Picto Diary - 01 to 04 April 2024 - TIMDT returns home
Above, Imperial Hotel, New Delhi, India. 02 April 2024. 3:00 AM
TIMDT returns home.
It was at the Imperial Hotel that Nehru, Gandhi, Jinnah, and Mountbatten met to discuss the Partition of India. There is a table in one of the hotel restaurants cordoned off as "the" table where the great figures dined together. We have eaten at that table in previous visits and, truly, the mind spins as one reflects on the import of what the partition discussion must have been like. I'm reminded of the Manila Hotel, in Manila, PI, where hotel guests can visit Douglas McArthur's office suite, with original design and furniture preserved... suspended in time.
Delhi's Imperial Hotel and its Connect With Modern Indian History (thewire.in)
TIMDT has stayed in the Imperial a dozen times since 1972. She, more stays than Mwah (sic), as she led ladies' tours here during the 'aughts.
Only four hours sleep here. Then, off to Agra... another well-worn path for TIMDT.
Above: Oberoi Ameralis Hotel. Agra, India. 02 April 2024.
Bedside view of Taj Mahal. It never gets old.
Above: Oberoi Ameralis Hotel. Agra, India. 03 April 2024.
4:45 AM. TIMDT observes floral display prior to visit to the Taj Mahal. This is my sixth visit to the Taj Mahal. The first visit was in the summer of 1963 while accompanying Mom, Dad and brother Dee on west bound trip from San Francisco to Cairo, Egypt for Dad's employment with Egypt's National Institute of Management Development, during his sabbatical leave from BYU. TIMDT and Mwah (sic) visited the Taj Mahal twice between late 1971 and early 1974 during my employment in India with Citibank. Finally, I've visited the Taj Mahal three times during frequent travels to India over the last two decades. It never gets old.
During the '70's the grounds of the Taj Mahal were poorly managed. The fountains, containing brackish, brown colored water, were inoperative. Weeds proliferated in the gardens, touts roamed freely, and hawkers' stands surrounded the base of the Taj Mahal itself. Today the grounds are meticulously maintained. There is no commerce on the grounds. Ticketed entry is rigorously enforced. Thankfully, today there are no touts.
Above: Taj Mahal, Agra, UP, India. 03 April 2024.
Granny, Bishop and Koessler family.
In December of 1972, TIMDT, Mwah (sic), and two-year-old Feebee arrived from Beirut, Lebanon, where we had lived for the previous six months, at the Palam Airport in New Delhi, India at around 2:00 AM. We had come to India to undertake my first work assignment for Citibank at its New Delhi branch. Four hours later, cranky and exhausted, we arrived at the Oberoi New Delhi hotel, escorted by Citibank officer, Surinder Singh. Why the four-hour long delay between arriving at the airport and hotel check in? While at Palam we underwent a first-degree screening as India Customs officers rifled through each piece for our luggage, emptying the contents, checking for hidden compartments, then replacing the contents. With no air conditioning inside, the airport was warm and musty. TIMDT did her best to keep FeeBee pacified, but FeeBee cried most of the time during the customs ordeal. After departing the customs and baggage area, we were accosted simultaneously by a dozen or so screaming touts, offering rides to town, porter service, or currency exchange. Surinder Singh located us, shooshed the touts away, engaged some porters and escorted us outside of the airport into India's unique, pungent, smokey atmosphere, to our non-air conditioned, rickety van.
