W a y m a r k s ~

1 November 2020

The Zocalo - Mexico City

Anyone who has watched the opening scene of the James Bond movie Spectre (2015), starring Daniel Craig, will be familiar with the central square of Mexico City – the Zócalo. It’s where James Bond pursues a baddie clutching a walking cane with a silver skull for a pommel amidst crowds of revellers out celebrating Mexico’s famous ‘Day of the Dead’ festival. The chase ends up with Bond finishing the baddie off in a highly improbable but palm-sweatingly tense punch-up in a helicopter perilously swirling about over the heads of the many people gathered in the city square below. For me though, first watching that iconic opening – which cleverly appears to have been shot as a single take – on the big screen of the Cathay Cinema in Singapore it was oddly nostalgic, as it took me back to the Zócalo.

I first visited Mexico City in 2011 shortly before the Day of the Dead. My Rough Guide to Mexico gives a somewhat understated description of the annual festivities: “Día de los Muertos: If visitors know just one Mexican holiday, it’s probably the Day of the Dead, when families honour and remember those who have died. Actually taking place over two days, November 1 and 2, it’s an indigenous tradition unique to Mexico. […] it’s usually a private rite. In every home and many businesses people set up ofrendas (altars) for the deceased: the centrepiece is always a photograph, lit by candles. In addition to the photo, the person’s favourite foods are also placed on the altar, as a way of luring the soul back to this world. For the same reason, strong-scented, bright orange marigolds are often laid in a path leading to the altar, and resinous copal incense is lit. On the streets, market stalls brim with eggy, orange scented pan de muertos and colourfully iced sugar skulls. Families usually gather to eat dinner on the night of November 1, then visit gravesites, which are also cleaned and decorated. Far from being a sad time, the Day of the Dead is an occasion for telling funny stories, bonding with family and generally celebrating life.”

What the guidebook oddly leaves out is the fact that this carnival-like parade which is depicted in the opening scene of Spectre in Mexico City actually does take place each year. Not only do people get dressed up for it, but people also expend a considerable amount of time and effort creating enormous floats of the most spectacular and fantastical monsters and mythical creatures, all vibrantly painted which are paraded through the streets of the city to the Zócalo, or central square, where people flock to admire them. By a further strange coincidence, the private after-party for the London premiere of Spectre was held at the British Museum, and so for several days before and after the front hall of the Museum and the Great Court were decked out with some of the enormous skulls and dancing skeletons used in that opening parade scene ... And, judging by the stacks of empty champagne bottles I saw spilling out of the rubbish skips back of house the next morning, Mr Bond must have hosted quite a good party!

Zócalo is an unusual name – it actually means ‘plinth’ – and the central square of Mexico City originally got this name from a proposed monument to commemorate Mexico’s Independence, the base of which (long since demolished) was the only part which was ever constructed. By some strange twist of logic though, this nick-name for the central square became the standard term of reference for all city and town squares throughout Mexico. Mexico City’s Zócalo is one of the largest city squares in the world, comparable to Moscow’s Red Square and Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. And, just as with Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, the centrepiece is a truly huge national flag which is ceremonially raised and lowered each day by a goose-stepping military guard of honour.

Catedral Metropolitana

The Zócalo is flanked by two buildings of central importance to modern day Mexico – the Catedral Metropolitana, and the Palacio Nacional. Thought to have been built on the site of Moctezuma’s Palace, the Palacio Nacional was also the site of Hernan Cortés’s first residence after he defeated the much maligned Aztec ruler in the 1500s. Since 1562 the Palacio has been the official residence of the Spanish Viceroys, and since Mexico’s Independence in 1821 the presidents of the Republic. Today it’s most famous for a spectacular sequence of murals painted by the artist, Diego Rivera, who began painting them shortly after the Mexican Revolution in 1929 (I’ve written about these murals previously on Waymarks here).

