Some Beautiful Minerals from GM Museum of Schio

I like beautifully coloured minerals and I like to learn about ancient beliefs about the power of different minerals. For example, in India, based on people's astrological birth-charts, they are advised to wear certain mineral-stones to build up their positive energies and to counteract the negative influences. 

However, minerals have also played a fundamental role in the human history. In my first post about the  Geo-Mineralogic Museum (GMM) of Schio, their president Alessandro Sella had talked about the mineralogical history of Schio and surroundings starting from the Copper age mines.

This post is about some specific minerals from Schio and its surrounding areas. It also has information about 6 of my favourite exhibits from the GM museum.

Alessandro Sella about local minerals of Schio in the Museum 

I asked Alessandro Sella, president of the to tell me about the exhibits of the local areas around Schio. 

Alessandro: We have samples of the oldest Quartzite rocks present in this area, which are metamorphic rocks (1) primarily composed of quartz. These have more than 300 million years. These can be found in Pasubio valley, Torre Belvicino, Recoaro Terme, etc. They are important because these are the base for all the successive sedimentation leading to our mountains.

Then we have Yohansenite, a mineral found in Monte Civillina in our territory, which is recognised widely. For example, I found references to it in a book in Ottawa.

Around 15 years ago, some of our members, while on an excursion in Monte Trisa in Valle dei Mercanti, came across an old mine-complex, where the rare mineral Laurelite, as well as corkite and lanarkite were found.

We also have the quarries of Pearl-grey Marble in Val Posina along th Astico river, as well as in Ronchetta (in the Pasubio valley). These abandoned quarries were active around mid-18th century, and this marble was used also for the altar of the church in Valle del Pasubio.

Then there is the Sandstone of Val Gardena, which is a sedimentary rock that comes to the surface in the Pasubio valley and Torre Belvicino, cut into round-shaped stone disks with lathe machines, which were used for sharpening knives and scissors, as this sandstone is formed by sand which is rich in quartz, which is one of the toughest stones (7th on the Morse scale). The image below shows quarzite and sandstone specimens in the GM museum. (You can click on all the images for a bigger view) 

We also have the Agate stone (a kind of Chalcedony) found in the Timonchiello torrent which joins Timonchio, and comes down from San Rocco under the Tretto area of Schio. Agate is also a quartz, it is very beautiful stone even if the ones in Schio are not as colourful like the ones found in Brazil.

 

Among the precious stones, not so much in economic terms but in scientific terms, we have Pink Quartz from Campo Grosso. Then we have brucite (magnesium hydroxide) and magnetite (ferrous oxide), both from the pearl-grey marble quarries. We also have zircon (zirconium silicate) found in the caves of Novale. 

Among the minerals from other parts of the world, we have some big and imposing looking Amethyst from Brazil, which is a quartz stone in a shade of violet colour. 

My Personal favourite 6 minerals from GMM

To conclude this presentation of GM Museum of Schio, let me talk about 6 of my personal favourites.

Malachite: In the museum, there are two rocks with Malachite from Namibia with beautiful velvety looking green deposits over white crystals. It is composed of copper carbonate hydroxide. The name comes from Greek and literally means Mallow-green because it has the colour of Mallow leaves. Since ancient times, Malachite was used to produce copper as well as, used as a semi-precious stone. It was also used as a green pigment in paints. 

Xonotlite: The specimen in the museum is from Spagnago, south of Valdagno, not far from Schio. It is an ino-silicate mineral with prismatic or needle like crystals. Xonotlite is a luminescent mineral, producing grey-white florescence in short UV light. I like its creamy and chalky white flower-like appearance. 

Blue Smithsonite: The beautiful turquoise blue rock in the museum is from Sardinia. The zinc containing smithsonite mineral comes in different colours. It was discovered in 1802 by James Smithson, the person who donated money for the creation of the famous Smithsonian museum in the USA. People who believe in powers of crystals, say that it helps to calm the mind and they recommend it for anxiety, depression, low energy and even, shyness.

Iron Pyrite: It is also called Fool’s gold. Schio’s GM museum has different samples of this minerals, which were found when the tunnel connecting Schio and Valdagno was built in the 1990s. It is an iron sulfide mineral, with a metallic brass-yellow hue. Striking against pyrite can produce a spark and in 16-17th centuries, it was used in firearms.

I especially like the sample of reticulate pyrite found near Schio, it looks like a shining lace overlaid on a black rock (in the bottom-right part of the image below - click on the image for a bigger view).

Rhodochrosite: This red coloured manganese carbonate mineral sample in the museum is from Peru. Its name comes from Greek, Rhodo means Red, and Chrosite means coloured. For people who believe in the power of crystals, this stone is good for getting love and compassion and it is supposed to help you get over heart-break.

 Crocoite: The beautiful saffron-red prismatic needle like crystals of Crocoite are from Tasmania in Australia. It is a lead-chromate mineral. Its name comes from the Greek “crokos” which means saffron. It is too delicate for jewellery, while people believing in the power of crystals use it for energy, vitality and detoxification.

