Delhi Walking Tour - Malviya Nagar Metro Station

The vast network of the Delhi Metro has made it easy to explore different part of the city, that used to feel like far-away places in the past. For example, in the early 1960s when I was a child, I remember going from Old Delhi to the Yamuna river-bank in Okhala with my aunt and cousins, and it was like going on a long journey. Today Okhala is just a stop on the metro, easy to reach.

Recently, while in Delhi for a brief family visit, I had gone to Malviya Nagar metro station. This gave me an opportunity to explore the areas around it. I had only a few hours for this visit but still I managed to walk and see three new places - A Buddhist exhibition in a new structure built among the Rai Pithora Garh ruins; the Khirki Mosque and the KN Art museum (KNM) at the Select City mall.

I will write separately about the art exhibitions at the KNM. This post is about Rai Pithora Garh ruins, the Buddhist exhibition and the Khirki Mosque.

The image below is from the Buddhist exhibition, showing a Kadamba tree and the disciples of Buddha, wearing Kadamba flowers, and paying respects to the mortal remains of Buddha in the casket.

 

The map below shows the areas covered in this walking tour - as you can see, the whole walk is on the Press Enclave road:  (1) Malviya Nagar Metro station; (2) Rai Pithora Garh ruins & cultural Centre are to the west from the metro station; while (3) Khirki mosque and (4) KNM are to east. (click on the images for a bigger view).

 

Ruins of Qila Rai Pithora Garh

Rai Pithora Garh fort was a later addition to the Lal Kot citadel, the first city of Delhi. Lal Kot ruins are located about 2 Kms away to the west, in the Sanjay Van forest in Mehrauli.

Lal Kot (Red Fort) was built by Anang Pal Tomar in the 8th century. Rai Pithora Garh fort was built around 1180 CE under the king Prithvi Raj Chauhan (also known as Rai Pithora).

In 1191, Chauhan was attacked by Muhammad Ghori from west Afghanistan, but Prithviraj was able to repel this attack. A year later, Ghori returned with a bigger army and the two sides met in Tarain (today known as Taraori in Karnal district, more than 100 Km from Delhi). This time, Ghori won the battle and killed Chauhan.

After the war with Chauhan, Ghori also attacked and won Kannauj, around 100 Km east of Agra. Thus, in that period, around 10-11th century CE, probably Lal Kot-Pithora areas and Kannauj were the two major cities in central north India. 

Ghori gave the command of Pithora Garh to his Turkish slave Qutb-ud-din Aibak, and of the eastern areas in Kannauj  to another Turkish slave Bakhtiyar Khalji, and retreated to the west of Sindhu river.

After the assassination of Ghori in 1206, Aibak declared independence, and laid the foundations of Delhi Sultanat by the Slave Dynasty. Aibak also started the construction of Qutab Minar, not very far from Lal Kot and the ancient Yogmaya temple.

Khalji expanded his kingdom towards the east of Kannauj, and was involved in the burning of the Buddhist learning centre in Nalanda.

 

Today, a park has been built around the ruins of the old walls of Rai Pithora fort. In the centre of the park, a round Cultural Centre has been built for exhibitions and other activities. At the top of this circular structure is a statue of Prithvi Raj Chauhan on a horse. The image above shows a part of the old fort wall and the new cultural centre.

Exhibition of Buddhist Relics at Rai Pithora Garh Cultural Centre

It is believed that on Buddha's Mahaparinirvaan (final departure for heaven), the Dhatu (cremated remains) of his body were divided into 8 parts and distributed to prominent Buddh Viharas. One part was given to a Buddhist Vihara in northern Uttar Pradesh, not far from the India-Nepal border. Over the centuries, that Vihara was abandoned and forgotten, and got buried under earth. Many centuries later, a village called Piparwa came up in that place. (The image on the left shows an exquisite sculpture from 2nd century CE from the Kushan period, from this exhibition) 

In 1898, an English engineer William Claxton Peppé excavated a mound near Piparwa and found urns and boxes containing Buddha's relics, gold ornaments, precious gems and some inscriptions, including one inscription in ancient Brahmi script, which identified these as the mortal remains of the Gautama Buddha. It was one of the most significant archaeological finds in the Buddhist history. 

The British Government gifted the sacred relics to the Buddhist kings in Siam (Thailand) and Sri Lanka, while William's family took the different urns, boxes, gems and other archaeological finds to England. In 2025, these archaeological materials were given back to India.

 

To celebrate the return of these important Buddhist sacred relics, a special exhibition has been organised in Rai Pithora Garh cultural centre, where apart from the Piparwa gems and urns, important Buddhist sculptures and materials from different museums of India have been brought together (image above)

It is a beautiful exhibition and if you are interested in Indian and Buddhist history in the period 500 BCE to 1000 CE, you can find here plenty of beautiful exhibits. There is no entry ticket for visiting it and you can also look at the ruins of the Rai Pithora Garh fort.

You can also learn more about the Piparawa archaelogical finds in their website.

