art & architecture: intricate india
It’s been a year since our trip to India and in looking back through photos, I realize that I’d taken nearly twice as many pictures of the architecture than I did of our everyday adventures while there! I was (and am still) completely fascinated by architecture that outdates most everything on this continent. Having lived all my life in the US, and specifically in Chicago, it’s easy to forget that not all world cities are built with organized structure. Not all buildings are variations on Van der Rohe’s glass cubes.
The thing about India that brings an American’s Eat, Pray, Love fantasies to life is the repetition of Mughal design around every [traffic-filled] corner. India also loves inlaid marble (a country after my own heart)! When you stand in front of the Taj Mahal or even at the small mosques surrounding Qutub Minar, you see all of the inlaid marble patterns and beautiful scrolled Arabic text. To consider that all of this work was done by hand is very overwhelming!