(5) Agra
I was very ambivalent about going to Agra, the site of the Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal had never interested me in the same way as so many other Indian monuments. I wasn't going to go there at all but the Indian travel agent in Delhi insisted, it was on the way to the next stop, Khajurhao, and his insistence on driving these distances had so far been very rewarding . I tried to generate some anticipation during the 6 hour drive which was initially as enchanting as the approach to Jaipur. There was the regular occurrence of towns and villages, all of the exotic sights that one travels thousands of miles to see, a few colorful processions of some ceremonial or political import, Singh wasn't sure which, and long stretches of roadside industry that mostly involving building materials. These included brick making, masonry supplies, and several stretches of stone carvers making both figurative and geometric architectural embellishments. The level of craftsmanship was excellent, all executed by slight men ranging in age from young teens to very old, all done with hand tools and Archmedian principals that hadn't changed in millennia. At our periodic rest stops I was reminded how totally weird I must be to these folks, I was two feet taller than many of them, soaked in perspiration, taking pictures of things that I am sure they considered mundane, a bull in a cultural china shop whose every movement was regarded with a mixture of anxiety and curiosity which I think produced a kind of sideshow hilarity for the natives. I was as pleased to be a passing sideshow marvel to these folks as I was to be able to observe lives so different from my own.
As we got closer to Agra the terrain changed, it becoming more open and arid, and suddenly there were no more camel carts. The camel carts had been like a metronome for the pacing of the last few days, a primal presence that metered events with their deliberate gait and stoic bearing. I took it as a bad sign that as soon as the camel carts disappeared there appeared at regular intervals knots of people along the roadside who seemed to be puzzled by a muzzled bear on a trainers leash. I never saw these creatures do anything, no tricks, no begging. The gatherings were almost like tableaus, and the bears seemed uniformly wretched and demoralized, a sharp contrast to the startling autonomy of many of the animals I had seen recently. Even the toothless cobras moping in their baskets while a turbaned man noodled on an oboe seemed to have a dignity that these unfortunate bears had been denied. The closer to Agra we got, the more unpleasant the experience became. Agra ranks 3rd in India in the use of low-grade sulfur coal for power generation and other industrial applications. What I observed of the town in the early winter evening as we arrived was the most chaotic and inhospitable circumstances I had seen in India. Everything seemed demoralized and a suffocating atmosphere more toxic and menacing than any I had encountered cast a gray pall on everything and made breathing difficult. I made arrangements with Singh to see the Taj the next morning before moving on to Khajurhao, had a bad dinner at a dismal hotel and collapsed at 7 pm.
Singh picked me up at 8 the next morning and I was astounded by what I saw. Agra was even more of a dump than I had seen the evening before. I must admit that I saw very little of the town but what I saw of the palpably wretched cloud that enveloped the place would negate any monument in its midst. I have dim memories of my childhood in Los Angeles in the 50s where you could see possibly 3 blocks in the smog with a burning throat and watering eyes, but even that paled before what passed for air in Arga. There was a feeling that there wasn't quite enough oxygen no matter how hard you breathed, certainly enhanced by my still present flu symptoms, and there was a weight to the air, it was thick to pass through, thick with different particles that each made its own contribution to the squalid gumbo that made breathing, seeing and moving an enervating chore. I was at a loss to see how people could live here in this Dantesque nether world, and felt that every minute there was shortening my life by twice that.
The Taj is in an enormous park, with an entrance that required me to stoop through an opening in a wall that was barely 4 feet high. For some reason this was the only entrance at this particular hour, and a larger one would be opened later. There is no vehicular traffic within the park, and it is a long pleasant walk through reasonable well kept grounds to the enormous walled compound that surrounds the Taj. I paid my ten dollar entrance fee, 450 Rupees for foreigners and 5 Rupees for natives, and ascended the steps to the gateway of the great Taj Mahal. The place was already packed with tourists, and there it was, barely legible in its own compound from its own gateway because of the thickened air, the Taj Mahal. It was surreal in its soft focus atmosphere, and I momentarily forgot the multivalent stench that accompanied the mist to marvel at this postcard image come to life. It was indigestibly large, its scale was difficult to apprehend because of the mist but also because it had been such a cliché presence for so long in my life. I grappled with these unsettling discrepancies between what I thought I knew and what I was seeing as I moved closer. I was commensurately disappointed the closer I got. The Taj was grimy. They have to close it once a week for cleaning because of the incredible air pollution. The monument seemed to decompose, to lose all tension within its boundaries as I approached. I had to stop and take my shoes off in order to enter the monument at a well organized kiosk where shoes were checked for ten rupees. I ascended the steps, walked all around the perimeter of the place and then went inside. I had a feeling of being emptied out, of having something vital diminish to nothing upon entrance, of having arrived at nothing! The elaborate arabesques that are inlayed in precious and semiprecious stones in the surfaces of the walls and ceiling were without energy up close. The place was literally and metaphorically a tomb and this was a kind of astonishment I had not anticipated. I mentally acknowledged that this was a Mogul (Moslem) and not a Hindu memorial expressing completely different world views, historically a different period from the Hindu monuments that were the source of my greatest motivation for coming to India, and these acknowledgments offered nothing to mediate this arduously attained anticlimax.