Khirki Mosque

After the death of Prithviraj Chauhan, Rai Pithora Garh fort was taken over by Aibak, which gave rise to the Delhi Sultanate. The Sultanate was composed of five dynasties (Mamluks, Khalji, Tughlaq, Sayyid and Lodhi), which ruled north India till the arrival of the Mughals.

The area around Malviya Nagar was the key location for the Tughlaq dynasty, which created different monuments here, including the Khirki Mosque, built during the second half of the 14 century.

It is a huge building. The mosque is located at a higher level with gates on three sides and steps for going up (image above). Now this building is closed. However, a local man, sitting near the entrance, has the keys to one of the gates of the mosque.

All around the mosque, on a higher (street) level, 3-4 storey buildings have been built, some of which looked a bit precarious to me. At the mosque, it seems as if you are standing in a well, looking at people living their lives all round in matchbox like houses (image below).

 

I had read that it is very difficult to find this Khirki mosque, however, I found it easily. The best way to reach it, is to look for the blue-and-white painted big pedestrian over-bridge in front of MGF mall. The mosque is on the opposite side of the road, a little after this bridge. After the over-bridge, look for a Shiv temple  with its red coloured walls, and take the narrow lane just after the temple. The mosque is 2 minutes walk from there. (Shiv temple located on the main Press Enclave road, is shown in the image below)

Other Historical Monuments Near Malviya Nagar Metro Station (Not covered under this walk) 

There are some other historical buildings in this area, which I did not visit due to lack of time. For example, close to metro station is another old mosque, the Badi Masjid; behind Khirki Masjid, going towards Sheikh Sarai, there are ruins of the tomb of Yusuf Qattal; and further down the road from Khirki Masjid going towards east, is the Satpula lake complex. I hope to return to this area during a future visit to look at all these other monuments. 

In The End

Delhi is full of forgotten histories and their monuments. The areas of Sheikh Sarai, Khirki Mosque and Satpula were part of Jahapanah, the Delhi built by Firoz Shah Tughlaq in the 14th century.

Most of the medieval buildings of this area were buried under earth-mounds and have been covered by the new constructions over the past 60-70 years. Most simple single storey houses have been converted into taller buildings, as Delhi continuously expands.

This means that if you can walk with your eyes opened, you can discover bits and pieces of those histories. The construction of Delhi Metro has played a big role in both hiding and exposing those forgotten histories. Its construction allowed excavations and many new archaeological discoveries. Its vast network means that you can easily visit and discover different parts of the city. At the same time, metro by facilitating access, has led to numerous new constructions and loss of the city-histories.

The last image (above left) is from the Buddha exhibition - it is one of the wall-paintings from Ajanta caves which were built by Buddhist monks in 2 century BCE. These wall-paintings show one of the ancient Indian painting styles. 

Some More Delhi Walking Tours Near Metro-Stations 

I love going out of a metro-station, walking and exploring Delhi's histories around it. You can also check my post about these other walking tours around some metro-stations of Delhi -  

Delhi Metro Walking tours - Rajiv Chowk and Connaught Place;

Delhi Metro Walking Tours - Jor Bagh;

Delhi Metro Walking Tours - Pragati Maidan;

Delhi Metro Walking Tours - Qutab Minar;

Delhi Metro Walking Tours - Hauz Khas; and 

Delhi Metro Walking Tours - Dalit Struggles and Pride in Okhla.

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Dilli Haat - Delhi's Artisanal Markets

Delhi has different markets where one can explore the products of artisans from different parts of India. For example, silk and Khadi-cotton clothes can be found at many mainstream shops. In addition, there are some specialised spaces which present handicrafts, specialised agricultural and herbal products, handwoven clothes etc. from all over India.

One such place is close to the Connaught Place market in central part of New Delhi - the different state emporiums on Baba Kharag Singh Marg. In these emporiums, each state of India sells its products.

Another space is at the Dilli Haat markets, which regularly bring small artisans from different parts of India to showcase and sell their works. (Image, left)

In October 2026, I was in Delhi for a brief family visit and visited the Dilli Haat located near the INA Metro-station. During my visits, I am always curious about talking to people and learning about them. My visit to Dilli Haat was no different, it was an opportunity to speak to people. This post is about that visit and it presents three artisans who had come there to present their products.   

The Cow-dung Art From Satara, Maharashtra 

Indian villages use cow-dung in two main ways. First is by making cow-dung cakes called Upla in Hindi, which are used as fuel for cooking. Food cooked on this fire has a specific smell, which can be perceived as a good fragrance by persons used to it, or as a "strange smell" by persons who are new to it. I have some happy childhood memories about going around to collect cow-dung in my maternal grandfather's farm-house, and of my grand-mother cooking over the upla-fire. 

The second use is by adding a little water to the cow-dung, and then using that liquid as a daily coating for floor and other house surfaces in mud-houses. Different surfaces in the mud houses can be damaged easily, even by daily walking, and need to be repaired periodically. The cow-dung liquid is considered a good way to do that repair because it is supposed to reduce the house temperature and to keep away mosquitoes and other parasites.