 

In Conclusion

If you want to visit the GM Museum in Schio, it is located in the old Cella Barracks on Via Pasubio, not far from the city centre. The museum is open on saturday afternoons from 3 to 7 PM and entrance to the museum is free.

When I had asked Alessandro about the name of Monti d'Oro (Gold mountains) near Schio, he had told me that it was only a legend and gold had never been found in this part of Italy. However, this area is rich in iron pyrite, which is also called Fool's Gold. Looking at the samples found in the Schio-Valdagno tunnel, they do look shiny like gold. Thus, I was thinking that may be the toponym Monti d'Oro had come from pyrite rocks. What do you think?

I also think that apart from the scientific and practical curiosity about rocks and minerals, since ancient times, human beings also associate specific, or even magical, powers with some minerals, and create stories, legends and myths about them. I think that a guided tour of the GM museum, which touches on those myths and legends about the minerals in GM museum would be very interesting.

If you visit this museum, do share your experiences in the comments below. You may also like to check my earlier post about this museum where I had spoken to Alessandro Sella, president of the GM Museum.

***** 

Notes 1. Metamorphic rocks are formed when existing rocks are altered by heat, pressure, or chemical reactions deep within the Earth which changes the rock's mineralogy, texture, and chemical composition.

Geo-Mineralogical Museum of Schio

Schio, in north-east of Italy, has a wonderful little museum about local geology and minerals of the surrounding areas. It is hosted in the stable buildings of the old Cella military barracks, not far from the city centre. The Geo-Mineralogical (GM) Museum has free entrance and is open on Saturday afternoons, when the volunteers of the local Geo-Mineralogical Association (GMA) can guide you its collections.

Recently, I had an opportunity to visit the museum and to talk to Alessandro Sella, the president of Schio’s GMA. (The image below shows the museum entrance - you can click on all the images for a bigger view)

This first part of my blogpost is about my talk with Alessandro. A second part of this post will focus on some of the exhibits from the museum. Finally, there should be a third part, focusing on the contributions of Pietro Maraschin, a 18th century geologist from Schio.

Let me start this post with a brief history of the building which hosts the museum.

Cella Military Barracks: Brief History

These barracks were built in the second half of nineteenth century and functioned till the end of second world war. In September 1943, when Italy asked for armistice, it was hosting the 57th Infantry Regiment. It was attacked and occupied by the German soldiers, who used it for their troops as well as a prison for the partisans.

In 1945, when Germany lost the war, on 29th April, the German troops stationed in Alto Vicentino gathered in its courtyard and left for Austria through the Fugazze pass on the Pasubio mountains.

The old barracks were bought by the municipality of Schio and the old stables were renovated. These now hold the Geo-Mineralogical museum as well as the offices of Association IV November, involved in historical research, especially about the first world war.

Pietro Maraschin Exhibition

Though I knew that there was this GM museum in Schio, I had never been to it.

I learned about it in an exhibition on Pietro Maraschin organised by the museum in collaboration with local schools. He was an amateur geologist known for his mineralogical studies in Schio. That exhibition was an opportunity to know more about some of the local toponyms and their links with geology and history. It was also an opportunity to see some of the exhibits from the GM museum.

The image below shows the inauguration of this exhibition (click for a bigger view). Thus, I decided to visit the museum and asked Alessandro for an interview.

 Talking to Alessandro Sella, President of  the GM Museum

 Q: Alessandro, how did you develop an interest in geology and mineralogy? 
 

Alessandro: I was always passionate about natural sciences, I loved studying them at high school and university levels. I never lost that passion and thus even if I work in another area (as a product quality manager), I continue to be active in this area in my free time. I deeply love Schio and its surroundings, I was born here. (Alessandro Sella, left)

Ever since I was a child, I was very curious about places like the Pasubio Valley and the little Dolomite mountains. I wanted to know why a rock was dark and another was white, how were they formed, why do certain plants grow only in one area and not in another, why some animals live here and not others, and so on. About ten years ago, I became associated with the GM museum and I am its president for the last 6-7 years. My aim is that our little museum should remain alive and active. It is a private museum, maintained by the work of all the volunteers of our association called MUSA and the GM group of Schio. I feel that this museum is important because it narrates the natural and geological history of this area.

This area known as Recoarese (area around Schio which covers Recoaro, Pasubio & Leogra Valley, Astico valley up to Posina and Laghi), is important because it is the southern most part of the Alps which have an outcropping of crystalline basement, which is a metamorphic formation, more than 300 million years old, on which different geological layers are located. Our museum exhibits showcase this big local geological and mineralogical diversity. At the same time, we have a lot of geological and mineralogical samples from other parts of the world, all the continents are represented here.

Q: Ancient humans have a long history mineralogical knowledge and discoveries. How was the situation in this part of the world?

Alessandro: In the Leogra valley, the area known as Valle dei Mercanti (Merchants’ valley), has traces of human occupation from the copper-age. They were using this metal because the rocks in that area have copper.