Yesterday, 02 April 2024, fifty-two years later, TIMDT and Mwah (sic), arrived in New Delhi at Indira Ghandi International Airport, also at 2:00 AM. We had come to join our son's (Koessler's) family for a ten-day tour through India's golden triangle. The kids, who arrived in India two days ago, had already done the Delhi portion of the tour. We would join them for the Agra and Rajasthan segments. After, separating from the Koesslers, TIMDT and Mwah (sic) will travel to Gujarat, a region of India we hadn't seen during our three years of living in India in the early '70's and traveling there fifteen times since. Immediately on exiting the KLM Airlines aircraft's jetway we were greeted by a young woman who escorted us to a golf cart, only feet away. The golf cart driver loaded our hand luggage and drove us quite a distance (the ten-year-old, spiffy, international class, Indira Gandhi Airport has extremely long concourses) to a VIP immigration control desk. There was no one ahead of us at the immigration desk and after the immigration officer reviewed our papers, we were quickly whisked through to the baggage area. The young woman gave our baggage receipt to a porter, who immediately located our baggage (wha?? it had been less than fifteen minutes since we deplaned). With our baggage loaded on a cart, we exited into the public area of the airport to be met by Souvan, a TravelScope India (TIMDT's travel agent for the last 20 years) employee. Souvan, no touts in sight, escorted us to our car, less than one hundred yards away. We arrived at the Imperial Hotel in New Delhi in thirty minutes. We were in bed by 3:30 AM.
The marked contrast between our two India arrival experiences, separated by fifty-two years, is a metaphor for India in general over that period. What once was a third world country, 550 million strong, a democracy, but really mired in bureaucratic socialism and petty corruption, today is a "second world" country, 1.4 billion strong, still chaotic and not without corruption, but leveraging its democracy to tilt, with inexorable, dynamic forward momentum, towards economic freedom and prosperity for more and more of its 1.4 billion citizens.. India grows (5% GDP growth) at a rate that will turn it into the world's third largest economy within three years. Like Indira Ghandhi International Airport of 2024 as compared to Palam Airport 1971, India today is on a far better footing than it was fifty three years ago.
I love coming to India. Indians have to work hard to get ahead. There is no room in India for the lazy. There are few social safety nets apart from family assistance. India is aspirational in an age where the West questions its own purpose. India is spiritual when secularism drains the west of its sense of direction and vitality. We lived for three years in India in the '70's and have been back fifteen times since. We return often because we are ever amazed at India's frenzied progression to becoming a major world player. I look forward over the next three weeks to gaining firsthand insights of transformative India and reporting on them in my Picto Diary/Daily Blog notes.
Above: Agra, India. 03 April 2024.
Vulture sits on Taj Mahal ledge. Birds are India. Most of them have flown off for cooler climes in Siberia, but a few remain. In the Taj Mahal grounds we also saw Hornbill, Green Pigeon, Eurasian Collard Dove, and Parakeet.
Above: Agra, India. Agra Sloth Bear Rescue Sanctuary, 03 April 2024.
Agra Bear Rescue Facility - Wildlife SOS
Every few weeks during 1973, the bear wallah and his dancing bear would show up in front of our house in the Hauz Khas subdivision of New Delhi. To our delight, the bear would dance in our driveway. We'd gratefully pass a few rupees to the bear wallah and he'd move on to the next house. Had we known the back story to this seemingly innocuous and fun practice, we might have had second thoughts about participating in it.
The dancing bear phenomenon in India is an activity that goes back for centuries. Training the bears involved drilling two holes into the bears' snout and looping a control rope through the holes. The practice seems bad enough on its face (no pun intended), but it often led to infection and disease in the animal. Inducing pain to the bear by yanking on the rope was the way that the bears were compelled to dance. Rightly, the practice of dancing bears was outlawed in India in the late 1990's. Under the auspices of the India Forest Management authorities and a private foundation, the practice was halted. Bear wallahs were given a 50-thousand-rupee payment for giving up their bears. Special arrangements were also made to find employment for the bear wallah's wife and to insure education for the bear wallah's children. There are ninety former dancing bears in the Agra facility and a total of 200 former dancing bears in the four bear rescue facilities in India run by Wildlife SOS foundation.
Little did we know in 1972 that by paying the bear wallah for the dancing bear performance we were abetting animal cruelty.
Male sloth bears can weigh as much as three hundred pounds.
Above: Outdoor Market. Fatehpur Sikri, Uttar Pradesh, India. 04 April 2024.