I took the obligatory snapshots and exited the tomb for the first of many variations on my airport security ritual involving my artificial leg. It is next to impossible for me to bend my damaged knee enough to put a shoe on my artificial limb while I am wearing it- the fact that the foot and ankle are basically stationary add to this usually private inconvenience, but there I was, in the midst of swarms of tourists unable to put my left shoe back on. The only thing to do was to take the leg off, put the shoe on the foot and then put the leg back on, which I proceeded to do. Those near to me were agog. They surrounded me gaping, laughing and pointing, no mockery seemed intended, they were just confronting the furthest thing from their expectations at a world class architectural site, and marveling accordingly. Some Japanese tourists videotaped the event. I hammed it up a bit, checking my camera bag, jacket, hat, and lastly my leg as if they were all routine items of maintenance before departure. I turned back as I was departing and looked at the Taj every few yards as I left, the morning mist had cleared slightly, and as I got further away it became more coherent and I realized that there was probably one ideal place from which to view this structure where it became indelibly dynamic, an equivalent to the station point in western linear perspective, the hallmark of monotheism, that ultimately "there is only One way to see things."
I seemed to be such a curiosity that I was approached at least half a dozen times in my departure to be photographed with groups or families of fellow visitors. Sometimes they asked in English, other times by pantomime, to include me in their photos as an unexpected souvenir of the Taj. I was bewildered by this at first but when I saw how happy it made people I became gregarious and put my arms around the smiling pilgrims while onlookers beamed. Later when I had returned home and saw the photos I took of the Taj it looked regal, crystalline, timeless, imposing. It had the great fortune of adapting advantageously to a photo, of becoming a compelling image with a life of its own in a state of drastic attenuation via photography. I had puzzled similarly in the past with the experience of seeing a René Magritte painting for the first time after "knowing" the work through copies, and felt the same disappointment upon seeing the actual work, and then noted that the effectiveness of the reproduction remained intact, even with the knowledge of the actual object.
Singh was awaiting me with all of my luggage so that I could press on via the afternoon flight to Khajurhao. I was delighted to be leaving Agra, I decided the name of the place must have been derived from a contraction of AGRAvation, and I didn't need any more of that than I was already enduring. We arrived at the airport and I noticed that it was ominously empty. There was no line at the check-in window, and before I got all the way to the counter the clerk announced that the flight had been canceled. I said "you don't know what flight I'm taking" and he informed me that ALL flights were canceled, because of the weather and also because of the earthquake that had occurred a few days before. I could see that there was no place for anger or negotiation and inquired about the next flight, which turned out to be at the same time the next day. This inquiry brought forth a kind of Indian hyperbole that had been hinted at in past transactions but was now unfurled before me in all of its entrenched glory: "as of this moment, the flight tomorrow is one hundred percent guaranteed, but you will have to be on a waiting list for a seat". When you added all of that up, you had absolutely nothing. It was laden with promise but veered at the last minute from any tangible commitment. I fled to Singh who had luckily waited until I had confirmed my ticket. He talked calmly and at length with first the airline clerk, and then with an official of India Airlines. He was dubious about the flight the next day, and had wangled a room for me courtesy of Indian Airlines for the night and made arrangements for me to take a train part of the way to Khajurhao and to take a car the rest of the way. This was the first of many times I was glad I had Singhs assistance, as I am sure I would have turned Ugly American under the stress of dealing with such a screw-up on my own. Singh took me to a 5 star Clarks hotel which I thought did not rise above its turgid surroundings. I was exhausted and enraged because I had to spend two nights in a place I hated, and in order to remain on schedule with the rest of my itinerary, it meant one rather than jtwo days at Khajurhao. My flu continued to capriciously pummel me, one moment feeling like I was going to live and prosper, the next feeling like I was going to expire while on a waiting list in some grimy airport lounge. I remember fitful sleep and bouts of anxiety about whether this whole junket was cursed. The next morning at 7 am Singh deposited me at the train station in Agra which was appropriately alienating, like the town it served. There were lots of people living in a very dark lobby or antechamber to the main station, they were just waking up and I felt like an intruder stepping between the makeshift bedding and shelters in the cold winter morning. Singh graciously saw to it that I was actually on the train and I set off for a 2 hour ride to a place called Jahnsi, where I was to connect with a driver to take me on a 4 hour ride to Khajurhao.
