Urban Art, Prayagraj (formerly Allahabad), INDIA

Reincarnation -- my laptop started charging late last night and is now its old self!  On thinking about it, I'm inclined to believe now that it wasn't the laptop that was defective but the electric outlet.

Saw this in passing yesterday but the Rajput could not stop then and there, so he did me an enormous favour by pointing it out today and finding a parking spot long enough for me to take a few shots.

We visited some interesting parts of Prayagraj (formerly Allahabad) today.  First on the menu was Khusru's Tomb.  Khusru was Jehangir's eldest son by his first wife.  As happened often those days, he rebelled against his father (maybe because Jehangir married other women as well and had children by them, and gave these children equal chances to ascend the throne) and lost.  He was captured and blinded, and put in the custody of his younger brother (by a different wife), Shah Jehan, of Taj Mahal fame.  In short, as our travel agency put it, had Khusru ascended the throne, we wouldn't have had any Taj Mahal.  Khusru's tomb is standing in a row together with his sister's tomb as well as that of his mother.  You'll see the tombs in Extra #1.

After that, we visited the fort, built in Jehangir's time as well, but the military are actively using it, and today it happened to be closed to visitors.  The Rajput was shocked to find me waiting beside the car after only 15 minutes.  To make up for it, we went for a walk down to the water where I took more shots of the Jumna.

The last stop was the Anand Bhavan, the bastion of the Nehru family -- Motilal Nehru, father of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister after independence in 1947, Jawaharlal's daughter Indira Gandhi, and Indira's sons Rajiv and Sanjay.  See Extra #2.  It's just a simple house and annex with a small museum, but looking at the exhibits and reading the stories behind the photographs made my hair stand on end.  What enormous sacrifices they all made!  Unfortunately, the caste system is still in place and there's still a lot of inequality and poverty.  If you ask the Indians, though, they are proud of their country, as they should be.  It is an amazing place to be!

Our little tour ended at 14.15, and I had time for a late lunch again, same as yesterday.  I even ordered the exact same thing -- lemon coriander chicken soup, vegetable fried rice, two sunny side-up eggs, and tea with fresh lemon.

I think I'll mention here that I began reading Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things ... a most wonderful and intriguing book so far.