The above image, captured through the window of our minibus as we passed through Fatehpur Sikri, Rajasthan, of fruit sellers seems to indicate food in abundance. When TIMDT and Mwah (sic) first arrived in India in 1972, India, with a population of 550 million was a net importer of food. Today, as we return to India in 2024, with its population of 1.4 billion, India is a net exporter of food. India's food production achievement over the last fifty years is one of the great, yet today, underappreciated and little talked about world scale success stories of our time. How did India achieve food self-sufficiency in the last fifty years while growing its population by nearly a factor of three?
Agricultural scientists developed higher yield varieties of grain, that's how. Norman Borlaug (of course every American school child knows Borlaug's name by heart - not) was an American agronomist who led initiatives worldwide in the mid 1960's that contributed to the extensive increases in agricultural production termed the Green Revolution. Borlaug was awarded multiple honors for his work, including the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the congressional gold medal. Borlaug was often called "the father of the Green Revolution" and is credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation. Today, Borlaug and his miracle achievements in food production, at least in the popular consciousness, are all but forgotten.
Above: Norman Borlaug
Planting Borlaug's seeds in India led to record production year after year post 1970. There is still hunger in India. It is estimated that 15% of India's population receives inadequate nutrition. Authorities say such food deficiencies relate to distribution issues and not to food shortages.
Perhaps the reason that the success of the Green Revolution isn't widely appreciated today is that its accomplishment runs afoul of the narrative that there are too many people in the world. The "eat only non-genetically modified food (GMO) movement" is a tool used by progressives, without scientific justification, to convince gullible Westerners that Green Revolution's putative success is illusory due to the supposed harmful effects of genetically modified seeds. *** The ruse has worked. Today, most parts of the developed world, still adhering to the narrative that there are too many people in the world, are on the cusp of a population decline driven by low family formation and low birthrates. Declining populations will result in a lower standard of living as fewer workers (without unlikely whopping productivity gains) will be available to spur continued economic growth.
India is not so gullible as the West. India is aspirational as Western Culture cowers. Through use of science, India has shown that she can produce enough food for a growing population and with accompanying economic growth, now at 5%, increase prosperity for all of her citizens. With her growing population, look for India to take an increasing share of the world's output while simultaneously improving her peoples' standard of living. There may be other reasons to question India's future, but her agricultural success is not one of them.
Moral? Doubt so-called conventional wisdom driven by ideological narrative. Be like India. Use science to grow.
*** The fact that the believers in the harm of consuming GMO food are also strong supporters of the mRNA vaccines is another story for another time.
Above: Chand Baoli Stepwell, Rajesthan, India.
Lotta work just to get down to the water table. Too bad no one had invented a pump in the eighth century. As much time as TIMDT have spent in India, this, the largest stepwell in India, is the first Indian stepwell we have ever visited. We expect to see more stepwells later in Gujarat. We were stunned with the scope and preservation of this wonder. It's just another example of how during each visit to India, something new, unexpected, and fabulous unfolds before your eyes.
Above: Dera Amer Wilderness Camp. Rajasthan, India. 04 April 2024
Leopard. Image captured at 200 yards through a binocular by Koessler while on a nature walk with his family. Unlike some leopard camps in India, Dera Amer doesn't advertise a possible leopard sighting. On arrival, seeing that the terrain was similar to leopard camps in Rajasthan that we had visited in the past, I asked the manger if there were leopards in the area. He confirmed that there were and showed me a picture on his phone that he said he had taken two days ago. Koessler and family were treated to a nice, unexpected surprise on their nature walk. Unfortunately, TIMDT and Mwah (sic) didn't go on the nature walk. Still jet-lagged, we were sleeping in our glamping tent.
Addendum:
Dear Steve,
I wish to thank you again for enriching the final years of my career by funding my 2 creative endeavors as a beneficent, generous Arts Patron. That meant so much to me. My one big regret is that I wasn't able to return your money in this age of streaming. That being said, I am grateful to you.
Responding to one of your emails in which you mentioned: "an observation about the dynamism, as measured by financial strength, of today's LDS Church. Joseph Smith, out of whose mind, inspired or not, LDS temples and accompanying rituals sprang, would be (is?) amazed to note the far-reaching fruits of his inspiration."
