Beating the Retreat

There's an annual event in Delhi at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.  It's the closing ceremony of the Republic Day events, known as Beating the Retreat.

I have no pictures of my own because cameras--and anything else you might carry--are strictly not allowed (which is a story itself).

What I do have is a picture in my memory.
Imagine this...
The sun is setting behind Rashtrapati Bhavan with the silhouettes of the BSF soldiers and their camels standing at attention, while the chimes in the towers rang out 'Abide with me'. 
It was beautiful. 

Beating the Retreat is a leftover from British days.  It's a ceremony that marked the end of the day retreat of troops from the battlefield.  The Indian military today still takes great pride in making this ceremony their own, with the President as the guest of honor. 

Myself, I felt like a guest of honor to be let in at all.

Metcalfe House

To take this picture, I deliberately disobeyed the "photography is prohibited" sign.

All I wanted was to see the Metcalfe House.
Really.
I would have been content with just a glimpse of the rooftop from the other side of the gate. But it didn't go quite the way I had anticipated.

After seeing Dilkusha and reading stories about how Sir Metcalfe's house in Delhi was the center of high society during his time, I was curious.
I had read that nowadays it is the Defense and Research Development Organization and people are not allowed in. So I expected not to be let in.

I suppose the idea I had in my head was viewing a great, big mansion from the opposite side of a well guarded fence.
Like this:

Wait, Sir Metcalfe was British.
So more like this:

And then I would have been satisfied.

Instead, this is how it went down:
We arrived at the imagined well-guarded gate and were asked where we were going.
"To see the Metcalfe house," I replied. And he waved us inside.
!
A quick picture from inside the gate has got to be better than any view from outside the 12 foot walls.
Everything inside the gate, though, just looked like big, ugly office buildings. Where was this mansion?

The next military official approached us: "Where are you going?" And he led us into the security room where our bags were xrayed.
Then he didn't know what to do with us. He didn't understand what we wanted to see. He didn't understand why we didn't have a "who" to see. And he didn't understand why we were trying to get anywhere without a permission letter.

So he went and got someone from higher up.

The next man spoke some English. He wanted to know which department we were visiting or who we had come to see.
No one, no department, I tried to explain to him. We just want to see the Thomas Metcalfe house, to see what it looks like from the outside. We will look at it, I said, and then we will go.

That made no sense to him. We were in the DRDO, after all, where people are engaged in the research of new technologies for defense and research. We must have had some other purpose for being there.
And of course, they weren't going to let us in--I didn't even mind that--I just wanted to see where Sir Thomas Metcalfe lived.
I rephrased our request as many ways as I could think of, but I was not getting through to him.

Finally, we gave up and went back out through the gate. If the mansion is still in there, it's buried among ugly buildings and bureaucracy.
It was not the adventure I expected to have, but it was adventurous, nonetheless.

Buglers

When I showed up at India Gate this morning, there was a military drll in progress. I missed its significance, what they were practicing for:
flag raising?
holiday?
honoring of a military leader?

For only my second visit to this famous city landmark, it was something new and interesting to see.

One of the little observations I liked the most was that there was a Commander (the one in the turban) making sure the hand placement of the bugle players was adjusted just so.
Apparently very important.

Fake and real

I drove through a part of the city today where they were setting up this strange display.

Talk about crazy mannequin sightings.

This is my favorite: Can you spot which one is the real thing?

India Gate

India Gate.
Yes.
It only took me eleven years to get here.

Finally, I've seen it.
Along with every other tourist who comes through Delhi for a week.

Did you know there's a flame burning at India Gate? Neither did I. And I couldn't get close enough to see why.
Though this is what wikipedia says: it's the flame of the immortal soldier. There are some 90,000 Indian soldiers who died in World War I and the Afghan wars fighting for British India, and their names are engraved on the gate.

This was one of my favorite observations: the reflection in the muddy water.
Apropos.
Especially in these days of flooding, the threat of dengue fever, and the mess over being unprepared for the Commonwealth Games.

I saw the figures on top of the gate and wanted to go up there. But it seems you have to be wearing the right uniform to be allowed.
Too bad.

This is what the gate says on it:

"To the dead of the Indian armies who fell honoured in France and Flanders Mesopotamia and Persia East Africa Gallipoli and elsewhere in the near and the far-east and in sacred memory also of those whose names are recorded and who fell in India or the north-west frontier and during the Third Afgan War."

So now. Been there. Done that.