Palacio Nacional

Jesús Nazareno Church

The Catedral Metropolitana which is visually very striking – and holds centre stage in the movie fight-sequence opening Spectre – was begun in 1573, although the front towers weren’t completed until 1813. The building contains a plethora of different architectural styles which make it one of the most distinctive and interesting buildings of its kind. I rather like it, even though I’m not usually a fan of garish and over-the-top cathedrals – I tend to prefer a sparer sort of sanctity, something more airy and austere (think Durham or St. Alban’s Cathedrals perhaps). A few streets away from the Zócalo is a very simple and austere church and hospital, called Jesús Nazareno, which were both founded by Hernan Cortés in 1528. Hence this church with its rather fortress-like thick walls is one of the oldest Spanish buildings in the city. It has a wonderfully cool and dimly lit interior, perfect for escaping the midday heat and sun. It is also the last resting place of the famous Conquistador himself. He’s commemorated very simply by a modest bronze plaque set on a wall near the altar, which is presumably located close to the place where he is buried.

For a long time it was assumed that much of the stone used to build the Cathedral and other Spanish buildings was taken from the huge Aztec temples which had stood here at the heart of the Moctezuma’s capital which the Conquistadores had usurped, and so there would be little left of the original city of Tenochtitlan left. But happily the nearby ruins of Templo Mayor, which have been under archaeological excavation since 1978, have proved that this wasn’t entirely the case. Thankfully the remains of quite a few Aztec temples have since emerged, teaching us much about the ways of life – and death – which flourished in the Mexican capital before the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadores. More animated reminders of the original Aztec city and its culture are commonly found most days on the side streets around the Zócalo – where it isn’t unusual to find Pre-Columbian revivalist dance troupes, fully bedecked in plumes, dancing to intoxicating drum rhythms. They are truly mesmerising to watch.

The city of Tenochtitlan was founded, so the legend tells, when the sight of an eagle sat upon a cactus devouring a snake indicated where the wandering Aztecs were meant to found the heart of their empire. This motif now forms the centrepiece of the flag of the modern Mexican Republic. Originally the centre of the city was an island in the middle of a lake, hence a floating city grew up here. It must have been quite a sight to behold when Cortés and his men first saw it. In order to get a sense of what this waterborne world might once have been like it’s worth taking a trip out to the suburbs, to the floating gardens of Xochimilco. “The floating gardens themselves,” so my Rough Guide says, “are no more floating than the Titanic: following the old Aztec methods of making the lake fertile, these chinampas are formed by a raft of mud and reeds, firmly rooted to the bottom by the plants. The scene now appears like a series of canals cut through dry land, but the area still is a very important gardening and flower-producing centre for the city.” Here too the carnival-esque atmosphere continues most weekends, with parties of revellers in high spirits, all quaffing back tall beakers of chilli-spiked beer, as they drift along on brightly coloured raft-like boats, called Lanchas. Drifting amidst the bankside flower markets, serenaded into the night by bobbing mariachi bands who grapple alongside like marauding pirates! … It is hilarious and awful in equal measure, but thankfully there are moments of calm along the canals, and so it can feel quite peaceful and enchanting too, especially on a moonlit night when you’re in the company of good friends ... Peaceful, that is, until Mr Bond decides to rip through it all at full-throttle on a speed boat he’s commandeered – no doubt off on the start of another international, jet-setting adventure. Best hang onto your sombrero, amigo!

Also on 'Waymarks'

A Visit to Tula - Mexico

A Visit to Teotihuacan - Mexico

Danza De Los Volodores - Mexico

Frida & Diego - Revolutionary Artists

1 October 2020

Exploring Mughal Delhi

Jama Masjid - by Yoshida Hiroshi

The northwest region India has been inhabited since the second millennium BC. The site of present-day Delhi first became a major political centre under the Tomar Rajput Dynasty in 736 AD. Over the subsequent centuries its political prominence waxed and waned until it formally became the capital of the Mughal Empire in 1648. The Mughal city covered an area of just over six square kilometres and was enclosed by great walls with access through fourteen gates. The city was presided over by the Lal Qila, meaning Red Fort, home of the Mughal Sultans; a colossal imperial palace constructed of red sandstone, and completed in 1648, it was built overlooking a channel of the Yamuna River. Nearby, a magnificent mosque, the Jama Masjid (its full name being Masjid-i-Jahan-Numa, meaning ‘World-reflecting Mosque’), was built between 1644-1656, with two minarets each 40 metres high.

