He is said to have lived and preached here for over two decades.

I didn't spend much time at Sravasti, so did not get too many details of individual structures etc.

Structures in the Jetavan monastery complex


Ghandha Kuti


Monasteries and temples



















Anathapindika's stupa within the city walls of ancient Sravasti


Reconstructed walls of the stupa, with decorations

Delhi Metro Phase III planned routes map

Google map with updated Delhi Metro phase 3 planned routes. The dark lines are phase 1 & 2 active routes. Lighter lines are planned phase 3 routes. The blue line is the airport express line. Click on the static map below to get to the Google map.

Phase 3 planned routes



The next map shows what the system will look like once phase 3 is complete. The colors on the map match the actual line color-codes (for all known color-codes).

What the system will look like once phase 3 is complete

(Don't Be A) Shoppoholic!!

Driving around Delhi and spotted this billboard at a petrol pump (on Mathura Road, in Nizamuddin). The image looked really familiar and then I realized that it was a picture I had clicked at Dilli Haat's Nature Bazaar a couple of Novembers back! Apparently the billboard is by the Delhi Govt to promote shopping in the city. They obviously got the image from my Flickr account, where the pics are free for download and use as long as the users attribute the original pic to me. This being the govt though, there was no attribution nor any intimation that they were using the pic. Oh well! I still got a kick of seeing one of my work on a billboard!

The billboard


Close up


And the original image



Thankfully the image they've put up is one of shopping for fabric in Dilli Haat, and not, for instance, jewellery at some fancy Delhi zevar ki dukan! Still, since they used my picture to promote consumption, I feel compelled to a tiny rant on the topic: shop/consume in a way that leads to a more equitable society, not in a way that leads to a more unequal and polarized society!

Cheers!

PS: No idea where they got the spelling for "Shoppoholic" from - obviously they were trying to go for "Shopaholic"! Maybe they conflated shopaholic with the trend (current? past?) to name things "Shoppe" in Delhi/India.