I was surprised when I saw that one of the stalls in Dilli Haat in INA was selling art-works made from cow-dung. It was managed by a young man, Sunil Sawant (image left). I spoke to him and he told me: "I am from the eco-conscious cultural and artistic hub called Gaumaya Art Centre in Nagewadi, about 8 km north of Satara. We use organic cow-dung, which we call Gaumaya, to create our art-works. It is a grassroots initiative for promoting rural youth empowerment and for preserving traditional heritage of Indian crafts and cattle-rearing practices."

I was curious to know how they had come to idea of using cow-dung, so Sunil explained, "This process was initiated by my elder brother Veera, who went to study art at the J. J. School of Arts in Mumbai and after completing his studies in 2008, started to experiment with different organic materials for creating artistic handicrafts. He finally created the "clay" for his artworks by mixing cow-dung with Raal, organic Gond (Gum), powder of Tamarind seeds and other materials." 

Then he promoted the setting up of a cultural and artistic hub in Nagewadi called Veera Art Village, with the aim of reviving India's ancient craft traditions, preserving indigenous cow heritage, and empowering rural livelihoods. They create Indic idols and other decorative and sacred objects, inspired by traditional Indian architectural ideas (Vaastu-Shastra) from such materials. You can take a look at the Veera Art Village website for more information about their products.

Traditional Indian beliefs consider cow-dung and other cow products as auspicious for the homes. I also bought from this stall a Gaumaya plaque with a bronze finish, with a prayer in Sanskrit to Sidhi Vinayak. (image below)

 

Bunkar Seva Kendras - Weaver Service Centres

Weavers Service Centres (WSCs) under India's Ministry of Textiles support artisan-weavers in different parts of India. There are 29 such centres in India. Different states have WSCs in different cities depending upon their weaving traditions. For example, Uttar Pradesh has 2 WSCs, in Varanasi and Meerut, while Rajasthan has one WSC located in Jaipur.

The WSCs provide technical support and training, help in accessing weaving materials and support for selling their products. Artisan-weavers are invited to present and sell their products in Dilli Haat.

One of the stalls in Dilli Haat was showing a weaving loom on which Mr Anil Kumar (image left) from Varanasi was hand-weaving with jute and cotton fibres. He explained to me that apart from cotton and silk fibres, they are also experimenting with innovative organic materials such as banana-fibre and a fibre made from the leaves of the snake-plant.

Over the past decades, all over the world hand-weaving techniques have been replaced by machine-weaving and industrial weaving, because they are faster and cheaper to produce. However, hand-weaving can provide a specific finish to the products, which is impossible with machines. These products are costlier and can appeal to specific customers and fashion houses, but are not suitable for mass-markets.

Ensuring that these hand-weaving skills are maintained and safeguarded for future is an increasingly complex challenge for our societies unless a minimum of economic sustainability is guaranteed. (Right image with a handwoven art piece at the entrance of Dilli Haat)   

Allam Ansari, Silk Weaver from Varanasi

When I was a child, every year a couple of persons from Varanasi used to visit our home in Old Delhi, before the start of the marriage season in October-November. They came with colourful handwoven Banarasi silk sarees wrapped in white sheets, on their heads. I used to sit there mesmerised by their beautiful shimmering colours and designs, as my maternal grandmother, my mother and aunts, took hours to choose their new sarees for a marriage or a function.

Visiting the stall of Allam Ansari (image left) in Dilli Haat reminded me of those days and those two individuals.

Allam Ansari continues his family's tradition of weaving colourful silk sarees. He told me, "I am from Banaras and we have our own silk-looms. It was what my grandfather and his grandparents did and it was something that I saw in my home as a child. No one had to teach me weaving, I don't remember when I had learned it by watching others. I never went to school and was fourteen when I became a weaver. We started coming here in Dilli Haat around 25 years ago. Before that, we used to visit people's houses and shops to sell directly to them. We have our traditional designs but we keep on adding new elements to them. We also experiment with new colour-combinations. Now most of the silk weaving is done on machines because people don't want to pay more for the hand-woven clothes. My children are still young but I hope that some of them will learn hand-weaving and keep alive the old traditions of our family."

In the End

Dilli Haat is a beautiful place full of colours, and going around, looking at sculptures, artworks, home decorations, handicrafts, shawls, dresses and sarees, is a sensory experience, similar to a walk in a colourful garden.

At one stall from Kashmir, I bought some colourful papier-meche bells for our Christmas tree. I wanted to speak to that guy but he had other clients waiting for him, so he did not have time to talk to me.

Dilli Haat also has restaurants from different parts of India, where you can try their distinct cuisines. If you are visiting Delhi, do ask about the nearest Dilli Haat and find time to visit it. It is a good place for buying small colourful handicraft artists as gifts and souvenirs of your visit.

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Ghost-Writing & Impact of AI

A couple of years ago, in the second half of 2024, I had interviewed my niece Srishti, who was a ghost-writer. At that time, I was very curious about the ghost-writing work. I spoke to her recently and found out that Artificial Intelligence (AI) had a big impact on her ghost-writing work.

Let me start with my recent experience with AI.