More recently, during the reign of the Venice republic (Serenissima) this area was known as a metal-district for the extraction of zinc, lead, copper, iron and even silver. For example in the Tretto area of Schio, around the area of the St. Patrick’s well (Pozzo di San Patrizio), there used to be extraction of silver, used for minting money. As the stores of silver were exhausted, the mines were abandoned.

From 1000 CE till medieval periods, groups of persons from Tyrol and lower-Bavaria regions, were invited by the local Bishops, to come and settle in the Leogra valley, as they had the necessary skills for fine wood work as well as for mining. These Germanic groups were called Cimbrians (Cimbri), literally, ‘good carpenters’. Many locations and family names of this area carry the traces of this immigration even today.

Then around the end of 18th century till the end of the second world, there was a new phase of mineral extraction in this area.

Finally, an important extraction was of Caolino, a special clay formed from alteration of volcanic rocks formed from ancient volcanic eruptions, in this area, which was used for a different kind of industrial development. It was linked with production of porcelain, ceramics and paper-industry, which were active till early 1980s.

Q: Tell us about the origins of this museum.

Alessandro: Schio’s mineralogical group was formed in 1973 by persons like Prof. Luciano de Zen, Girolamo Zamperetti, and many other friends. They were all passionate about geology and mineralogy. The group changed different locations along the years and started putting together some exhibit boxes to showcase their first collections of the materials made during their walks and excursions in the area. In the year 2000, the group was given some space in the basement of the old primary school building in Magre, where the first exposition-room was started.

The present location in the old Cella barracks was inaugurated in 2013, and it is no longer just an exposition room, it is a proper museum.

Q: Earlier you spoke about the valley of merchants in Pieve. It also has Monti d’oro (Gold mountains). Did they really find gold there? 

Alessandro: That is just a legend. It was an important area for different metals, as I have explained, starting with copper and iron. There are stories about finding gold there, but they are just stories. In more recent times, there was an article about finding a rock containing an iron-mineral, where they have found traces of gold, but it did not have any gold deposits.

Q: The area around Arsiero called Laghi is called Val di Ferro (Iron valley), did they have iron in that area?

Alessandro: If you go towards Valdastico, there is a place called Fusine, on the banks of the Astico river, where they did have smelting of iron (from the verb ‘fucinare’) found in that area, and used the water-energy of Astico river for this purpose. We have also found signs of Ematite (iron mineral) extracted in Valle dei Mercanti, which was taken to Fusine for smelting of iron.

Q: Tell me about the different collections in this museum.

Alessandro: The mineralogical collectors can collect materials from different parts of the world or they may limit themselves to some specific geographical areas, such as our collection of the minerals of Alto Vicentino. Some collectors focus on some specific kinds of minerals, for example, there are persons who collect only Agate stone, known for its colour bands. Personally I am interested in the geological aspects and minerals of our own geographical area.

Among the collections of our museum is that of Alessandro de Grandis, one of the founders of this museum, that is given on loan to us by his son Ugo.

There have been many donations as well, including one from Mrs. dalla Fina, who was a traveller, geologist and speleologist with geological and mineralogical samples from different parts of the world. She left all her writings and materials to the museum in her testament.

These persons leave their collections not just to us in the association and to the museum, but to all the population.

Q: Tell me something about the different aspects of the minerals which are studied.

Alessandro: Each mineral has a geometrical aspect, which is about how that mineral is built. Another is the aspect about its chemical composition.

When I talk to children about it, I explain that we can look at the ingredients of a mineral and then, we also need to look at the dress or the form those ingredients take which determines what kind of mineral it is going to create.

Knowing both, the form and the composition, of these is fundamental for classifying the different minerals. Every mineral must have a name, a family name and the location where it is found, for its scientific and naturalistic value, which can be very different from its economic value.

Q: If you are shown a piece of rock, looking at its colours and form, can you tell its composition?

Alessandro: Generally speaking yes, eventually with the help of some of our members. We have these stereo-microscopes here for looking at the rocks under the microscope. We also have different volumes of books about geology and mineralogy. With the help of these, we can identify them by looking at their crystals, their colours, hardness, etc. and classify them.

Bigger laboratories can do spectre-photometric tests to analyse the spectrum of different minerals in a sample.

Q: We can now create molecules of different chemicals, such as those used as medicines, in the laboratory. Can we do similar creation of natural elements? For example, can we create iron in the laboratory?

Alessandro: It is a difficult question. I am not conversant with some of the new technologies like Nanotech, but I don’t think that we can create elements. For example, thinking of all the ‘rare earths’ elements used for technology such as microchips, whose mining is much in the news and is associated with difficult international situations, because we can’t just create them. For the time, we need to focus on recycling and reuse.

Conclusions

Thanks to Alessandro for sharing his knowledge and being patient in answering my questions.

The second part of this post will look at some of the interesting exhibits from Schio's GM Museum.

*****  

Writing About Heartbreak

Chinese-American author Yiyun Li has written a new book, "Things in Nature Merely Grow", about the suicide of her younger son, James. This post is about this book.

 

Yiyun Li

About twenty years ago I had encountered Yiyun Li, through her first book, "A Thusand Years of Prayers". That book had immediately captured me. It has her stories about Chinese lives, both in China, as well as in the diaspora, especially in the USA.

