The Wealth Of India
by Raja Murthy,
The Red Fort ranks as my favourite stopover in Delhi, when passing through en route to Rishikesh. This former address of emperors calls not because of architectural grandeur or bloodied history, but partly because it offers an island of serenity amid the honking bustle of New and Old Delhi. The Red Fort too serves as example of what India was, is and has potential to be – particularly in reducing poverty and increasing prosperity through tourism.
Spending meditative time under Red Fort’s elderly trees, or in green parklands near the Rang Mahal, under smiling blue summer skies or the pale winter sunshine of Delhi, grips me with a strange sense of déjà vu – like hearing some distant melody of memories, and straining to hear more, to know from where and why. Old monuments are like time machines – what stories ancient walls can tell, if they can speak of all they saw and heard of lives lived through centuries.
In its working hours, thousands of visitors walk around the Red Fort, in the middle of one of the world’s biggest cities, and yet silence and solitude surround the outer ramparts guarding the ‘Diwan-i-Khaas’, where the bejeweled and infamously looted Peacock Throne once stood.
After the setting sun bathes the Red Fort in an ethereal glow, and the lights of Chandni Chowk greets the moon shyly unveiling, the Red Fort then serves its nightly reminder of how much tourism is an under-utilized treasure in India. Good to see tourism getting special attention from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The government’s new online e-visa, for instance, is emerging as one of the bigger success stories in global tourism this year.
But the Red Fort’s nightly Sound and Light show, narrating its history, is still trapped in a time-warp of the 1980s – with outdated sound-light effects, and an under-whelming commentary (including the offensive word ‘slut’, upon hearing which invariably some visitors get up and leave). Surely, immensely technology-rich India can deliver a cutting edge 21st century upgrade of the most seen Sound and Lightm show in the country – with 3D effects, holograms, laser lights, better commentary and epochal music to hopefully soon replace the existing 30-year old version.
The Red Fort’s doddering Sound and Light show is a small example of India’s unused potential to be a more rewarding tourist destination, as one of the most enthralling places in the world. See more…