A Trip to Museum

The day looked pleasant enough to take a ride through the Janpath road. No honking and hurry-burry. The road stretched right before me like a gray carpet. The swaying trees on both side of the road felt like the dancing Salabhanjikas, adorning the facade of a great palace.

  

National Museum indeed is not lesser than any palace. Arts & Culture being its building blocks, cemented together by the history of Indian subcontinent. When I reached there the place has already been filled with school children. Their white and white uniform made it difficult to differentiate between them, a sense of unity and uniformity. Kids, they are like water, you couldn't contain them, they fill the entire place. They are here for a learning tour about the history and arts of Asia. Schools should encourage such tours more. It helps to create an awareness among the children about what they need and needn't to be believed. Today we are exposed to different versions of history and other dangerous manipulative doctrines. Such tours to Museums would make children observe and realise what is what. Such things have a long lasting effects on their psyche than we could ever imagine.

 

I was scanned by a police man before entering the Museum. After that I bought a ticket which costs me 20 Rs. However if I was a foreign national the ticket would have cost me 160 Rs. I always failed to understood the reasoning behind this. This is the same everywhere in India with no exceptions. I entered a long corridor, through which one have to go to reach the main galleries. There were many stone statues on both sides but one statue in particular got my attention. I have never saw a statue or picture dedicated to River Yamuna. But here I saw a stone statue from Madhya Pradesh, a medieval collection, Yamuna as a goddess with her attendants. I was amazed by our ancestors' ability to visualise everything and everyone as one of us or as some one above us.

Yamuna with attendents

There was a grand collection from Harappa civilisation for exhibition. I breezed through collection at the same time got amazed by the artistic talent and the historical significance of the items that I m with. All those things I saw there, made the people and country of mine and around. I got a feeling that “If you don't know your past, you don't know anything”.

elephants carrying the remains of Buddha

Sun God -Konark Temple

Black Buddha

Laxmi Narayan on Garuda

I have to move fast as my actual destination is yet to be arrived. I am here to see the relic of “Lord Buddha”. The gallery of Budhist art collection presents a myriad of Buddhist religious symbols and sculptures. Many holy objects from the monasteries, related to Buddhism, from Ladakh and Nepal was kept here. Chinese Paintings of Avalokiteshwara and Bodhisatva were hanging on the wall. Many statues of Buddha and a big elephant tusk on which the Jataka stories had been carved upon. You can feel the presence of Buddha in here. At the end of the room near the exit, is a big gold plated stoopa in which, at the top is a glass box which carries the remains,4 bone fragments, believed to be of Lord Buddha's, which was excavated from Uttar Pradesh by ASI (Archaeological survey of India). 

Relic of Lord Buddha

Looking at the relics of Lord Gautama Buddha in such close proximity caused a chilling self-realization. In today's world the significance of Buddha is even more than before. The holy relics, the bones, which was once a man who ignited the change. He, who lighted a lamp of hope which tore away the black robe of ignorance,  created by religion and caste,were kept screaming to me in the face--

“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who say it, unless it agrees with your own reason and common sense”

If anybody who are interested in history, arts and culture, it is a must go destination, especially for children. What you see there is your own past. No illusion , No Manipulation.