Yiyun Li had arrived in the USA as a science student in 1996. While doing a PhD in immunology, she decided that she was actually interested in writing. In 2005, she completed a masters in fine arts and in that same year, her first book, "A Thousand Years of Prayers" came out.

When I had read her first book, it was the time when I used to dream of giving up my job and to dedicate the remaining years of my life to writing. When I had read about her, I was really envious. She had chosen the path that she really wanted. She also had a talent for entering people's minds and to make them come alive through her words, and, her writing voice was distinctive, different from other American and European writers.

I think that many years ago, I had already written about her in one my blogs. Over the past twenty years, I have read some of her other books.

Things in Nature Merely Grow

However, it is her latest book, "Things in Nature Merely Grow", which has prompted this post. In this book, she writes about the deaths of her two sons, both by suicide.

This is how she tells about it in the first chapter of her book: "There is no good way to state these facts, which must be acknowledged before I go on with this book. My husband and I had two children and lost them both: Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, James in 2024, at nineteen. Both chose suicide, and both died not far from home; James near Princeton Station, Vincent near Princeton Junction." 

For her first son, she had already written a fiction-memoir, "Where Reasons End". It is composed of 16 chapters, one for each year of his life, and is about the dialogue between a mother and her dead son.

Her latest book, "Things in Nature Merely Grow", is both heart-breaking and exquisitely written. In an interview for The Guardian about this book, it says, "For months after his death, Li worried that she lacked the vocabulary to write about James, but then she began writing and realised “of course I could do this, this is what I do”. Things in Nature Merely Grow, her memoir of losing her sons, is resolutely unsentimental, and yet it might wind you with its emotional force. She wrote it in less than two months. Often people ask her if writing the book was cathartic. “No, never!” she replies. If it offered solace, “it was the solace of thinking”. “When I was writing the book it felt like I was at the centre of a hurricane. The eye of the hurricane is the stillest place. It’s very quiet and clear,” she says. And then she finished writing, and she stepped back into the hurricane. “My life goes on as a very strange woman,” she tells me, strange because her losses are so extreme: “Going out, people will always look at me and say, ‘Poor woman’." 

I can vouch for the emotional force of her writing, for I cried many times while reading it. In the interview, she says, “My children were not my burden. My sadness is not my burden.”

I wonder what kind of mental detachment would be needed to continue to be a writer, and to talk about it in interviews, so soon after a tragedy? As a parent, to be able to do it, perhaps it would need a kind of dissociation, a kind of schizophrenia, to be able to go on?

For example, in the following paragraph, she writes about personal objects of her sons - "Objects don’t die. Their journeys in this physical world, up to a certain point, are parallel to the trajectories of the humans to whom the objects belong. Then comes the moment when the separation happens. Vincent’s phone became a phone, James’s backpack, a backpack. They became objective objects, left behind in strangers’ hands."

To Conclude

Let me conclude this post with another paragraph from her book: "Learning a new alphabet—for weeks and months I’ve held on to that notion. James was a different child than Vincent, and James’s death left us in a different place than Vincent’s death. And yet a new alphabet can only be symbolic, as I have but this old language to work with. Words tend to take on a flabbiness or a staleness after a catastrophe, but if one has to live with the extremity of losing two children, an imperfect and ineffective language is but a minor misfortune.

There is no good way to say this: words fall short." 

While I read her book, I feel as if her writing is like a pencil-sharpner, which she runs around herself, cuts her own surface and core, and then wields herself like a knife to carve the words covered with blood.  

***

The 100 Sarees of Ms Roy

You never know where an online research will take you. Recently, an online search took me to a website where Indian women talk about their sarees and their memories linked to them. I spent a few hours reading about different kinds of saree-textiles, their designs and traditional weavings.

At the end, I have a new understanding about the kind of relationship persons can have with textiles, about which I had not thought earlier. It also brought back some memories from my childhood about my mother's sarees.

Let me start this by telling you about how I landed on that website.

Starting from Sonali Sen Roy

I was looking for information about the childhood of Sonali Sen Roy, who had become famous during the 1950s for her story with the Italian film director Roberto Rossellini.

Sonali was born in Banaras in the British India, her father was a doctor in the United Province and her mother was the elder sister of well-known Indian film maker from the 1950s, Bimal Roy.

The search took me first to Sonali's elder sister, then to her daughters and then to one of her grand-daughters, Ms. Bhattacharya Roy. Some years ago, Ms Roy had taken part in an online challenge of presenting 100 different saris, where she had talked about some of her family stories.

100 Sarees Pact Website

 The 100 Saree Pact website collects the stories of sarees, it describes its mission as, "This blog is an invitation to join and share the magic. Celebrate life, celebrate relationships, celebrate your past, your heritage, your memories, your moments, your connections through saree wearing. Enjoy the stories shared already, be enthralled ! Bring your sarees and their stories out into the world. Let them spread the happiness and positivity that we have all been surrounded with."