My Recent Experience with AI on Reddit

Earlier this year, I had written a fantasy-fiction novella in Hindi, which is now being serialised on my Hindi blog. I was looking for a cover for my book. I spoke about it to my son and explained to him about the main characters  of the book. With the help of AI, my son prepared a couple of book covers.

However, I felt that those covers looked very clearly "AI-made", so I tried to modify them by using some image programmes and tried painting over them. One of these modified cover was finally used for my book.

Fantasy-fiction is not a common genre in Hindi and I wanted to connect with people who was interested in it. So I joined a fantasy-fiction group on Reddit and wrote a post about my book. The moment the persons in the group found out that my cover was originally AI generated, there was a huge backlash and my post was removed from the group.

This experience gave me an idea about the strong impact AI is having on the work and livelihoods of artists and book-cover designers.

In this article, I am going to present excerpts of Srishti's interview in 2024 and then her recent interview, to understand the impact of AI on her ghost-writing. You can also read her complete interview on my website Kalpana. 

Excerpts from Srishti's 2024 Interview About Ghost-Writing

Being a ghostwriter is an unusual profession. Most of my relatives had not even heard of it. I, myself, had no clue about anything called ghostwriting. Interestingly, I recently found out that one of my uncles (he is no more) used to ghostwrite a weekly newspaper column about a policeman’s encounters and investigations in 1960s' Allahabad. He did it for fun and never got credited or paid for it. The series was later compiled into a book.

I am, too, not credited for my time, worth, talent, energy, research, or honesty. I never Google the books I write because it’s like being in a toxic relationship with your ex. But I do love it when I have repeat clients. The fact that people want to work with me again makes me happy.

I don’t really see my work as unconventional because ghostwriting is more common than most people know. Most autobiographies are ghostwritten.

I keep getting orders so I am actively ghostwriting as of now. However, I have started working on my two fiction books and I intend to publish them in the next ten years (the thought gives me jitters).

In 2022, I came across an advertisement by the platform that I currently work with. It’s a Canadian company and they work with and for people from everywhere. They were hiring ghostwriters through a series of tests. I took the tests for fun and got selected.

The pay was better than what writers are paid in India. I have ghostwritten 24 books. Initially, I was a little sceptical about writing books on real estate, finance, religion, and technology because those were not my areas of expertise, and I adhered to subjects on women, interrelationships, parenting, health, diet, lifestyle, humour, self-help, politics, economy, and diseases and disorders. Now, I take up all the orders that come my way. I am proud of the fact that I can dissociate personal preferences and beliefs from my profession.

I do interact with my clients before I sign the contract. I have the liberty to work at my pace and schedule my orders. When I began in 2022, I used to take up an insane amount of work every month (beginner’s enthusiasm) and the burnout was real in 2023. I have taken things more slowly in 2024.

I love that I get to work with people from different parts of the world. I have worked with competent editors who taught me about book writing and formatting. I have had my share of tough clients as well, very demanding and rude, but the overall experience has been good and I get to read a lot. For example, I had to refer to the Torah for a few segments of a book I wrote this year and that was a great learning experience.

You can read her full interview on Kalpana. 

Impact of AI on Ghost-Writing

Srishti said: In 2024, while I was ghostwriting at Dibbly, we had an opportunity to train their AI tool called KIP.

It was a great learning experience, although back then, we had absolutely no idea that we were axing our own source of income. Kind of makes me laugh right now. Because AI orders got so cheap gradually, the writing packages declined in number.

We had a true dry spell at the company after that because other AI companies were already giving nascent manuscripts/stories a full outline/writing/publishing structure for free and people didn't need ghostwriters or even paid AI writing packages any more.

But I did get some opportunities to work on AI orders too. That was a good learning experience.

I am now working for a company where I will be editing/reviewing academic papers and research articles in the humanities stream. This company helps research papers get published. Most of our clients are from Japan. China, and South Korea. They are very professional and their papers are very good.

I am only learning right now but I think I will also be working on AI manuscripts since people are using it in research too.

I was inherently very anti-AI. This April, I went to Bangalore for a short trip and met a few German civil engineering students there and with one of them kept in touch later. He really changed my perception on AI. I realized millennials like me are more apprehensive about it, of course we think about the larger picture and its effects on the environment and everything else.

But Gen-Zs just don't care. They are unafraid of the change. While we are scared of being dependent on AI or even addicted to it, he told me how Claude is his work assistant and buddy. That really fascinated me. How we use AI is really going to be a game-changer.

I think AI invasion into our lives is inevitable, the world leaders are pushing it with data centres and the biggest tech-tycoons are adamant on making this world AI-driven. But people like me need to make our way through life by using AI, and also correcting AI because it will need constant direction, command, and correction. Until it becomes smarter than me, I got to keep upskilling to not get replaced, I guess.

Conclusions

Srishti's views about AI can make us understand some of the challenges people are expected to face in their personal and professional lives over the coming years and decades. Some of those changes will enhance our quality of life, while the others would make it more difficult, and then, hopefully a new equilibrium would emerge out of chaos.

