The Blue Mosque - An Essay

The Blue Mosque - An Essay, originally uploaded by Shivaranjan.

The Sultanahmet Cami (pronounced Jaami, which I understood to mean a humongous mosque as compared to a Mesjid - Masjid in India - an ordinary sized mosque) and the Hagia Sophia (also known as the Ayia Sophia or Sancta Sophia) are two imposing, almost menacing, structures sitting opposite each other in close quarters, ready to slug it out. The bulging domes ripple like muscles and you are dwarfed standing between the two in the small square and can't help being in awe of the fact that these buildings are so old. The Hagia Sophia was dedicated in 360 A.D. according to Wikipedia and the Blue Mosque in 1616. Incidentally, the Blue Mosque is so called because of the blue tiles inside the building, there is not much blue on the outside. Kind of a clever way of piquing your curiosity and tempting you to have a look see inside :)

I will be posting interior snaps of the Hagia Sophia in the next few days.

See the two behemoths square up to each other here

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=istanbul&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=17.025991,46.538086&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Istanbul,+Turkey&ll=41.006767,28.979369&spn=0.005295,0.011362&t=h&z=17

A shaky melodic memory

A shaky melodic memory, originally uploaded by Shivaranjan.

Taken near Galatasaray Square on Istiklal Cadessi in Istanbul over Easter 2010

I don't know what musical instrument the old man was playing, but he had the most melodious voice that will forever haunt me. I will forever seek that voice and I will never find it. The singer was blind, completely lost in (what I think was a folk or Sufi) song while his grandson held the mike, interested and disinterested at the same time. The blind singer's wife sat behind waiting for him to finish. I stood mesmerised, trying my best to capture something to remind me of how I felt. The municipal cleaners tried their best to disrupt him mid song, but he was in another world. And when he finished, he calmly stood up, placed the instrument in its carrying case and shouldered it, took the stools in one hand and his grandson's hand in the other and went his way with his wife following them. And the voice was gone and I will forever search for it.

It really makes me sad that someone with such a mellifluous voice has to sing on streets, fighting with passing trams and cleaning trucks to be heard. But I don't think he cared.