Blue Skies
Me and my CJC relief teacher friend, Anisha on a SQ flight!
Love these pottery - I bought many back home!
I don't know why, but at that moment I just felt like taking a picture of this great big vehicle. And I absolutely love how it turns out!
Love their rainbow advertisments! Artistic, yet marketable.
Love this picture too. Street scene, poverty abounds.
They were playing baseball in the middle of NOWHERE. haha dots.
My friends and I were parading in our little room at Jaipur. I also took a couple of such shots. HAHA BUT NO WAY am I subjecting myself to that kind of exposure. hehe.. I know what you guys will say if I do so!
I think she's very pretty.
Washerwoman - an occupation that you can never find in modern-day Singapore.
Barber scene.
At last, the Taj Mahal!
Jump shot.
For those of you who know little about the history behind the Taj - it was built by an infamous Mughal King I believe. Well, this man chopped heads and hands of his enemies easily but he loved his wife dearly. This palace, if you may call it as such, was constructed by him in memory of his beloved wife who I believed, died at childbirth. Later, when he was imprisoned by his son, (yes, it was his son) , it was rumoured that he used to look out of his prison window everyday just to stare at the Taj and be reminded of his wife. Well, it seemed that he died looking at it.
Every colour you see in the Taj was painstaking inscribed. Whcih means to say, no paints whatsoever were used. Instead, as you will see in the picture below, the colours come from that of little jewels and gemstones that have been inscribed, by way of hand into the walls and ceilings. Absolutely stunning.
Anyway, Her tomb is supposedly in the Taj itself. It used to be open to visitors but because vistors have so rudely interrupted her slumber by throwing wishing coins onto her coffin, they have hidden her tomb elsewhere. Sadly, we did not get to see it. WHAT A SHAME.
My nice professor! She is very nice and motherly to me. Extremely intelligent woman.
Us trying to be Mughal princesses.
Love the blue and the ancient looking well.
Busy, busy textile shop!
This is apparently a very famous shop in Agra I believe. Or was it Jaipur? Anyway, many Prime Ministers, Nehru for instance *but i bet you guys don't know who, used to patron this shop.
Similar design to the Taj. Ah, we were at Agra!
Traffic was DANGEROUS. FATAL. YOU GET MY PT.
The Red Fort, Old Delhi.
Our tour guide who told us many gruesome stories of Mughal Kings.
Don't you think that the tiles look so cute? haha...Apparently, retro is in style in India eh.
Introducing the Minister of Textiles ( HAHA i'M SERious)
I bought one of these bags.
Conference session with students from a very prestigous women's college in India. They were considered to be the most intelligent girls in India. All of them stayed in the hostels. Their homes were many, many miles away. I admired their tenacity. Most of them, those that I met anyway seemed to be driven by a powerful self-motivated force to excel. I suppose part of the reason comes from their belief that they were from one of the two world's greatest economies. Well. This may be just be a temporary rainbow. India and China may be growing at an extremely fast pace, but there are very very very serious problems. Not many people know that they are also the 2 most countries with the WORST water scarcity. They, can be comparable to the standards of Sub-saharan Africa. Without water, how rich can they further get?
I wonder at some of their complacence.
If only people would really adopt this...
My friend, Gen has a talent! And that is, she has EXTREMELY flexible fingers! Haha... Does this look like a cobra to you?
In a nutshell, India has been an eye-opener. I've seen many things, heard many stories and witnessed for myself the misery of India's widening income disparity. It is downright shameful that some people live in the lap of luxury, building for themselves 54-storey houses with a dozen servants and a 3-floored garage just to hold their family cars while at the same time, within a couple of miles, there are people who sleep on the pavement. One night, while we were traversing from Jaipur to Agra, I was awakened by noise. I peered out of the window and had a shock of my life. I saw lines and lines of bodies on the pavements. These pavements - if you can even call them that, were only about 1m in width? The temperature had fallen to a mere 10 degrees. Even with a thick jacket on and in the warmth of the bus, I was freezing cold. Yet, these people only had the thinnest jacket, and the hardest floor. Yet, so many bodies were laid across it. For a minute or so, I had thought that they were corpses. But perhaps, they were. Their lives, so ridden by poverty and so perpetuated by the corrupt government officals of India... it was terrible. We in Singapore cannot possibly appreciate the value of our lives until we have truly lived in the shoes of others. I wonder sometimes. What lies ahead? Why the unfairness and the inequity? Recently, my professor talked about a man in India who opposed the salary of one other rich man in India. Why did he do so? Well, because the rich man was earning 27 million rupees in a year. Here comes the blow. That man was paralysed and he could not, in any way possible contribute to the company. Yet, public funds were used to pay him. Immense public funds. Well, his son is the boss of the company..... The injustice of it all never fails to put me into a "thoughtful rage". Food for thought for all you people out there.