Lal Qila

Shahjahanabad, as Old Delhi was originally called, is now a part of a much larger metropolis. The layout of New Delhi was masterminded by British architect, Edwin Lutyens, around 1912-1913. He laid out a monumentally ambitious new plan for the city, which was to be the new Imperial Capital of British India. The map he drew up showed a series of wide boulevards and connecting avenues laid out in a beguiling geometrical pattern which aligned many of the city’s old and ancient landmarks with those of the new Imperial capital. Many of the new monumental buildings of government he designed managed to mix classical and oriental elements to great effect, countering the old adage (taken from a poem penned by Rudyard Kipling) that ‘East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.’ Construction work, employing some 29,000 labourers, began shortly after 1912 and lasted most of the next two decades or so, with ‘New Delhi’ officially becoming the British Imperial Capital in 1931. Having been purposefully designed to express the colonial might of British India it was perhaps rather ironic that less than two decades later it was handed over to the indigenous leaders of the newly independent Republic of India in 1947. Since then New Delhi has remained the capital of India to this day.

Lal Qila

Purana Qila

My first visit to India was quite literally a flying one – a brief stopover in Mumbai whilst on a freighter flight en route to Hong Kong and finally Australia in 2014. We didn’t even get off the plane. Two years later though I went to Delhi to work on an exhibition at the National Museum. It was a manic and yet magical time. Working long and challenging days to get the exhibition up in time for its scheduled opening, balanced by the full use of what free time we had to see as much of old Mughal Delhi as we possibly could. Riding on tuk tuks at the end of the day, like Roger Moore’s James Bond in Octopussy (1983), the first Bond movie I ever saw at a cinema; racing through the teeming streets to catch an hour or two before the sunset at Purana Qila, Humayun’s Tomb, or the Lodhi Gardens, before going for dinner at Khan Market.

Tuk Tuk

My guide for many of these places – as for so much about India’s rich history – are the books of William Dalrymple. Prior to this trip I had been blown away by the richness and enthusiasm of his highly evocative prose when reading the remarkable, cross-cultural love story of White Mughals (2002), which recounts the lives of James Achilles Kirkpatrick, the British Resident at Hyderabad, who represented the British East India company in the late eighteenth century, and his wife, Khair-un-Nissa Begum, and what became of their descendants. Dalrymple describes Kirkpatrick as “thoroughly orientalised” – converting to Islam in order to marry his bride, an exceptionally beautiful Mughal noblewoman – the book goes on to show how British social mores and racial attitudes changed dramatically over time from the early days of the British Empire in India to how things were towards its end. What begins as transcultural assimilation, balancing East and West, eventually ends in the snobbish, racial divisions of social hierarchies and colonial humiliations which sparked the bloody uprisings of 1857, which Dalrymple has chronicled in stark detail in his book, The Last Mughal (2006).

On this trip though, I took an earlier book of his – The City of Djinns (1994). This book is far more personal than his later works of history, it deftly mixes anecdotal travelogue and historical curiosity into an almost novelistic narrative. The book is filled with characters, such as his endearing Sikh landlady, comical taxi drivers, languid yet absurdly bureaucratic government officials, and old-colonial British expats. Dalrymple explores the city he has fallen in love with through a remarkably engaged sense of awareness; his pen is simultaneously awed by Delhi’s deep history and respectful of its highly spiritual culture, yet it is also leavened by the amusing absurdities of India’s very distinctive and occasionally peculiar outlook on life in general. In this idiosyncratic manner Dalrymple both is and isn’t writing as an outsider. His forebears were active participants in the former colonial administration of India – he is a relative of Alexander Dalrymple (1737-1808), who served as Chief Hydrographer to both the East India Company and the British Navy. Hence one assumes his deep interest in India is rooted in a long ancestral affiliation to it. The book ends though with an analytical eye focussed on the more recent past and speculation about the future; drawing a rather sobering parallel between the uprising of 1857 and the bloody feuds reawakened in the cultural clashes which ensued during the riots that followed on from the assassination of Indira Gandhi, India’s first and (to date) only female Prime Minister, in 1984. India is a land of many passions and Dalrymple is infectiously passionate in his writings about it. Reading any of his books is a real joy, especially if you are a lover of travel and history books written in gorgeously lyrical language, in this respect he is a prose stylist par excellence.

