Tag Archives: Gandhi Smriti

Daily Life, India

Munnerlyns in Delhi – Golden!

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I sang it in Girl Scouts, and it still rings true:
“Make new friends, but keep the old.
One is silver, the other is gold.”

Some of our favorite people from the Shanghai days swept through New Delhi last week, and I am still feeling the glow. Tim, Jen and Sydney Munnerlyn were our downstairs neighbors at Green Court in Shanghai. They left China the year before we did and now live in Abu Dhabi. Sydney, a wee 4-year-old when we met her, is now a sensitive, beautiful, fifth-grade blogger, horsewoman, actress, swimmer, traveler, storyteller. How special to be part of her life experience!

The Gandhi Smriti affected me so deeply that I wanted to share it with the Munnos.

Saturday evening, our school held its big Fall Fiesta, a Halloween party/fund-raiser for high school service clubs. Tony volunteered for the dunk tank, but got reassigned to the pie-in-the-face booth. Turns out Sydney has a good arm.
tony and syd

I had planned Sunday breakfast with a group of former Shanghai American School teachers who now work here at AES, but only Cheryl Perkins was able to make it.

Syd bought a leather-bound journal and a pack of jewel-encrusted pens at Dilli Haat, a local handicrafts market. She couldn’t wait to start writing.
syd writes

Zangoora, which bills itself as the “only Bollywood stage musical,” took place at a Vegas-y venue called Kingdom of Dreams. It featured horrifically loud music and hilariously bad English dubbing (piped into our headsets), but also outrageous special effects and brilliant dancing. A definite Delhi “don’t miss”!
kingdom of dreams

Still new to India, Tony and I were not the best tour guides. We hauled them to a few places in town, dragged them to school and then sent them off to Rajasthan for a few days. The best part of their visit for me, though, was the seamless simple process of reconnecting.

(The photos at the Fall Fiesta, Dilli Haat and Zangoora are stolen from Jen’s Facebook page.)

Daily Life, India

Eternal Gandhi

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I’m having a hard time getting started on my post about the Gandhi Smriti and Eternal Gandhi Multimedia Museum. So many emotions surfaced during my visit to the place where Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated; how can I harness them to write about it? Most brain-freezes will thaw with the making of a list, so here goes.

Things I Felt at the Museum
Awe – I knew Gandhi had been a powerful force in India, but I hadn’t realized how far-reaching – geographically and philosophically – his influence was. The museum features comments and film footage from esteemed world leaders in politics, education, science, social welfare and more – including Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Albert Einstein.
Grief – Seeing the movie or reading books about Gandhi cannot compare to standing in the spot where he was gunned down on his way to pray.
Fear – It seems too easy for the extremist minority to destroy the dreams of the moderate majority. This theme has played out so many times in history, and I worry that it’s happening today in the States.
Understanding – A somewhat cheesy collection of dioramas clarified the major events in Gandhi’s life. For example, he had been working as a lawyer in South Africa when authorities kicked him off a train for sitting in the “whites only” compartment. This, combined with other indignities he experienced there, was apparently a life-changing catalyst for him to embrace social activism.
Humility – A pair of simple sandals at the museum affected me deeply. Gandhi had made the sandals while in prison and presented them to Gen. Jan Smuts, an adversary who advocated racial segregation in South Africa. In 1939, when Smuts was Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, he returned the sandals in honor of Gandhi’s 70th birthday with the following message: “I have worn these sandals for many a summer, even though I may feel that I am not worthy to stand in the shoes of so great a man.”
Wonder – While I appreciated the old-school panels with photos and text, dioramas, and artifacts downstairs, I was unprepared for the cutting-edge fusion of technology, art and education that we encountered upstairs. According to the Eternal Gandhi Multimedia Museum’s brochure, the project’s tradition-based interactions with classical symbols, sacred objects, collaboratively created artworks, collective chanting and more “inspire a rich panorama of tactile interfaces that allow people to access the multimedia imagery and multidimensional mind of Gandhiji.”

I guess it would be fair to say I was a bit overwhelmed.

The Gandhi Smriti is housed in the Birla House, the former home of a New Delhi businessman where Gandhi spent the last few months of his life. “Smriti” is Sanskrit for “that which is remembered.” The house and gardens include footsteps to mark Gandhi’s last walk to prayer, the living quarters that have been untouched since his death in 1948, the diorama exhibit and many interpretive panels with hundreds of photos.

The Eternal Gandhi museum fills the second floor of the Birla House with amazing exhibits. Please visit the Eternal Gandhi Multimedia Museum website for details on the brilliant and powerful interactive displays. Here are some photos, but they really can’t capture the fascination inspired during my visit.

One installation offers scenes of Gandhi’s life in prison. During that time, he wrote his autobiography, which unfolds digitally in his own handwriting on the floor of the prison cell.