Tuesday was a deadline day for Kim and I was exhausted from Chandni Chowk, so she worked and I finished putting together slide shows. Despite the traffic racket, it was pleasant to sit on on her garden patio with my laptop.
Wednesday, April 1, we went to the Taj Majal, which is in Agra somewhere around 80 miles from here. But it took four hours because of traffic, which Kim planned for, so we left about 6:30 in the morning.
There are no rules on Indian highways. Trucks that look too tall to have a safe center of gravity, motor rickshaws built for three crammed with thirteen, scooters, bikes even pedestrians all share space. At about 8 a.m., Suresh had to weave us through a mile of stopped trucks. Stopped on the road, off, half on and half off. All with the words "Honk please" hand lettered on the back of the bumper. At least its one admonition the Indians obey.
The road to Agra passes through a rural area. There are shacks along the highway, juice stands, schoolkids, very old people, dogs, cows, water buffalo, monkeys, dust, dirt and trash everywhere.
Kim explained that the trucks ostensibly were stopped for weigh-ins (how in that disordered fashion I have no idea. I saw no station) but the real reason was likelier to be the collection of bribes. The first of the month is pay day for police and other government workers. They don't make enough so they squeeze the smaller fish down the food chain. The long delays for truckers also are on reason for the country's AIDS rate. You can have sex with a prostitute, or with another trucker, to pass the time. She also predicted we would get pulled over. Stopped at a McDonald's for a bathroom break (chains and franchises often recommended for this purpose).
At 10:30 we got to the Taj parking lot. Suresh dropped us off the hawkers descended. "Madam, you come with me. Look. Special pictures, 10 rupees." "Hello. Madam. Look, special tour, can't get inside. I give to you for (however many) rupees."
Little kids. "Madam, please, keychain please? Only 10 rupees." And on and on. Everyone had the same stuff. Really. Except for the guy selling the bullwhips "Very fine leather, Madam." Did they sell a lot of bullwhips when the Taj was built?
Then we had to walk through a "security gate" that was nothing more than a hole in a fence "guarded" by 10 or 15 lounging uniformed officers.
We walked to the ticket gate and Kim bought her ticket then had to elbow away a guy pushing in front of her as she tried to by mine. Even as she was getting change, he was still trying to push his money in past her.
Overall, the Taj was a discouraging experience. Not because this monument to love is not supremely beautiful and serene, but because of what surrounds it. I’ve mentioned the hawkers and drivers who descend upon you. As you walk to the entrance on a sidewalk by a wooded area, you are overpowered by the stench from an open sewer next to the walkway. Trash is everywhere. Guards lounge, guarding nothing. If you didn’t know better, you would not know you were approaching one of the seven wonders of the world.
Once you enter the grounds (and this is not exclusive to the Taj Mahal) men stare and whisper if you are not Indian (as we were leaving, Kim called out a man who was surreptiously taking pictures of a female tourist, a Western woman, doing the familiar “pinching the top of the Taj Mahal pose.” Kim has enough of a command of Hindi to know the comments the man was making to his companions weren’t nice. She dressed him down and later we saw him examining a bullwhip. Character definitely will out.)
It was crowded, but not so much so that we had to elbow our way around. There are unofficial guides inside the main chamber, which houses the mausoleum of the favorite wife of Shah Jahan, Mumtaz Mahal, who died in childbirth. Later, when the Shah was imprisoned by his paranoid son, Aurangzeb, he requested a prison with a view to his creation, so he could see it every day before he died.
The whiteness of the Taj, iconic as it may be, is not how it looked originally. It was encrusted with precious stones, most of them later looted.
One of the unofficial guides snared us as we came in. It is cool and dark inside the main chamber -- photography is forbidden, so they carry small flashlights to illuminate the semi-precious stones including onyx, lapis lazuli, malachite and so many others that make up the intricate marble inlays, in the design of flowers, inside the chamber. The dome rises to 144 feet. Inside, the chamber is acoustically structured so that a call from the floor takes 10 seconds before it echoes back to you from above. Our guide demonstrated; it was disconcerting to hear his voice bounce back 10 seconds later.
The dome is doubled, with a chamber of air between the upper and lower layers for cooling purposes.
The queen’s body is not in the mausoleum, but in a chamber below. You can look down to it through a screen as you come in, but there is nothing to see and the screen is used primarily as a catch for offerings of paper bills.
Behind the Taj is the Yamuna River, dry when we were there, which once irrigated the water courses. Off in the distance in the river bed, we saw oxen.
On one side of the Taj is a mosque, still used for prayers on Fridays and on the other an almost identical structure once used as the guest house.
As you catch your first glimpse of the Taj Mahal, you are struck by the long fountained canal that, if it continued, would intersect the entrance of the shrine on a vertical. The fountains are on, but not dramatically so. One of the principles of architecture in the ancient Islamic world was of the water feature to create a point of view. I’ve never been to the Alhambra in Spain, but it is a prime example of the use of water as a symbol of power in an arid environment and, for example, in the long watercourses, as a way to draw the eye more dramatically to a focal point. The Taj would not be as impressive if there was no cool water with splashing fountains directing the eye to it. The long course is intersected by a horizontal one, extending toward the mosque on one side and the guest house on the other. There are gardens along the course on the guest house side. The principle of symmetry must apply on the other side.
As we walked out, I thought about how hot and serene and shimmering the Taj Mahal must have been in earlier times. I’ve been here only a few days, but I’ve seen enough to wonder why better care isn’t taken of treasures like these. The Qutab Minar in Delhi, the tallest free-standing minaret in the Islamic world, is closed to visitors because it is in such poor shape. Once you could climb to the top.
The Taj Mahal is a world treasure, like so many wonders of the ancient world conceived by vanity, love or both, designed and built by intelligence, mathematics and the hard labor of unremembered thousands. Today, it is surrounded by trash, sewage and sellers of junk.
Outside the gates, one of these vendors, a young man, started to make vulgar noises at us. Being around Kim had soaked in, because out of my mouth came “Shut up, asshole.” He didn’t understand the words, but my tone was unmistakable. Why should I be speaking like that at the Taj Mahal?
As Kim predicted, we got stopped by the police on our way out. There is a press sticker in the window of Kim’s car, since her husband is a journalist. The cop’s excuse? Foreigners in an India press car. Suresh got the papers out and Kim was out in a split second with her camera.
“What’s the problem here? I have kids in Delhi who are hungry!” The cop, stunned by her anger, waved us along but, embarrassed, immediately gave chase to car behind us. We pulled up and stopped next to them and Kim gave the cop attitude for a few seconds before we pulled away. I felt very sorry for the people in that car.
We snoozed most of the way back home. It was a long day.
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