Week Ending October 27, 2019

Work continues on the baby quilts. Sisters Srinivasan and Rayudu came to work on Wednesday . . .

Along with Lucy Broadbent and her mom Sheralie and

Sisters Meenakshi, Matheshu, Thyagarajanm, Hansen and Nirmla Dass. We are over half way through the 100 quilt kits provided by the Latter-day Saint Humanitarian Center.

Friday we visited and closed a Latter-day Saint Charities project at Bhavya Rehabilitation Centre in East Delhi. The Church had donated learning material, desks and chairs to this school for children with disabilities. The kids always have such a sweet spirit and its a treat to be around them.

Saturday morning we visited Tughlaquabad Fort, built by Ghazi Malik Tughlaq between 1321 and 1325. Tughlau qas the governor of Dipalpur in Punjam under Alauddin Khilji. Whe Khilji's sons proved incapable of holding power, he orchestrated a coup and became the sultan.

Military campaigns to consolidate power, attacks by marauding Mongols and financial strain marked Tughluq's reign. Historian Percival Spear described it as "a soldiers age, stern and pitiless, and its spirit is reflected in its buildings, the unique and grim Tughlaq style."

Here we are with Jarmon Drummond, who left Delhi about a month after we arrived and is now back in India studying Urdu in Lucknow, and Sister Rhonda Skidmore standing before a little mosque.

This massive step-well was cut deep into the rock.

See how big it is!

The fort encompassed a city, a palace and a citadel. It took four years to build the city of Tughlaquabad, but it was never fully populated, and fifteen years later, it was abandoned. Some say it was due to a shortage of water in the area. A more interesting story is that Tughlaquabad was undone by the Sultan's hubris in picking a feud with the Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya.

The story goes that Ghazi Malik Tughlaq commanded all the workers in Delhi to be employed in the construction of his fort. At the same time, Nizamuddin Auliya was bjildng a baoli (step-well), near the saint's present-day dargah. By day, the city's laborers worked on the fort; by night on the baoli.

The angry Sultan forbade the sale of oil to Nizamuddin, so no lamps could light up the consturction site a night. The saint then magically turned the water in his lamps to oil. This and some additional conflicts between the practical, rough and ready Sultan and the popular, generous and reclusive saint led the latter to curse the Fort saying:

May it remain desolate and unoccupied

Or inhabited only by headsmen

While Tughlaquabad lies in ruins, Nizamuddin's dargah is one of the most venerated shirned in Delhi, thronged by the faithful. The baoli is still in use, fed by a spring whose waters are considered sacred.

Another of the saint's curses was "Hunuz Silli dur ast" (Delhi is still far away). The Sultan, on his way back to Delhi from a successful campaign in Bengal was met by his son Muhammad bin Tughlaq at kara in Uttar Pradesh. Allegedly at the prince's orders, a Shamiana (wooden tent) fell on the Sultan and crushed him to death (1325). Ghazi Malik Tughlaq was buried in the beautiful tomb he had built for himself.

The tomb is connected to the fort by a causeway, now bisected by the busy Meharuli- Bararpur Road.

This week was Diwali. Everyone prepared by cleaning their homes to welcome in the goddess Lakshmi and the wealth she brings. Cleaning supplies were for sale everywhere . . .

as were gifts of nuts, cookies and other sweets.

Bishop Ravi Gupta invited us to his home in Aya Nagar for Choti Diwali on Saturday night. Here my dear friend Shoba Gupta is lighting diwali lights on the roof of her home.

The Tooones as well as Jarom Drummond (far left), a returned missionary and our house guest for the weekend, also attended the dinner. We love Ravi (far right) and his beautiful family!

Sunday was Diwali. We had Appam, a Naga from northeastern India, over for dinner. He is an excellent guitarist and an very interesting person. He likes to play Blues the best.