Delhi contemporarily

I've added some new "non-historical" photos of Delhi to my flickr account. There's just a few right now, but more should come in time. Click the image below to check the present ones.

Nature Bazaar at Dilli Haat

A couple of images from the Nov '08 Nature Bazaar at Dilli Haat.

Dilli Haat and Delhi Metro construction


Buying and selling at the Kilmora stall

Chirag Dilli - aerial photo

Chirag Dilli is the next site on my list to visit. I might not get there till late-Dec/Jan since I have other things to do as well (like my actual research!), but get there I will (hopefully!) :)

The settlement of Chirag Dilli grew around the abode and then tomb of a 14th c. Sufi saint by the same name, and later a square protective wall was built around the settlement. The wall is mostly gone now, but the present village of Chirag Dilli still conforms to the square shape. Spiro Kostof was right!!! :P

Chirag Dilli.

Khirki Masjid - aerial photo

An interesting aerial shot of one of the sites I was talking about before - Khirki Masjid. This is a 14th c. mosque that is unusual because much of it is covered, as opposed to having a large central open courtyard. Instead, this has 4 small courtyards with wide "passages" between them. From the sky the shape is pretty interesting, you can see it as the checkered square in the lower left quarter of the photo.

Satpula (the bridge/sluice gate) I had mentioned earlier is in the lower right quarter of the photo, between the road and water body.

Khirki aerial.


Closer up ...

Satpula!

Couldn't resist mentioning one more building from my Jahanpanah excursion (that's the wider site where the two mosques from the previous blog entry are located as well). This might look like a boring old building, but I'm really fascinated with historical buildings that involve water-works, so had to highlight it! Click on the image to go to the set.

Satpula.

Dilli Darshan

Dilli: Delhi
Darshan: Pilgrimage, Visit

I've been visiting Delhi's innumerable (literally!) historic sites and posting images from them on my flickr account. I'm just at the beginning of this "project" (which is not connected with my dissertation research directly, but is a good way to get to know the city better) and go for these visits as and when I can.

I'm using a book titled Delhi: A Hundred Years of Building by Lucy Peck. It's pretty darned comprehensive, and I'm starting from the beginning and progressing chronologically, so have arranged the photos in the same order.

You can click here to go to my "photostream" on flickr.

Flickr allows members to arrange photos into "collections" and "sets". I've made a collection titled Dilli Darshan for this project, and each site I visit is in a sub-collection under the Dilli Darshan collection. Each building at the site has it's own set under these (sub)collections. From my photostream you can go to the Dilli Darshan collection and explore.

Click the images below to go to the sets of two mosques from the latest site I visited.

Begampur Masjid.


Khirki Masjid.

Second attampt at regular blogging!

Hello again! After a long hiatus brought on by alternate bouts of extreme laziness and moderate laziness, and then my computer's hard drive crashing (about a month ago, lost a lot of images!), I'm trying this blog thing again. Lets see how long it lasts!

Out with the old, in with the new!

Photo taken on the eastern edge of Delhi, December 2006.

Biryani take-out in Walgreens Alcohol Swab packaging!

What is the yummy biryani we bought from the local market doing in Walgreens Alcohol Swab packaging? Especially since we don't have a single Walgreens store in India? We thinks Walgreens has outsourced the packaging of their swabs to India somewhere, and the packagers are selling them to other interested parties as well!

What we see here are either surplus packages, or defective packages in some way, or the manufacturers just make some extra to sell, and don't bother removing the Walgreens signage because its too much of a hassle!


Also, note that the packaging is for individual swabs, and so is not cut to the size originally designed for! The aluminum/paper sheets have been cut and made into this size especially for the biryani!

In case you're wondering, the biryani was delicious (and spicy-hot) and the packaging kept it warm for quite a while! Hopefully it was safe to eat!