January 16th - Delhi (Qutub Minar, Birla House)

Qutub Minar


Meher Baba at Qutub Minar

This was our first sacred site visit for the entire group. We mixed with all the school children and tried to get our group dynamic going. They were much more disciplined than we were. Although they were louder, we were not walking hand-in-hand and following our teacher!

I personnally was really looking forward to that visit to see what was awaiting us for the 2 following weeks and I was only disappointed by the fact that we didn't have much time to stay longer.

I remember that I was amused because the story around Qutub Minar really reminded me of a church back home: taking the bricks from the old temple to build a new one. This is more or less what happened to a beautiful church in Brittany by the ocean. After the French revolution came the loss of powers for the clergy. Consequently, many parts of the church were destroyed by locals who stole the bricks to build their own houses. It now lays in ruins.

Destroying to create... Nothing new under the sun.

I lost my concentration when I saw this woman walk by (don't worry, Yuri). I was still very very new to India and my eyes were still used to the european winter color palette: grey and black. Seeing such beautiful and bright colors surrounding me definitely contributed to bringing the site back to life to some extent, thus making it easier to portray what our guide was telling us.

This is Gorov, our guide for the day. His name means "respect". I understood his name suited him well after I started talking to him! He was very dynamic, very interesting and...respectful!

After the first repetition of 'Allah' took place at Qutub Minar, some noticed that he left, thinking that he might have been scared of what he had just seen. Once we got back on the bus, he came to me and asked :
'So what exactly is your sect?' Yuri and Katheryn were around me and started answering before me: 'This is not a sect'.
So I then proceeded to explain basically how anyone was free to do what they wanted and that one of Meher Baba's most famous quotes was that he had not come to create a new religion but to revivify the old ones.
It was actually very easy to talk about it with him because, for some reason, he had already come to me earlier in the morning saying: 'There is only one god that many religions approach differently'. So I insisted on the fact that our group work was sharing the exact same base belief.

Some time passed and he got very talkative and interesting, as a guide can be. I liked his visual explanation of god: "God is like a gigantic magnet on top of a board. We all are underneath that board, behaving like very small magnets, thus heavily influenced and attracted by the interaction, the magnetism. We can't see it but it guides us.'

-Aurélien

Birla House





Gandhi's last steps.



Gandhi's assasination spot.

The photo on the left has zero artistic value, Brice and I were just intrigued to see the workers taking a short pause to take a picture of them in front of the statue of Gandhi. They looked like they did not want to be noticed while they were doing it and did not see me take their picture at the same time...They're now on the Internet...oh well.

The picture on the right is just one of many examples in which one pupil would come to me when I had my camera in evidence and ask for a picture. Then, another one would notice it and ask for one with his friend. Then another one, etc. Very joyful moments.

Inside where Gandhi was heading to for a prayer.