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The Reiki Journey

Reiki is one of the alternative therapies that have arisen out of Indic spiritual ideas. Indic ideas about Brahman, the life energy that pervades every particle of the universe and the different practices linked to focusing on that energy inside ourselves is the basis of different practices varying from Yoga and meditation to Acupuncture and Reiki.

Often people call all these as "unscientific" or "without evidence". However, I think that all these can be seen as another manifestation of what is called "placebo effect", which is a core part of scientific investigation. Whenever we scientifically compare the impact of any therapy through randomised controlled trials, we need to keep account of the Placebo effect, that is the number of persons who will heal themselves with or without the therapy. This means that there are a number of persons who heal themselves, or that our bodies have mechanisms and capacity for self-healing.

Origins of Reiki

Reiki originated in the 1920s by Mikao Usui in Japan. The word Reiki is made up of "Rei" (spiritual), and Ki (life energy).

The Chinese ideas about the blocks and lack of equilibrium in the body-channels of life energy (Chi) is, in my opinion, another approach to a similar idea.

In Reiki the healers use a light touch or keeping the hands near the body to influence the "Ki" in individual's body for unblocking energy channels and thus create equilibrium.

In my opinion, for persons dealing with mental or psychological difficulties, chronic conditions, and life-threatening conditions such as cancer, therapies like Reiki can be a valuable support to more conventional medical treatments. Reiki and other alternative therapies can also be good as a part of people's self-wellness approaches. 

Sadguru on Reiki

Sadguru is a well-known spiritual Guru in India. Recently, I heard him speak on Reiki during a podcast, where he warned about the dangers of Reiki because he said that "life-energy is a delicate and complicated thing and trying to influence the life-energies of people can be dangerous".

I was a little surprised at his ideas since I feel that human beings across cultures and civilisations have been practising different techniques for influencing the life-energy for thousands of years. If we accept his ideas then perhaps we may not even do meditation on our own? 

I was talking about his views to my niece Meghna, who has been engaged in practising and teaching Reiki for many years now.

She said to me, "There is often a lack of understanding about Reiki. Sadguru speaking about it is not new, it came out many years ago when I was in Singapore. I have written a book chapter about my personal life journey and what drew me to Reiki."

Meghna's Journey With Reiki

I asked Meghna:  Is there something about Reiki you'd like others to know that is not commonly known.

She said: I believe Reiki is one of the most wonderful complementary therapies and simple to learn personal wellbeing tools.

What a lot of folks do not know is that Reiki has been recognised as a valid complementary therapy and widely integrated into patient care plans to promote relaxation, alleviate stress, and reduce pain. Over 1,000 hospital-based Reiki programs exist in the United States alone, and the therapy is formally recognized by major global healthcare frameworks, including the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom. I myself was part of a voluntary program with the Red Cross Society for the disabled in Singapore where we used to weekly offer Reiki to their patients.

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Some months ago, Meghna has contributed a chapter in a book about Reiki, titled "Reiki Lights - Collected Stories of Transformation". Her chapter is titled "From Doing Reiki to Being Reiki", which explains how she looks at the Reiki practice - a process of her own inner transformation that she uses to help others as a healer and as a Reiki teacher.

About her initial experiences with Reiki she writes: "I realised what a profound self-healing tool Reiki could be, if guided by the right teacher. I approached these practices with the same level of excitement as a child in a candy store. I built a regular self-practice with full body healing techniques as well as distance healing for the inner child when I felt I was working through more deep-seated patterns. I became more disciplined about carving out time at the end of my day ..."

About its impact in the initial phase of her journey she says: "There was an expanding awareness growing within, almost like a quiet voice speaking to me, which inspired the more true to myself choices I started making." 

After facing many challenges in her life-journey, she writes about her present life in Kerala (India): "The Reiki Principles have been a steady compass throughout my journey; guiding my way of being, inspiring me to show up present, authentic, vulnerable and deeply grateful. Practising radical acceptance and surrender is not something I have mastered; it is something I return to, every single day. It has been a journey of constant rediscovery, realignment and remembering. Every day I am learning to be still, and to trust what my heart already knows." 

You can read more about Meghna's Reiki journey and learn more about her Reiki work from her website.

In The End

Reiki, mediation, yoga, mindfulness and similar spiritual practices are important practices to keep us grounded and in contact with our inner core and to what is really important in our lives.

All of us have our ups and downs, moments when everything is going well and moments when challenges come knocking on our doors. I believe that spiritual practices make it easier to deal with those challenges.

***** 

 

The Wandering Gods

When and how did the ancient humans decide to create the sacred spots where their Gods or prophets will live? With time, they decided to create elaborate homes for their Gods but sometimes, the Gods were left out in the open or travelled around with wandering holy-men and sometimes with the holy-women or were carried out of their homes periodically, in processions. I call these the wandering Gods.

This post focuses on some of the my experiences about the wandering Gods.

Most of my experiences of such events are linked with my travels in different parts of the world, especially in India. (Click on the images for bigger pictures)

Sacred Spots for Ancient Humans 

I think that ancient humans chose at least two different kinds of sacred spots.

