After Akbar

Sometimes someone will suggest something as "very Lux Lotus," and although it always delights me I can't say I fully understand what it means (Lux Lotus is my personal blog but the phrase itself is something that just popped into my mind fully formed one day). Then last night, I started a new cycle of pleasure reading (focus: India), and barely made it through ten pages of Indian Summer before I felt compelled to mark a passage:

"Akbar [The Great] was one of the most successful military commanders of all time, a liberal philosopher of distinction and a generous patron of the arts. He lived in unmatched opulence at Fatehpur Sikri, in rooms done out in marble, sandalwood and mother-of-pearl, cooled by the gentle fanning of peacock feathers. His hobbies were discussing metaphysics, collecting emeralds, hunting  with cheetahs and inventing religions; he had as his plaything the Koh-i-Noor diamond, a giant, glittering rock weighing over 186 carats, then almost twice its present size."

He had me at "hunting with cheetahs." (Aside: one of the most jaw-dropping things I ever heard as a child, at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, that stayed with me ever after was the story of how she "walked a pet lion on a leash.") Or was it "the gentle fanning of peacock feathers"? At any rate, that's fairly sublime and it made me laugh out loud when I thought to myself: that's so Lux Lotus!