Ghosts of India Past

I was just watching this documentary today called "The Story of India". It was 6 hours of breathtaking footage and stories about India's past. This was like crack to me. I can't tell you how amazing it feels to stand in a building a 1000 years old and imagine life as it used to be. I remember standing in Ajanta Caves when I was 13 years old and simply wanting to cry at the sheer magnificence of what was around me. While I can't do that (relative to India) at this point, just watching it online was enthralling enough.

I have always wondered where Ramayana and Mahabharata fit into the mold of Indian History. As they have religious connotations, I can imagine many people preferring to imagine them as myths and not include them in the accepted historical versions of India. Still, personally to me it was always likely that these stories were true. There were true places like Kurukshetra that were mentioned. And also maybe it was the romantic in me that wanted to believe that the stories were true. I found out that Ramayana supposedly existed around 7500 BC. The Mahabharata time was around 3200 BC. I was also always confused about the different timelines of the Maurya (around 300 BC) and Gupta Dynasties (around 300 AD). It was an amazing refresher to the greatness of India.

Watching these kind of documentaries gives me this kind of strange mix of elation and sad wistfulness. I remember this movie , " A midnight in Paris". The main guy in the movie (played by owen wilson.. what a cutie!) gets to go back to the 1950s each night and experience the life he always longed for. I really think that if I had one wish today, it would be to be able to do the same (after world peace of course :p). Which time would I choose? Ugghhhh.. it's hard but I think I want to see India in all her glory so it would be the Golden Age first of course, and then I guess I'd like to meet Birbal, so Akbar's rule then.

This trail of thought also makes me think about the DISMAL state of preservation of our history. My visit to London and my stay in the US since the past 4 years has shown me how much we take our history for granted. I have visited exhibits in both places where it was preserved, marketed like crazy and all for something that was probably from the 1800s. The documentary was showing artifacts from the Kushan empire (50 AD!!) and the artifacts were kept in a normal room with minimum preservation. The historian was even allowed to touch the artifacts. And it wasn't even in some huge museum which has many visitors, the artifacts were stored in the local city museum of the tiny town in which in was discovered! And in cities like Hyderabad, historical buildings are routinely torn down to build newer uglier buildings. The documentary also showed this structure called Akbar ka Tila which was like a small gathering assembly for Akbar. The monument is completely ignored and unacknowledged and treated like any other piece of concrete in the middle of any other park. Ok, I need to stop.. this is getting me super riled up. Ugghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.