100 Sarees of Ms Roy

Ms Roy presented her 100 sarees on this blog during 2015. Her sarees come from different sources - the ones she bought, the one brought as gifts by her husband, the family heirlooms, the ones on loans from aunts and cousins ... Each saree is accompanied by a brief or a long description including some of her family memories.

For example, in one post, she talked about her maternal grand-mother, Sonali's elder sister: "This sari belonged to my Dimma (mother’s mother). She usually wore whites, greys, beige or very light colours. This is one of the few coloured saris I saw her wear, mostly when she went abroad. I lost her when I was still in college and hence a very occasional sari wearer but I did get two of her saris. This sari is special for another reason too. I wore it one of the first times I went out with my (then to-be) husband ..." 

In another post, she talked about the saree worn by her mother for her wedding: "The magenta Benarasi was bought from Indian Silk House. The zari work is exquisite, with three different kinds of butis all over and an intricate border and pallu. Even after almost 40 years, the zari hasn’t lost its sheen. Ma wore it only a couple of times after her wedding though ..."

There was one post, which might have been about Sonali, though she did not specify it: "She was for me a strand of red corals that my mother has always treasured and which I have worn on a couple of occasions. She was for me a letter she wrote to my mother when she lost my father and another she wrote at the time of my wedding, with an alpana-like doodle at the end. She was for me a frantic hunt for a fresco on a hot and humid afternoon in Santiniketan. I never saw her. For me, she lived in the many black and white photographs, and a few more recent ones in colour, from the family album and the many stories I heard about her from Ma and her siblings ..." 

Sarees as Repositories of Weaver-Traditions, Cultures, Memories

I don't have any emotional bond with any of my clothes - I buy most of them in the supermarkets, and when I am tired of them, give away some of them and throw out the others. There is no emotional relationship between me and the clothes. I guess that this would be true for most of us today.

On the other hand, reading about Ms Roy's posts about her sarees, gave me a glimpse of the different weaving traditions, the traditional motifs they use, the festive occasions on which special sarees are worn, the memories associated with them and how some sarees become family heirlooms. Even when they are old and worn out, their borders and embroidered parts may be kept and used for other sarees.

It is a completely different relationship with our clothes, something that we lose when we shift to today's factory made products and the consumer culture.

My Childhood Memories

In our old Delhi house, where we lived in one part and my maternal grand-parents in the other part, every year before the wedding season, a couple of men arrived from Banaras carrying on their heads, silk sarees wrapped in white cotton blankets. I think that they were middlemen and sellers, they did not weave themselves.

I remember standing there with other children, as they showed bright coloured silk-sarees with shimmering and richly embroidered zari borders and Pallus (the end of saree hanging over the shoulders).

Every year some of my aunts or uncles or cousins from the extended family was getting married and thus, the family-women needed new sarees. I remember some of sarees bought by my mother. When they became old, sometimes they were exchanged for pots and pans from another group of women visitors.

In The End

Going through some of Ms. Roy's posts and reading about her stories about specific sarees was a rewarding experience, it made me think of some of my old memories. It also brought out the importance of different textile museums and persons who are trying to conserve the priceless weaving traditions of communities such as sarees, kimonos and other traditional dresses.

Even in Italy, till some decades ago, families had traditions such as knitting, cross-stitching, embroidery and lace-making for their daughters' weddings. We still use some of the heirlooms from my mother-in-law's family at our home.

However, all those things are from the past, and often today's generation is dismissive about them, they would rather buy something new from the supermarket, as I do!

***

Aurangzeb's Tomb

As I read about the Aurangzeb controversy in India, I was reminded of my trip to his tomb in January 2020, just before the Covid pandemic.

I am no fan of Aurangzeb, I think that he was a bigot and perhaps even a psychopath. However, in this post, I want to write about my visit to his tomb and to explain why I think that the idea of destroying or desecrating his tomb is wrong.

At the end, I also want to talk a little bit about India's syncretic Ganga-Jamuni culture in relation to the Aurangzeb controversy.

Visit to Aurangzeb's Grave

I was in Aurangabad and had gone to visit the Ajanta caves. Living abroad, I always feel that I am losing touch with the India of ordinary people, thus, whenever possible, instead of taking cars, I try to travel by the public transport buses.

Coming back from Ajanta, I was sitting in front in the MSRT bus and talking to the driver, when he told me that the bus will pass through Khuldabad, where Aurangzeb was buried in 1707 CE. I told the bus driver to drop me there.

Khuldabad is a little town in the Aurangabad district, a little bigger than a village. The bus dropped me in a crowded market street and when I asked about the Aurangzeb tomb, people pointed to a simple looking mosque in a side street.

I was a little surprised that the Mughal emperor had his tomb in such an insignificant mosque in such an insignificant place.

Inside the mosque, his grave was immediately after the entrance, to the left side. The grave was surrounded by a marble-lattice (sangmarmar ki jaali) enclosure. There was no makbara or a monument, and his grave was just an open strip of ground, exposed to the rain and wind. A tree was planted in it but it seemed to be having difficulties growing.