(1) Some of those sacred spots were along the ancient pathways, for the travellers. At these spots, usually they did not build elaborate structures. Often, these were simple stone-towers or coloured clothes tied on or around trees. Sometimes these sites were close to the water sources.

For example, in Mongolia I saw the stone put together, often accompanied by flower trees and colourful scarfs, along the important pathways, criss-crossing its land. I was told that each stone in that place is sacred and you are prohibited from taking away even a single stone from those places.

 

I think that many persons have started believing in building such stone-towers. I saw them in a forest in Arizona (USA), as well as, in the river bed behind our home in Schio (Italy).

Similar to those stone-towers in Mongolia, are the tree shrines, that are so common in India. There was a small Hindu temple in central part of Mozambique, where I had seen a beautiful tree shrine around a huge Peeple tree. The image below has a tree shrine from a rural area in Madhya Pradesh (India).

 

(2) Other, more important sacred spots were places where the hunter-gatherers came together for big clan meetings. Often these were near rivers and streams or on the top of mountains. Prehistoric caves where rock art has been discovered were also chosen as sacred sites. These became sites of seasonal or periodic fairs and pilgrimages.

For example, the vast area around the confluence (Sangam) of Ganges and Yamuna rivers in Prayagraj (India) is visited by millions of persons during the 6 or 12 yearly Kumbh fair.

 

Specific Energy Fields For the Sacred Spots 

There is another aspect of the selection of sacred spots, about which my knowledge is limited - areas with auspicious or positive energy fields.

I have read that many ancient temples were built in areas that had a special kind of energy and thus, many of the more recent churches were built in their places when the old pagan religions were abandoned.

For example, I had read that the beautiful Santo Stefano church in Bologna (Italy) was built at the site of an older temple dedicated to Venus. People talk of the positive energy of this church. 

Some years ago, while on a walk in the forest behind the Bashistha temple in Guwahati (India) in India, I had met a Sadhu (ascetic) who had told me about the special energy that comes out of the ground and the rocks. I had put my hand on that spot but I was unable to feel any energy, which was there according to that Sadhu.

Perhaps, ancient humans, shamans and mystics are more open psychologically to such experiences of energy-fields and thus, chose specific sites for their prayer places. Or as the Sadhu had told me, "You have to learn to quieten your mind, then you can feel it." 

Gods Come Out of Their Abodes for a Procession

There is another sacred tradition that continues from old times - that of the Gods in procession. Sometimes, the icons and symbols of Gods are brought out of their temples or churches and are carried out in processions.

For example, when I lived in Bologna (Italy), I remember the annual procession in the evening, when the Madonna statue was taken out of the Bertalia church and carried out in a procession along the streets and parks.

 

Another example is from Delhi (India), where floats carrying statues and persons dressed as Gods travelled on floats for the annual Ram Lila in which the story of Ramayana was enacted.

 

I remember a more complex example of such procession in Cidade Alta in Salvador de Bahia (Brazil), where the descendents of the slaves brought from Africa, who were forced to convert to Christianity, had merged their African Orisha Gods with the Christian saints.

 

In Himachal Pradesh (India), in the mountains around the town of Kullu, each mountain village has its own deity in a temple, many of whom come from older folk-traditions. Around the festival of Dusshera every year, all of them are carried out in procession to Kullu, where they live in temporary temples along with all the other deities.

In Karnataka (India), they have a tradition of men carrying in annual processions the Gods in their temples on their heads without holding it with their hands, while persons dressed as warriors carrying swords accompany them for protection.

 

Finally, in another example from Kerala (India) I remember the tradition of Theyyam in which there were men dressed as Gods, who invoked the Gods to descend in their bodies, to give benedictions and to answer questions.

Herders Moving Their Homes And Temples   

As hunter-gatherers were replaced by people owning cattle, they usually shifted their homes with the seasons, looking for grasslands and fodder for their cattle. They also took their Gods when they moved homes. 

I saw a group of herders in Mongolia, who had travelled from their villages to an area next to a lake, where they were setting up their home-tents and their temple.

 

Wandering Triptychs & Tripitaks

Travelling story-tellers, ascetics and mystics, was another group of people who carried sacred icons with them to the different communities. For the wandering Gods, sometimes, their sacred images were depicted on scrolls or portable temples, which could be folded and carried easily.  

The term Triptych (literally 3 tablets) comes from Latin and Greek, it is used frequently in conjunction with Christian sacred images. A triptych has 3 panels, one bigger central panel with two side panels which are attached to the central part like a door. Thus, the panels can be closed and it becomes a box, which can be carried around easily, similar to the idea of the wandering Gods.

The foldable Catholic Triptych in the image below is from Victoria & Albert Museum in London (UK). 

 

There is a similar term, Tripitak (3 boxes), used in Buddhism. It comes from Pali language, one of the languages of ancient India, which was used by Buddha for his preaching. It denotes an ancient Buddhist book containing all the  discourses of Gautam Buddha, which is divided into three main parts - Vinaypitak, Sutpitak and Dhammapitak, and was perhaps carried around by monks.