© Richard A. Berger. All rights reserved.
As we got closer to Agra the terrain changed, it becoming more open and arid, and suddenly there were no more camel carts. The camel carts had been like a metronome for the pacing of the last few days, a primal presence that metered events with their deliberate gait and stoic bearing. I took it as a bad sign that as soon as the camel carts disappeared there appeared at regular intervals knots of people along the roadside who seemed to be puzzled by a muzzled bear on a trainers leash. I never saw these creatures do anything, no tricks, no begging. The gatherings were almost like tableaus, and the bears seemed uniformly wretched and demoralized, a sharp contrast to the startling autonomy of many of the animals I had seen recently. Even the toothless cobras moping in their baskets while a turbaned man noodled on an oboe seemed to have a dignity that these unfortunate bears had been denied. The closer to Agra we got, the more unpleasant the experience became. Agra ranks 3rd in India in the use of low-grade sulfur coal for power generation and other industrial applications. What I observed of the town in the early winter evening as we arrived was the most chaotic and inhospitable circumstances I had seen in India. Everything seemed demoralized and a suffocating atmosphere more toxic and menacing than any I had encountered cast a gray pall on everything and made breathing difficult. I made arrangements with Singh to see the Taj the next morning before moving on to Khajurhao, had a bad dinner at a dismal hotel and collapsed at 7 pm.
Singh picked me up at 8 the next morning and I was astounded by what I saw. Agra was even more of a dump than I had seen the evening before. I must admit that I saw very little of the town but what I saw of the palpably wretched cloud that enveloped the place would negate any monument in its midst. I have dim memories of my childhood in Los Angeles in the 50s where you could see possibly 3 blocks in the smog with a burning throat and watering eyes, but even that paled before what passed for air in Arga. There was a feeling that there wasn't quite enough oxygen no matter how hard you breathed, certainly enhanced by my still present flu symptoms, and there was a weight to the air, it was thick to pass through, thick with different particles that each made its own contribution to the squalid gumbo that made breathing, seeing and moving an enervating chore. I was at a loss to see how people could live here in this Dantesque nether world, and felt that every minute there was shortening my life by twice that.
The Taj is in an enormous park, with an entrance that required me to stoop through an opening in a wall that was barely 4 feet high. For some reason this was the only entrance at this particular hour, and a larger one would be opened later. There is no vehicular traffic within the park, and it is a long pleasant walk through reasonable well kept grounds to the enormous walled compound that surrounds the Taj. I paid my ten dollar entrance fee, 450 Rupees for foreigners and 5 Rupees for natives, and ascended the steps to the gateway of the great Taj Mahal. The place was already packed with tourists, and there it was, barely legible in its own compound from its own gateway because of the thickened air, the Taj Mahal. It was surreal in its soft focus atmosphere, and I momentarily forgot the multivalent stench that accompanied the mist to marvel at this postcard image come to life. It was indigestibly large, its scale was difficult to apprehend because of the mist but also because it had been such a cliché presence for so long in my life. I grappled with these unsettling discrepancies between what I thought I knew and what I was seeing as I moved closer. I was commensurately disappointed the closer I got. The Taj was grimy. They have to close it once a week for cleaning because of the incredible air pollution. The monument seemed to decompose, to lose all tension within its boundaries as I approached. I had to stop and take my shoes off in order to enter the monument at a well organized kiosk where shoes were checked for ten rupees. I ascended the steps, walked all around the perimeter of the place and then went inside. I had a feeling of being emptied out, of having something vital diminish to nothing upon entrance, of having arrived at nothing! The elaborate arabesques that are inlayed in precious and semiprecious stones in the surfaces of the walls and ceiling were without energy up close. The place was literally and metaphorically a tomb and this was a kind of astonishment I had not anticipated. I mentally acknowledged that this was a Mogul (Moslem) and not a Hindu memorial expressing completely different world views, historically a different period from the Hindu monuments that were the source of my greatest motivation for coming to India, and these acknowledgments offered nothing to mediate this arduously attained anticlimax.