The board near the grave said that Aurangzeb had died in Ahmadnagar, but was brought here, 130 kms away, because he wanted to be buried near the tomb of the 14th century sufi saint Zainuddin Shirazi. According to his wishes, no monument was built around his grave.

The marble enclosure and floor were made two centuries later by Lord Curzon and the Nizam of Hyderabad.

The Mosque and Dargah of Zainuddin Dawood Husain Shirazi

The structure has different buildings, including the dargah of the sufi saint Zainuddin Shirazi, with his grave covered with a red chadar.

Near the sufi tomb there was a board with a list of 15-18 names starting from Prophet Mohammed  and leading to the name of Zainuddin Shirazi.

The caretaker had explained about that board and how the sufi saint of Irani origins was linked to the Prophet, but I don't remember it. At that time I had thought that I will write about it in my blog but then Covid arrived and I forgot all about it.

Near the saint's tomb, there was also a special niche made in the wall holding some relic or important Islamic symbol from Mecca.

The caretaker had also explained why that relic or symbol was considered holy, but I do not remember it now. Saint's tomb was located a proper makbara.

The mosque was located on the other side, in front of the saint's makbara (image below).

In the courtyard behind the makbara on one side, there were other religious structures, which looked like shrines of some kind. I have forgotten the details about them. You can see them in the image below.

It was a very simple and peaceful place and I could feel its sacredness and spirituality. It was wonderful to sit there and soak in its atmosphere.

How to do Namaz

As a child I grew up in front of a Muslim graveyard and not very far from the big Idgah of old Delhi. I have been to mosques in different countries around the world and I have watched persons doing the prayers (Namaz), but I was not aware of the whole process of how to do Namaz, and its different positions.

Outside this mosque in Khuldabad, I found a board (left) explaining the different positions assumed during namaz, with text in both Urdu and Hindi. I was fascinated by it.

You can see that board in the picture. It makes me think of a set of stretching exercises, somewhat similar to yoga, which means that apart from the religious significance of doing namaz, it might also be good for the body as an exercise. (You can click on the image for a bigger view)

Talks of Destroying Aurangzeb's Tomb

While not being an admirer of Aurangzeb, I do not agree with the idea of destroying or desecrating his tomb, for 2 main reasons:

(1) I think that Aurangzeb paid for his brutality and sins in his own life. He was 89 years old when he died and had been the Mughal emperor for almost fifty years. The last 25 years of his life were spent in the Deccan region of India, fighting different adversaries, especially the Marathas. Imagine spending all your old age, away from your home, fighting different wars, and dying far away from your family and children.

I think that killing other human beings extracts a price from us, it leaves a scar on our soul. The number of soldiers coming back from a war and suffering from PTSD, is one example of this negative impact of violence on ourselves. Imagine killing your brothers and sisters, and imprisoning your father - persons who had loved you and perhaps played with you when you were young. Could he just kill them all ruthlessly without paying a price for it psychologically? What lessons did his own children learn from their father? After being brutal to his father and siblings, did he become afraid of his own wives and children, that they could also kill him?

He sowed the seeds of hate and violence, he reaped the crops of those seeds. Look at his family history - after his death, his son Azam Shah became emperor for only 3 months. Then he, his brother and their children were all killed by another brother, who became the new emperor Bahadur Shah, but he lasted only for 5 years. He was succeeded by his son, who lasted one year and was killed. And their stories of killings go on.

Apart from the killings and destruction of families, Aurangzeb's reign started the decline of the Mughal dynasty and empire, from which they never recovered. Thus, I feel that Aurangzeb paid for his karma in his own life and through his descendents.

(2) I also believe that we can't think of destroying or desecrating sacred places of any religion, also because we have to remain true to ourselves and our beliefs. Personally, I believe in the message of Upanishads, Aham Brahmo Asti, that there is god in each one of us, without any exceptions. 

Aurangzeb's grave is open to the sky. After more than 300 years, I am not sure if you will find his bones. And even if you can find them and dig them out, what will you do to them? Is that going to vindicate you and give you any peace of mind?

Aurangzeb killed many persons, destroyed many temples and religious places, but then I hope that his soul made peace with what he had done and he could forgive himself. I certainly don't think that his actions gave him any happiness. He left behind an inheritance of hate and bloodshed. What would anyone else get today by destroying his grave?

On the other hand, his grave remains as a warning, a place for us to not forget him and to think about his life, about his inheritance and his impact. Hate and violence do not lead to happiness and prosperity, they can only lead to more hate and violence.

India's Syncretic Traditions of Ganga-Jamuni Culture

I grew up surrounded by ideas of living together and loving of different religions and cultures. During my extensive travels in India, I feel that among the ordinary people, those basic ideas of mutual love and respect are still alive today.

The caretaker of Aurangzeb's grave was very generous and kind in taking me around, showing me different parts of the shrines and explaining. I remember sitting with him in the courtyard, talking to him about the changing world and the future of our children and grandchildren, as old men tend to do everywhere. For me, that is the essence of Ganga-Jamuni culture - recognising, respecting and loving our essential humanity.

