A Walk in the Park

One of the added benefits of Tyler going to Columbia is that it has spurred me to become re-engaged with the alumni community. It really is quite incredible getting emails each week of various alumni events happening all over the world.

This past weekend, I organized a heritage walking tour for CBS alumni of one of our favorite places in Delhi: Lodi Gardens. In many ways, it's become our equivalent of Central Park. It's one of the few places in Delhi that has become a true oasis for us, and we love spending our Sunday mornings just walking around there. It's incredible just strolling around amidst Indo-Islamic architectural works from the 15th century.

The weather was just about perfect (cool, crisp, and sunny), and it was fun meeting recent and older alumni, learning about the various things they're now doing in India.

Led by a history professor working with the Indian National Trust for Art & Cultural Heritage (INTACH), we learned about the history of the gardens. Turns out my favorite structure is not Lodi at all, but rather the tomb of Mohammed Shah, the last of the Sayyid dynasty rulers and built in 1444.

Nearby structures were from the Lodi period (interestingly, rulers of different dynasties chose to be buried in the same place, due to proximity with Nizzamudin and the tomb of a Sufi saint -- deemed to be incredibly holy). We walked to the Sheesh Gumbad (meaning, "glazed dome"), with remnants of its beautiful blue mosaic work still seen on parts of the structure. Opposite this tomb is a mosque, as well as a structure whose history no one seems to know; the best educated guess is that it was used as a gate.

After the Lodi dynasties, villages grew around the monuments (which is quite difficult to imagine today, but the same could also be said about Central Park). The British created the gardens in 1936, naming it Lady Wellington Park (after the wife of the Governor-General of India). After Partition, refugees flocked to Delhi, many of them setting up settlements in the park itself. In the 1950s, the Indian government took the park over, and it became Lodi Gardens.

A few pictures of our morning: