India's Epcot of Lies

Its amazing to me that I haven't yet posted on this, as its been several weeks since I visited.

Early on here, a few friends and I were eager to do a bit of sightseeing. We'd been so engrossed in apartment-searching that - a week or two into our time here - we'd hardly had the opportunity to see any of Delhi, particularly not historic Delhi. Like any good tourists, we started our day at Humayun's Tomb, which I have described before as a marvel of Mughal-era architecture. Thereafter, it got a bit strange.

Our next destination was Akshardham, which is described on its website as epitomizing "10,000 years of Indian culture in all its breathtaking grandeur, beauty, wisdom and bliss. It brilliantly showcases the essence of India’s ancient architecture, traditions and timeless spiritual messages. The Akshardham experience is an enlightening journey through India’s glorious art, values and contributions for the progress, happiness and harmony of mankind."

In other words, its a bizarre temple complex run by an extravagantly wealthy and extraordinarily odd sect of Hinduism. It consists of a magnificent central temple, with facades, pillars and sculptures that were handcarved by 11,000 volunteers over the course of 5 years. The entire complex was designed to perfectly replicate ancient temples, and as best as I could tell, it did. But beyond this central temple, the campus - and I say campus because inculcation seems to be the primary objective of this cult, ahem, sect - consists of: an animatronic tour of a Swami's life, an animatronic boat ride that takes you through a complete mythical and fabricated history of Indian ingenuity and invention, and an IMAX film that is translated into multiple languages and was filmed with the support of tens of THOUSANDS of extras. They also have a snack stand that sells delicious popcorn, a personalized photography set-up, with the temple as a backdrop, and a musical fountain show that is the showy and surely completely traditional denouement of every evening.

When I arrived, I had no idea what to expect. When I learned that there would be animatronics, I had every idea of what to expect and I was excited, because animatronic-anything is guaranteed to be both hilarious and awesome in equal measure. And it was. The animatronic Swami brought fish back to life, healed the sick, and became one of India's most important figures (so the believers say) in a series of seven or eight mechanical scenes, operose in the disturbingly funny way only robots are capable of.

With the tour of the Swami's life over, it was time to pull the lens back and focus on the rich lineage of India's cultural, scientific and philosophical traditions. When was the first space ship invented? Did you say 1950? Well, you are wrong. Ancient Indian's invented the first spaceship more than two thousand years ago. They also invented nuclear fission, modern day medicine, yoga (ok so we knew that), and EVERY OTHER THING UPON WHICH HUMAN CIVILIZATION HAS BEEN BUILT. This fact - and the error of Western history as we know it -was presented to us during a 20 minute indoor boat ride that ended with a trip to the future where, evidently, small children of different colors (not races, I mean primary colors) will walk through the sky on nearly invisible pieces of glass.

I would go on to describe the IMAX, but I mostly just fell asleep, despite it being the single loudest film ever made. How could I stay awake after such a tiring day of having my entire belief system and cultural heritage shown to be a fiction?

The evening closed with the dancing fountains. Jets of water, illuminated by multi-colored lights danced through the air as though summoned by the Swami himself. We were all amazed and then bored. So, we left early, went home, and spent the next days sorting out dreams from reality and reality from nightmares.

One thing I've been dogged in trying to figure out ever since is where their money comes from. The temple complex literally must've cost billions. But there is no information about it anywhere, as though no one else is interested in such an oddity, or as though they're Scientologists. Which is my theory of the moment.