I feel that today this Ganga-Jamuni culture is under attack not only by the religious hardliners and bigots of the different religions, but also by persons of our civil society when they start differentiating between bigotries - they can only criticise some, and about the others, they prefer to keep quiet, or worse, try to justify, minimise or white-wash them.

 

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If you have read this far, perhaps you would also like to read my ideas about blasphemy (it is in my Hindi blog).

In the picture-credits above, the name of the place has been shown as Khulnabad instead Khuldabad - I regret that. All the pictures are by me.

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Yajnadevam's Indus Valley Script

Reading about the meanings and significance of the figures & inscriptions on Indus Valley seals is one of the enduring areas of my interest. It all started a couple of decades ago when I read some papers by Prof. Maurizio Tosi, head of archaeology department of Bologna university, and one of his researchers, Dennys Frenes. I have already written about it many times, especially in my Hindi blog.

Since then, every time someone claims to have understood those figures and signs from the Indus Valley, I try to read their papers. Most such papers are written by people who are passionate about the subject but do not have formal training to do such analysis.

This post is about a new paper by Bharath Kumar (Yajnadevam) on the deciphering of Indus Valley inscriptions, which seems interesting.

Yajnadevam Paper on Indus Valley Language

The researcher uploaded a 99 pages long paper titled "A cryptanalytic decipherment of the Indus script" on Academia website on 13 Nov. 2024. In the summary of this paper, he explains that through cryptographic analysis, he has found that "Indus script is a proto-abugida segmental" language, which means that it is a writing system that groups consonants and vowels into units.

He also explains that "Indus inscriptions are in grammatically correct post-Vedic Sanskrit" and through his analysis of more than 500 signs, he provides their understandable meanings. He also shows connections between the Indus Valley and the Brahmi scripts.

The Indus Valley alphabet is in allographs, which means that each letter of the alphabet can have some or many variations. I think that developing allographs over long periods and vast territories is to be expected, because there were no printing presses and scripts needed to be copied manually. Sometimes the allographs can be also be made for practical reasons by making conscious changes in the way some letters are written (for example, related to the surface of writing materials).

One difficulty of deciphering Indus Valley inscriptions has been the short number of signs in the Indus Valley seals - the median inscription length is about 5 signs and there are only about 50 inscriptions that are 10 signs or longer.

Yajnadevam explains that the oldest inscriptions are about 6000 years old, while the most recent ones are about 1700 years ago, and among the more recent ones, Indus Valley signs are sometimes mixed with Brahmi script signs. He also mentions a 3500 years old inscription in Belpahar, Odisha (Vikramkhol cave), which is half-way between Indus Valley and Brahmi scripts. About 83% of the inscriptions are from right to left.

Allographs of specific signs can lead to mistakes of 2 kinds - two different signs may be thought of as allograph of same sign; and, allographs of same sign can be interpreted as two different signs.

He underlines similarities between Indus Valley to Gupta period seals, and links them with specific shlokas from the Vedas. For example, he writes, "The contents of the Indus inscriptions are similar to Janapada coins and Gupta-era seals that they resemble. Long seals seem to use a concise Vedic concept as a motto or slogan." At the same time, he looks for origins from other languages such as Sumerian and old Akkadian.

The image below, presents the different allograph variations for some of the alphabet characters from his paper (click on images for a bigger view).

He concludes his paper with the following: "This is the only cryptanalytic decipherment and the only one that uses well-established mathematical models and methods instead of guessing sign values based on their appearance. This decipherment is the only full decipherment and the only one where every sign and every stroke has been resolved, the only one that is programmatically reproducible, the only one where the decipherment can be followed sign-by-sign by the reader ... We also show how the constraints and habits of the Indus script carry on to Brahmi inscriptions of the early historic era." 

The image below, presents his analysis of a standardised Indus Valley alphabet, along with Brahmi and Devnagari alphabets from this paper. You can draw your own conclusions if there are similarities between the 3 alphabets - personally, I am struck by the similarities in the 3 alphabets for different letters. I am also struck by his assertion that this analysis provides meaningful results for the all the epigraphs he has looked at.

In Conclusion

This paper on the decipherment of the Indus Valley script is almost 100 pages long, out of which around 50 pages are descriptions of individuals inscriptions. I do not have the domain-skills needed to judge its scientific validity.

Probably, over the coming months and years, linguists, philologists and experts of Indus Valley civilisation will look at it and decide if his ideas and results make sense. Many years ago, I remember reading a somewhat similar understanding of the Indus Valley seals in a paper by Ms Rekha Rao on Academia, in which she had proposed that the unicorns on the seals were representations of the Vedic priests.

I am not sure how reliable can be papers uploaded on Academia, without being presented on a peer-reviewed journal. I do hope that Mr Bharat Kumar (Yajnadevam) is working on such a paper for a peer-reviewed journal.

We have limited understanding about the languages and cultures of people living under Indus Valley civilisation. It will be good for someone to finally solve this riddle, so that even from the limited seals and inscriptions, we can learn more about that period of India's history.

With AI, many persons have started saying that AI will help us in understanding Indus Valley script. I am not sure that AI has already reached such a level of expertise. However, AI may also help in expanding the findings of researchers and making sense out of them.

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János Géczi - Artist in Schio

János Géczi, the well-known Hungarian writer, poet and artist was in Schio in the beginning of March 2025. Some of his works created during his stay in the city are expected to be a part of Schio's DiCarta Paper-Art Biennale planned for 2026-27.

During his stay in Schio, János was accompanied by his friend and garden-architect, Zsolt Ambrus, who also acted as his translator.

I had an opportunity to meet János on 12th March, and to talk to him about his work. This post is based on that meeting.

Artists in Schio

Though Schio (VI) is a tiny town in the Alpine foothills in the north-east of Italy, it has a vibrant cultural and artistic life. The city has a rich calendar of artistic events including the DiCarta Papermade Biennale organised by the Commune of Schio. These events often bring to the city important artists and opportunities for interacting with them.

The next Papermade Biennale in Schio is being planned for 2026-27 and will be curated by Valeria Bertesina and Roberto Nassi.

János Géczi and His Creative Evolution

János was born on 5 May 1954 in a small town called Monostorpályi in Northern part of Hungary. His family members were mostly peasants and manual workers. He went to a local primary school, which had big classes with around 45 children.

He started writing poetry in the middle school. There, he had a good teacher who thought that he had potential and encouraged him to go to the grammar school for secondary education.

He was able to win a scholarship for the grammar school in Debrecen, where he studied biology. He understood very early that life-sciences and literature (prose and poetry), are two different ways to look at and understand the world and its reality. Thus, all his life he has followed both, the scientific and the literary-artistic paths. While in the school, he also started to explore the writings of important Hungarian writers like Péter Melius Juhász, Mihály Csokonai Vitéz, Fazekas and Diószegi.

After the grammar school, most of his classmates went on to study medicine while Janos went for 5 years to a biology institute, known for its research work. Today, apart from being a university professor and researcher, he is a well-known writer, poet, editor and artist.

During his university years, he became interested in sociological issues around the marginalisation of different groups of people and started to write about it. This was during 1970s when Hungary was under a communist rule - his writings were not appreciated by the authorities and he was told to stop.

For all his life, János has continued to observe and understand the world through those two different lenses, creativity and science, expressing himself through essays, poems and visual poems, fiction, décollage and has won different awards.

You can read English translations of two of his poems (link opens in a new window).

János & His Reflection Diary in 2025

János explained that for whole of 2025 he is participating in a writing exercise in collaboration with a Hungarian newspaper. Every month, a creative person (a poet or a writer or an artist) poses a question to him and every day of that month, he writes a kind of daily diary, reflecting on that question. His diary is published in the newspaper and its website, and after completing a year, it will come out as a book.

I thought that it was an incredible prompt for stimulating creative juices, but it also requires a very strong discipline. Even while his stay in Schio, he continues to write his reflections every day. 

János Géczi as an Artist in Schio

As an artist, János is known for his Décollage work. "Dècollage" is created by tearing-off or removing a piece or a part of a paper or canvas. In that sense, it is opposite of a "Collage", in which we bring together different pieces to create an art.

He works with old public-posters in cities. Those posters are usually pasted one on the top of another, till they become too many and then someone tears all of them off, cleans the space and puts up new posters.

János goes around to collect different layers of posters and then removes parts of each layer so that bits and pieces of the underneath layers can be seen. This mimics what happens in real-life as sometimes posters can tear off and show older posters below, creating shapes, juxtapositions of words, pictures, colours and shapes, as a kind of memento-mori about passage of time and the role of memories.

During his stay in Schio, János has collected many old posters from the public spaces in the city. He said that he liked the pale pinks and and blues that he finds at the back of these posters and his décollage works created in Schio, focus mainly on the different layers seen from the back of the posters.

The room where he was working, had rolled sheets of old posters he had collected from the city, some of them wet because it had been raining in Schio. It also had big containers of glue, which he used to create additional layers of the posters. Once the layers are placed, then he can tear-off some of them, creating the shapes and colours of his artistic geographies.

Compared to some of his works which showed the more vibrant colours and words from the front of the posters, I personally loved his more abstract creations made from the back of the posters, with their pale colours.

Roberto Nassi has asked Janos to also write a poem linked with his artwork for the Biennale, so that both his artistic and literary dimensions are presented together.

In the End

For me, meeting János and Zsolt was also an opportunity to reconnect with Valeria Bertesina, who has been curating the DiCarta Paper-Art Biennials in Schio.

János is of my age and I was trying to imagine his years of growing up in Hungary when it was a part of Soviet influence and to compare them with my growing up in India.

In a way, I find a reflection of my life in his, as like him, I also have my professional doctor-researcher life and a creative life. I was sorry that I could not speak and understand Hungarian, because it would have been much more interesting and enriching to talk and exchange notes about our similarities and differences.

Staying in a small town like Schio, and meeting and talking to interesting creative persons like János, is a wonderful combination, and I feel very lucky to have such opportunities.

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