Word: tombs
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...many of the 115,000 Samoans who live on the main island of Upolu, Robert Louis Stevenson is still very much alive. From his office on the sixth floor of the Central Bank of Samoa building, Deputy Prime Minister Misa Telefoni points out the window to Tusitala's mountain tomb: "See, it's up under those trees - right on top. That's an indication of how much the Samoans cared for him, because they had to hack the road up there and carry his heavy coffin." Telefoni's memory of Tusitala, or "Writer of Tales," as he was known locally...
...endangered. UNESCO has warned that sulfurous pollution from the city of Agra is eating away at the building's exquisite inlaid marble and that sewage water is seeping into the foundations; the organization has also asked for a report to address claims that the 350-year-old tomb is tilting by 19 cm, leading to fears that it might eventually collapse. Meanwhile, India's foremost Hindu site, the southern city of Hampi, has appeared on UNESCO's endangered list for five years over plans to build a road nearby, and the city's magnificent central concourse has been irreparably damaged...
...Amazingly, Thakur has retained this same sense of urgency and outrage even in the face of decades of disappointment. Taking her latest class of students on a tour of Mehrauli recently, she showed them the mosques, bath houses and orchards of the last Mughal Emperor and a tomb that British resident Sir Thomas Metcalf converted into a summer house and terraced garden. "Oh, God, oh, God," she repeats softly at the sight of one poorly executed renovation after another. "We've lost so much already," she laments. And yet, as always, Thakur determines to keep fighting. "It's a fantastic...
...there was one thing that astounded all visitors to New Delhi: the ruins. For miles in every direction, half-collapsed and overgrown, robbed and reoccupied, and neglected by all, lay the remains of 600 years of trans-Indian imperium. Hammams (steam baths) and palaces, thousand-pillared halls and mighty tomb towers, empty temples and half-deserted Sufi shrines?there seemed to be no end to the litter of the ages. "The prospect towards Delhi, as far as the eye can reach, is covered with the crumbling remains of gardens, pavilions, and burying places," wrote British traveler William Franklin...
...sheer volume and density of historic remains; yet in New Delhi, familiarity has bred not pride but contempt. Every year, more ruins vanish, victims of unscrupulous property developers or unthinking bureaucrats. Sometimes no other great city seems less loved or cared for. Occasionally there is an outcry as the tomb of the Mughal poet Zauq is discovered to have disappeared under a municipal urinal or the haveli courtyard house of his great rival Ghalib is revealed to have been turned into a coal store; but most of the losses go unrecorded. I find it heartbreaking: every time I revisit...