I took the obligatory snapshots and exited the tomb for the first of many variations on my airport security ritual involving my artificial leg. It is next to impossible for me to bend my damaged knee enough to put a shoe on my artificial limb while I am wearing it- the fact that the foot and ankle are basically stationary add to this usually private inconvenience, but there I was, in the midst of swarms of tourists unable to put my left shoe back on. The only thing to do was to take the leg off, put the shoe on the foot and then put the leg back on, which I proceeded to do. Those near to me were agog. They surrounded me gaping, laughing and pointing, no mockery seemed intended, they were just confronting the furthest thing from their expectations at a world class architectural site, and marveling accordingly. Some Japanese tourists videotaped the event. I hammed it up a bit, checking my camera bag, jacket, hat, and lastly my leg as if they were all routine items of maintenance before departure. I turned back as I was departing and looked at the Taj every few yards as I left, the morning mist had cleared slightly, and as I got further away it became more coherent and I realized that there was probably one ideal place from which to view this structure where it became indelibly dynamic, an equivalent to the station point in western linear perspective, the hallmark of monotheism, that ultimately "there is only One way to see things."
I seemed to be such a curiosity that I was approached at least half a dozen times in my departure to be photographed with groups or families of fellow visitors. Sometimes they asked in English, other times by pantomime, to include me in their photos as an unexpected souvenir of the Taj. I was bewildered by this at first but when I saw how happy it made people I became gregarious and put my arms around the smiling pilgrims while onlookers beamed. Later when I had returned home and saw the photos I took of the Taj it looked regal, crystalline, timeless, imposing. It had the great fortune of adapting advantageously to a photo, of becoming a compelling image with a life of its own in a state of drastic attenuation via photography. I had puzzled similarly in the past with the experience of seeing a René Magritte painting for the first time after "knowing" the work through copies, and felt the same disappointment upon seeing the actual work, and then noted that the effectiveness of the reproduction remained intact, even with the knowledge of the actual object.
Singh was awaiting me with all of my luggage so that I could press on via the afternoon flight to Khajurhao. I was delighted to be leaving Agra, I decided the name of the place must have been derived from a contraction of AGRAvation, and I didn't need any more of that than I was already enduring. We arrived at the airport and I noticed that it was ominously empty. There was no line at the check-in window, and before I got all the way to the counter the clerk announced that the flight had been canceled. I said "you don't know what flight I'm taking" and he informed me that ALL flights were canceled, because of the weather and also because of the earthquake that had occurred a few days before. I could see that there was no place for anger or negotiation and inquired about the next flight, which turned out to be at the same time the next day. This inquiry brought forth a kind of Indian hyperbole that had been hinted at in past transactions but was now unfurled before me in all of its entrenched glory: "as of this moment, the flight tomorrow is one hundred percent guaranteed, but you will have to be on a waiting list for a seat". When you added all of that up, you had absolutely nothing. It was laden with promise but veered at the last minute from any tangible commitment. I fled to Singh who had luckily waited until I had confirmed my ticket. He talked calmly and at length with first the airline clerk, and then with an official of India Airlines. He was dubious about the flight the next day, and had wangled a room for me courtesy of Indian Airlines for the night and made arrangements for me to take a train part of the way to Khajurhao and to take a car the rest of the way. This was the first of many times I was glad I had Singhs assistance, as I am sure I would have turned Ugly American under the stress of dealing with such a screw-up on my own. Singh took me to a 5 star Clarks hotel which I thought did not rise above its turgid surroundings. I was exhausted and enraged because I had to spend two nights in a place I hated, and in order to remain on schedule with the rest of my itinerary, it meant one rather than jtwo days at Khajurhao. My flu continued to capriciously pummel me, one moment feeling like I was going to live and prosper, the next feeling like I was going to expire while on a waiting list in some grimy airport lounge. I remember fitful sleep and bouts of anxiety about whether this whole junket was cursed. The next morning at 7 am Singh deposited me at the train station in Agra which was appropriately alienating, like the town it served. There were lots of people living in a very dark lobby or antechamber to the main station, they were just waking up and I felt like an intruder stepping between the makeshift bedding and shelters in the cold winter morning. Singh graciously saw to it that I was actually on the train and I set off for a 2 hour ride to a place called Jahnsi, where I was to connect with a driver to take me on a 4 hour ride to Khajurhao.
© Richard A. Berger. All rights reserved.