Old Farts in New Delhi: And I asked if you still considered love an art, And you said, "No, I think it's more a craft"

Rae said she wanted to go to the National Crafts Museum this weekend. I said, sure. What was I going to say? She left family and friends and came half way around the world and I am going to quibble about going to a museum? No way. It may not be my first choice but if she wants to go see a crafts museum, we are going to a crafts museum. Turns out, it was one of my favorite things we’ve done in Delhi. They have so many amazing things, both indoors and out of doors. Unfortunately, photography was prohibited in most of the interior exhibits. The collection of saris from all of the different India states by itself made it worth visiting. Another amazing exhibit was an actual 18^th century house that had been disassembled in Gujrat and reassembled in the museum – truly fantastic.

I am going to let Rae write some of her impressions and then the balance of the blontry will be pictures – again mostly taken in the exterior exhibits except for a couple I took on the inside before a kindly guard pointed out the no photography sign. Here’s Rae.

I appreciate Phil’s flexibility, and I’m glad he enjoyed our adventure. I’ve been waiting for the weather to cool off so I could stand to spend some time outdoors. Yesterday was really quite pleasant. I did get a bit hot but that’s not surprising since I have about a 10 degree range in which I’m comfortable.

We arrived at the museum about 10am and met our friends the Slocombes there. Their mission is nearing its end and they will be leaving in January to return home to Canada. We will miss them. When we first arrived we pretty much had the place to ourselves. About an hour later the first of the school field trip groups started arriving, can we say bus loads. The first group was an all girls’ school with probably about 12 classes. Normally you would not see them dressed in pink. If it’s a mixed gender group they would be in navy, tan, red, or something more generic, which is interesting because it’s not unusual to see guys wearing pink, purple, or other colors that guys in the US don’t typically wear. There were a few other groups that arrived later on.

We have previously mentioned the fact that as we travel around we are quite often asked to have our picture taken with different people. Yesterday was no exception, in fact it was that magnified. These girls were so cute and nearly every one of them wanted to say “hello”, “how are you”, shake our hands, and of course pose for some pictures. I don’t know how many hundreds of hands I shook, some more than once as we moved through the exhibit. Such a strange phenomenon to me. We often refer to this as the “unicorn experience”. Phil & Bro. Slocombe got in on some of this, but it seems that Sister Slocombe and I were the main focus of this outpouring of attention. There were times that we were stuck in the same place as we shook hands and greeted a steady line of these cute school girls dressed in pink. There were also a few teachers that wanted their pictures with us too. I still scratch my head and wonder, what is the attraction??????

When we weren’t meeting and greeting, we really enjoyed the displays of artifacts, artwork, and textiles. We even watched a shadow puppet show complete with singing and drumming. It’s a sound that my ears have not fully learned to appreciate yet. Beside the displays there were also craftsmen demonstrating and selling their crafts. Some of the items we saw were paintings, cutwork (paper), shadow puppets (made of very thin leather) and leather lampshades. Surprisingly there were no textiles.

It turns out that the National Craft Museum is listed in the top 10 things to see in Delhi; how about that!

Mobile Shrine that had an idol in it and was pulled by devotees around the city during festivals.