Traveling with Nancy and Rusty

Agra is trying to control pollution.  This is a losing battle in my opinion. Sections of the Taj Mahal’s white marble have become discolored and brittle. Preventive actions include ordering 200 industries to move and banning cars, busses and scooters from within 500 meters of the Taj Mahal. Nevertheless, Agra, like most of northern India, remains highly congested and polluted.  One can see with one’s own burning, tearing eyes the yellow color of pollution everywhere, turning the sun a beautiful, but fateful orange even at noon. At the gate we were frisked for bombs and weapons.  There were very few people, so the process went quickly.  It was still dark, but there was some light creeping up behind us as we walked down a wide path bordered by long, low lying buildings with several doors that led into sleeping rooms where, in the past, pilgrims with connections to the King would stay during their visits to the Taj Mahal.  This pathway opened up into a large courtyard with several large trees, some benches, grassy lawns and several lovely flower beds.  Now one could see that there were two other entrances giving access to this courtyard.  Still very few people were there.  Next we headed for an arched opening in a three-story high building, the entrance to the Taj Mahal.  Still no view of the Taj Mahal.   This is intentional.  The architect designed it so you would not see the Taj until you emerged from this arched gate.  The affect for me was as the architect intended: overwhelming.  No amount of hype prepared me for the impact the Taj Mahal had on me.  By now there was enough light to see it, and it was magnificent.  For the next hour or so we all stood or sat just inside this entrance and several hundred feet from the Taj Mahal itself just gaping and staring as the sun rose slowly from our right and cast a mystical spell over the Taj Mahal.  Its colors changed almost each second.  It was spellbinding.  Eventually I recovered from my trance and took pictures: from the left, from the right, straight ahead, with Nancy in the picture, through an arch to the side of the entrance, through two arches to the side of the entrance, with the sun showing the marble pink, with the sun showing the marble orange, and finally, after asking someone else to take the picture, with both Nancy and me in the picture.   It was hard to move on, but we did.  You approach the Taj Mahal walking past several ponds which cunningly reflect the Taj Mahal and provides still other images of it.  People took pictures of the ponds knowing that they were also getting another view of the Taj Mahal.  To the left and right of the Taj Mahal are two huge, magnificent, red sandstone buildings, one a Mosque, the other probably another guest house.  Like the Taj Mahal itself which critics say is the same on all its sides, these look-like buildings on either side of the Taj Mahal continue the architect’s original theme of balance and symmetry.  To me, it all is very beautiful.   The story of why the Taj Mahal was built is worth recounting.  Shah Jahan supposedly fell madly in love with Arjumand Banu Begum - I say “supposedly” because if 90% of marriages in India today are arranged and if Jahan’s grandfather Akbar deftly married a Hindu, a Muslim and a Christian, then this marriage had to be more for the increased power it brought than for love, but I digress.  He gave her the title of Mumtaz Mahal (Exalted one of the Palace) which of course means he considered her one of his favorites.  She died in 1631 giving birth to her 14th child.  Jahan was so distraught that he mourned her death for two years, his hair turned grey overnight and he stopped eating meat or listening to music, two abstinences that don’t seem so great when you consider Indian meat (goat mutton) and music.   He also promised to build the most beautiful mausoleum ever known to the world.  On this point, in my opinion, he succeeded.  It took 22 years to build.  The Taj Mahal is basically a crypt.  The coffins here do not contain anything; to avoid possible vandalism, the real coffins are in a locked basement area below the Taj Mahal.  Something you don’t notice from the outside are the windows which are an ugly cross-hatching of very small, clear glass, some of which are broken.  I asked our guide if these windows were original.  He said no, they used to be lovely stained glass windows.  I asked what happened to those windows.  He said, with little or no emotion, “The British took them and put some in their museums and some in their homes.”  I was livid.  I asked the guide why he was not upset.  Typical of the Hindu and his philosophy that I was slowly beginning to understand, he pretty much said, “Stuff happens and there is little one can do about it.”  Add to that that Ghandi preached non-violence to people who already for 5000+ years had been living such a philosophy and you get some sense of why there is no anger over a few windows. The week after we had returned from India, terrorists blew up the train station and a very holy Hindu temple in Varanasi. The next day, amidst the rubble of the explosion in the temple, Hindu elders were saying prayers and carrying on as if nothing had happened. Authorities in Varanasi and elsewhere in India had braced for angry demonstrations that never came. There is a serenity, a karma - per Webster’s New World Dictionary, the totality of a person’s actions in one of the successive states of his existence, thought of as determining his fate in the next - among Hindus in India that I think is representative of India, something that, at least in part, defines India.