Red Fort Report from Jim

                  Here is my report on the Red Fort -- said to be the biggest tourist attraction in New Delhi:  it is big and it is red.  I also learned that it is closed on Mondays, which precluded any more comprehensive examination.  But in navigating the surrounding neighborhood in old Delhi in the quest for a subway (known here as a metro, a fact that can lead to long walks in the wrong direction toward an underpass of a major street), it did drive home a few impressions about India, none of which are terribly new or insightful. 

                  One is that it is home to an extremely large, dense population.  Another is that it is quite security conscious at the moment, which means that the security checks we’re accustomed to at the airport are augmented by similar pat-downs and  x-rays of bags as you enter a hotel or subway (metro) station.    So there tend to be long lines, particularly during holiday periods.  Another thing we’ve learned is that we’re here during a holiday.  The result was a line in the hundreds to get into the subway (lines for women are separate and there are also some women-only cars, something found elsewhere in Asia) to get us to the central railway station, where the lines were measured in the thousands.

               So local folks do a lot of waiting, generally with patience and good humor, but they’re not into formal queuing and the famous bureaucracy has a pace of its own – the line for subway (metro) tokens halted and then melted away when the agent simply disappeared after putting up a “closed” sign.  That said the metro is quick, cheap and crowded and relatively clean compared to the Kolkata lines we experienced earlier.

                  It is difficult for a superficial tourist like me to get a good feel for any foreign nation (my excuse for travelling is that some feel trumps none) and that strikes me as particularly true here.  This is a country with a middle class larger than America’s, but we rub shoulders with many poor people who seem friendly enough, but have a minimal grasp of English, if any.  The result is a bit of cognitive dissonance in that we’re observing a poor country (once beyond the confines of our hotel) even as we know that the middle class nation we’re reading so much about is growing, however covertly.  The only hints are massive construction projects and billboards for cell phones, banks and flat screen televisions.

                  Here’s today’s audience participation question.  Within a week we’re going to Goa, a former Portuguese colony on the Indian (what else?) Ocean.  I’ve always wanted to go there since Secretary of State John Foster Dulles raised an issue about Goa during the Eisenhower years.  Ever since then I’ve wanted to see what Goa was.  Bit what was the issue?  I’ll give you a few days to respond before I refer it to Google.