Conclusions

The idea of writing this post came from my musings on the similarities between the words "Triptych" and "Tripitak". I hope that you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

Growing up in India, it is easy to get used to the idea of "God is every where" because in our daily life we can see people praying to cows, trees, mountains, rivers, all the time. At the same time, we can see the wandering Gods - men leading cows bedecked with flowers around the cities, children & adults dressed up as Gods asking for alms, people carrying sacred images or symbols in bowls and buckets to ask for alms on specific days of the weeks at red lights.

I want to mention 2 books that I had read in the 1980s, that have influenced my ideas about religions and gods - Jean M. Auel's series of books (Children of Earth series), starting with the "Clan of the Cave Bear" about the life in a Neanderthal community. Another book that helped me to understand how religions start and grow is "The Source" by James A. Michener in which he looks at different layers of history around a water-spring somewhere in Israel.

Not just about the origins of religions and ideas of Gods, these are great books and if you have not read them, try them.

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Safety & Efficacy of Traditional Medicine

Twenty years ago, in 2006, I was involved in the organisation of a regional meeting on traditional medicine in south Asia, which was held in Bangalore in India.

Recently, I have read some discussions about research on the safety and efficacy of traditional medicine. They reminded me of a speech given my friend Dr Bala on this theme in that meeting. Therefore, I have decided to share some extracts from his speech in this post.

Background to the Regional Meeting Held in Bangalore in 2006 

I was asked to organise and coordinate a meeting on traditional medicine practices in South Asia by a group of international NGOs. Similar regional meetings were held in that period in other parts of the worlds. Final reports from those meetings were put together and provided to the department of Traditional Medicine in the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva.

However, my participation in the whole process was limited to the meeting held in India, since I was busy in other research work in that period. My friends from People's Health Movement in India had played a fundamental role in organising that meeting. 

Dr K. Balasubramaniam (1926-2011) from Health Action International Asia-Pacific (HAI-AP) had given the keynote address at that conference. Dr Bala, as everyone called him, had done pioneering work in access to essential medicines and was a key and respected figure in the international People's Health Movement (PHM) in those days. That meeting was also an opportunity to meet some of my old friends including Dr H. Sudershan from Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra, Dr Mira Shiva & Dr Ravi Narayan from PHM-India.

That conference was my first real encounter with traditional medicine. It was also the first time that I had visited an Ayurvedic medical college and understood the kind of training Ayurvedic doctors receive in India.

In this post, I would like to share some extracts of the keynote address of Dr Bala focusing on "Evaluation of Safety and Efficacy of Traditional Medicine". His keynote was much wider in scope. For example, he devoted a significant part of his speech to the subject of "Preserving and safeguarding biodiversity sustainability and traditional knowledges". 

In the coming days, I want to share some more papers from that conference. If you wish to read more documents from that meeting, I invite you to check the final report of that conference, which can be freely downloaded.

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Evaluation of Safety and Efficacy of Traditional Medicine 

Dr K Balasubramaniam, Sri Lanka

I believe that this conference will focus on herbal remedies which constitute the therapeutic armamentarium of traditional systems of medicine in the region.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has defined herbal medicines as "Finished labelled medicinal products that contain ingredients from aerial or underground parts of plants parts or other plant material or combination thereof, whether in the crude state or as plant preparations. The same WHO document adds "Medicines containing plant material combined with chemically defined active substances, including chemically defined substances and isolated constituents of plants are not considered to be herbal medicines".

It will therefore, follow that chemically defined isolated constituents of plants used in modern medicine are not herbal medicines, it has been estimated that these medicines derived from plants constitute about 25 percent in modern pharmacopoeia.

The World Health Organization posed a question 2002 whether a herbal medicine can be used clinically if no harm has been found after the use of that herbal medicine for generations and there is no documentation of such an effect. For an answer to the question, reference is made to an earlier WHO document published in 20003 which states "Absence of reported or documented side effect is not an absolute assurance of safety of herbal medicine. However, a full range of toxicology tests may not be necessary. Tests which examine effects that are difficult or even impossible to detect clinically should be encouraged. Suggested tests include immuno-toxicity, geno-toxicity, carcinogenicity and reproductive toxicity", It adds the following caveat, "only when there is no documentations of long historical use of a herbal medicine or when doubts exist about its safety; should additional tests be performed.

A rigid framework that has been prepared for modern synthetic drugs will never be possible for herbal medicines. There has to be some flexibility in toxicological requirements for herbal medicines.

Accordingly, a group of experts met in Chandigarh, India, to develop a suitable framework for carrying out toxicological studies on herbal medicines. The framework developed was broadly accepted by the Indian Council of Medical Research and the WHO. The actual tests to be carried out in the Chandigarh model are given in tables 1 & 2 (click on the tables for a bigger view).

The tests recommended by the WHO are given in Table 3 below (click on the tables for a bigger view).

WHO has called on clinical researchers to conduct clinical evaluation of traditional medicines within the specific framework of rigorous clinical pharmacological principles without ignoring or trampling on the concepts of the traditional systems of medicine.

I wish to take this opportunity to present an alternate view for evaluation of traditional medicine.