Purana Qila

Purana Qila, meaning Old Fort, is one of Delhi’s most ancient sites and is commonly held to have been built on the site of Indraprastha, the capital of the kingdoms of the Pandavas from the Mahabharata. The present structure originates from the time of the second Mughal emperor, Humayun, but its construction was completed by his rival, the founder of the Suri Dynasty, Sher Shah Suri in the mid-1500s. The Fort is today the site of a lovely garden, the only structures remaining within its walls are the Qila-i-Kuhna Masjid, a mosque built by Sher Shah, and an octagonal building which served as Humayun’s library and observatory. It’s said that Humayun died as the result falling down the library’s steps whilst hurrying to answer the call to prayer.

Humayun's Mausoleum

Humayun’s tomb is a magnificent example of Mughal architecture. Built of red sandstone it gives off a lovely warm terracotta-like colour in the bright sunshine. In its design the form and shape of the later, and much better known, Taj Mahal in Agra can clearly be seen. Likewise, similar to the Taj Mahal, the surrounding gardens are laid out in the charbagh manner, in which four water channels divide the grounds into four areas. The main tomb building sits atop a vast platform. The small arches which line this platform are entrances to the tombs of lesser royals. An octagonal chamber in the main building above contains the final resting place of Humayun himself, with close family and attendants buried in the rooms to each side. The 38 metre high dome was the first of its kind, built in this distinctive onion shape, in India. The building works, which took place over nine years, were watched over by Humayun’s second wife, Haji Begum, who lived on the site for the entire period until the tomb complex was completed in 1570.

Humayun's Mausoleum

Isa Khan's Tomb

Nearby, in a compound adjoining the Humayun complex, is the smaller yet substantial tomb of Isa Khan, built in 1547. Isa Khan Niazi was a noble who served in the Court of Sher Shah. His tomb is octagonal, designed in the Lodhi-style. Much of its original tilework has disappeared making it look rather weather-worn, a more modest testament to the ages perhaps when compared to the imposing tomb of his more powerful neighbour. Isa Khan’s mausoleum complex also includes a mosque, the architecture of which is rather reminiscent of the one found in the Purana Qila. Both the tombs of Humayun and Isa Khan are very pleasant places to wander. It was interesting to note here, as at Purana Qila, how some visitors, notably Muslims, removed their shoes or sandals before entering the tombs and the now defunct mosque buildings as a mark of respect.

The Mosque by Isa Khan's Tomb

More tombs in the Lodhi-style can be found in the nearby Lodhi Gardens, a popular spot for local Delhi folk to walk in the cooler morning or evening air. Here the tombs of Mohammed Shah and Sikander Lodhi, local rulers whose Sayyid and Lodhi dynasties date back to the fifteenth century. Two other buildings, the Shisha Gumbad and Bara Gumbad, respectively meaning the ’glazed dome’ and the ‘big dome’ are more ambiguous. The first contains tombs of other unidentified nobles and important persons the Lodhi era, whereas no tombstones have ever been found in the second, hence the purpose of its construction is now unknown. Again, Lodhi Gardens is another wonderfully evocative place to wander round at the end of the day as the sun sets.

Sikander Lodhi's Tomb, Lodhi Gardens

There were two places I didn’t have enough time to see during my stay in Delhi. Firstly, the Qutb Minar – dating back to 1199, with its distinctive tower and the renowned ‘iron pillar’ which was made in the fourth century AD, the metallurgical make-up of which somehow (some say, magically) keeps it from rusting even though it stands open to the elements. And second, the Gandhi Smirti, where Mahatma Gandhi was shot in 1948, as well as the Gandhi Memorial Museum. When I was about 13 or 14 we watched the famous Gandhi biopic (directed by Richard Attenborough, in 1982) at school, which moved me greatly – particularly the scene depicting the Amiritsar Massacre. It kindled in me a deep interest in M. K. Gandhi’s life, such that I immediately bought and read his autobiography, My Experiments with Truth. Written in the 1920s and first translated into English in 1940, it tells the story of Gandhi’s upbringing, how he studied in London and became a lawyer, and how his experiences of racial discrimination, particularly in South Africa, along with his deeply complex spiritual leanings, shaped his character and culminated in his becoming the leader of India’s independence movement and his resistance strategy of mass civil disobedience through peaceful non-cooperation. Every day on our way to and from our hotel to the National Museum and back we passed the Gandhi Smirti, but always after it had closed or before it opened. If ever I go back to Delhi it’s a place I’d very much like to see for myself.