Joseph Smith knew that no enemy then present or in the future would have sufficient power to frustrate or stop the purposes of God. We are all familiar with his prophetic words: “The Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done” (History of the Church, 4:540). This statement demonstrates to me that young Joseph knew through revelation what the growth of Christ's church would be like.
Regarding Temple work, the Church is merely continuing a practice that the Church engaged in during New Testament times. What is the destiny of the billions who have lived and died with no knowledge of Jesus? With the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ has come the understanding of how the unbaptized dead are redeemed and how God can be “a perfect, just God, and a merciful God also” (Alma 42:15).
While yet in life, Jesus prophesied that He would also preach to the dead. Peter tells us this happened in the interval between the Savior’s Crucifixion and Resurrection (see 1 Peter 3:18–19). President Joseph F. Smith (1838–1918) witnessed in vision that the Savior visited the spirit world and “from among the righteous [spirits], he organized his forces and appointed messengers, clothed with power and authority, and commissioned them to go forth and carry the light of the gospel to them that were in darkness. …“These were taught faith in God, repentance from sin, vicarious baptism for the remission of sins, [and] the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands” (D&C 138:30, 33).The doctrine that the living can provide baptism and other essential ordinances to the dead vicariously was revealed anew to the Prophet Joseph Smith (see D&C 124; 128; 132).It is for this reason that the gospel is preached “also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit” (1 Peter 4:6). Our anxiety to redeem the dead and the time and resources we put behind that commitment are, above all, an expression of our witness concerning Jesus Christ. It constitutes as powerful a statement as we can make concerning His divine character and mission. It testifies, first, of Christ’s Resurrection; second, of the infinite reach of His Atonement; third, that He is the sole source of salvation; fourth, that He has established the conditions for salvation; and, fifth, that He will come again. As regards the Resurrection, Paul asked, “Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?” (1 Corinthians 15:29). We are baptized for the dead because we know that they will rise. “The soul shall be restored to the body, and the body to the soul; yea, and every limb and joint shall be restored to its body; yea, even a hair of the head shall not be lost; but all things shall be restored to their proper and perfect frame” (Alma 40:23). “For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living” (Romans 14:9). Contemplating God’s glorious plan for the redemption of these, His children, the Prophet Joseph Smith penned this psalm: “Let your hearts rejoice, and be exceedingly glad. Let the earth break forth into singing. Let the dead speak forth anthems of eternal praise to the King Immanuel, who hath ordained, before the world was, that which would enable us to redeem them out of their prison; for the prisoners shall go free” (D&C 128:22).
These sentiments Steve, and more, are why faithful members prioritize Temples and the work performed therein.
I greatly admire your life Steve - reading, traveling, discipline, generosity, growth mindset, support of things you believe in, enthusiasm, friendshipping, and thoughtfulness! The Church of Jesus Christ needs a great man like you!
As an aside Richard Bushman has been a progressive historian. Like so much that is the misnomer "progressive," their trade is one of misrepresentation, distortion, and faulty conclusions. His many unflattering and tainted claims are being dismantled now by traditional historians looking at verifiable facts and original sources.
Anyway, enjoy India!
Love,
Jay Lawrence, Lehi, UT
Your testimony, Jay, is evidence of the LDS energy of which I speak. Thanks! And thanks for your fabulous, world class contribution to big band and ensemble jazz. I was proud to be an executive producer of those two albums. Your comment on Richard Bushman is, if nothing else, "to the point." I've read both his books, "Rough Stone Rolling," and "Joseph Smith's Golden Plates." It is true that he tries to put in modern context those events/claims that happened in another era. He does so by evidence gathering and meticulous documentation. I thought both books were helpful, even if no book can prove or disprove Joseph's Smith's claims. Bushman bears a testimony to the effect that he would want no other life other than his life as an active Mormon... not an "I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt" affirmation, for sure. I'd have to say that his work is a net add to the Church's benefit, but acknowledge that his testimony is not solidly affirmative of the miracles claimed by Joseph Smith. Isn't there room for such a person within Mormondom?