Traditional systems of medicine are a summation of several thousands of years of human experience in the selection of plants for preventive and curative healthcare. Practitioners of traditional systems of medicine argue that the efficacy of herbal remedies is due to the synergistic activity among the several ingredients of herbal mixtures. Complex mixtures of plants or herbs form the basis of traditional medicines. The mixtures are usually subject to crushing, heating, boiling, etc. It is possible that this process may change the chemical structure of the active ingredients in the plants.

Clinical pharmacologists and other scientists working on medicinal plants, on the other hand, focus all their attention on isolating and identifying biologically active ingredients in medicinal plants and herbs. When a promising new biologically active chemical ingredient is isolated, it goes through all subsequent investigations identical to those for a new synthetic chemical ingredient.

Traditional healers do not accept that the efficacy is necessarily due to the active ingredients in the plant.

According to the active ingredient approach the modern clinical pharmacologists, take the knowledge from the plant but throws away the wisdom of centuries.

If there is acceptable historical evidence that traditional herbal remedies have been effective in the treatment of certain diseases, but neither their active ingredients nor the mechanisms are known, is it ethically or morally acceptable to not use that treatment? Examples of successful treatment by traditional medicines will be useful to answer these questions,

In the fate 1980s children attending the Dermatology Department, Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, London showed marked improvements in their eczema symptoms. These improvements were due to oral treatment with aqueous decoctions of a mixture of 10 Chinese medicinal herbs. Clinical experimentation and pharmacological testing revealed that a mixture of the 10 herbs were necessary and that the efficacy could not be attributed to any single active ingredient from any one of the 10 Chinese herbs, A placebo controlled double-blind clinical trial using the 10 Chinese herbs was carried out on 47 selected children with non-exudative eczema. The conclusions of the trial were to validate the standard of current conventional clinical trials utilized in the UK that the traditional Chinese therapy was efficacious.

If these children had to wait till the clinical pharmacologists had screened the 10 Chinese plants for active ingredients and tested them for biological activity, they would never have been given the chance of getting effective treatment with a mixture of 10 Chinese herbs.

Potential cytotoxic drugs are tested for their activity against experimental or human cancer cells. Efficacy depends on the ability to kill specific cancer cell types without affecting normal body cells. Studies on the effects of certain Ayurvedic herbal preparations for possible cytotoxic activity revealed that these herbal preparations did not kill the cancer cells but transformed them into normal healthy cells. These drugs, therefore, have a different mechanism of action, Classical testing methods would have missed this important anti-cancer activity.

I wish to pose a philosophical question. Is medical science one universal and uniquely expressed (western) paradigm – a biomedical paradigm? If it is possible to conceive of alternative methodologies, theories and practices in other domains such as music, logic, linguistics, art and politics, is it not possible to consider possibilities of alternative methodologies in medical science, knowing that doctors practice medicine within a biopsychosocial paradigm?

The guiding principles by which knowledge is built up in the biomedical paradigm are those of the scientific method where hypotheses are clearly stated, then tested and accepted or rejected as truth "until further notice" or "within the stated confidence limits” using only experimental or quasi-experimental designs – a deductive approach to problem solving.

Is it possible for research scientists to examine other methodologies, for example, using experiential methods – an inductive approach, to evaluate traditional herbal remedies?

There is an enormous amount of research on medicinal plants in research institutes in developing countries and the transnational drug industry.

Based on the WHO definition of herbal remedies and the herbal remedies used by practitioners of the traditional system, I wish to pose the following questions:

The Indian Council of Medical Research has taken the plant Pterocarpus marsupium from its use in folklore and Ayurvedic medicine to Phase III clinical evaluation for the treatment of diabetes mellitus using well accepted pharmacological principles. It was handed over to the industry for pharmaceutical development and marketing. This product will be marketed to practitioners of modern medicine. Table 4 (click on the tables for a bigger view) lists examples of modern drugs derived from plants that have been used in the traditional systems of medicine by ancient people around the world.

The question I wish to pose is as follows: "Will this type of research and development to isolate therapeutically active chemical ingredients achieve the objectives of this conference which is to promote the continuous development of traditional medicinal in the region to maximize its contribution in preserving and improving public health."

Let me make it clear that R & D to isolate therapeutically active ingredients from medicinal plants is of critical importance. There is no doubt about it.

But what I wish for you'll to discuss is the need for research to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the herbal remedies used by practitioners of the traditional systems of medicine. For example table 5 gives a 5 list of Ayurvedic remedies for some common ailments (click on the tables for a bigger view).

Is there a need to develop appropriate methods for clinical evaluation of traditional herbal medicines: methods and criteria not to be limited to the methods and concepts of modern biomedical science.

Interestingly much of the scientific literature for traditional medicine uses methodologies comparable to those used to support many modern surgical procedures: individual case reports and patient series with no control or even comparison group.

*****

For a full version of the keynote address by Dr Bala at the South Asia Regional Conference on Traditional Medicine, held in Bangalore, India in 2006, including the list of references, I invite you to download and read the conference report, that I had prepared. Please write to me at sunil.deepak@gmail.com if you would like any of the presentations made at the meeting.

***** 

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!

***