The Taj Mahal by Afternoon Light

Last weekend I felt very brave and Indian and hopped on the train to Agra for the day. Agra is just a three-hour train ride away from Delhi, which makes it a manageable daytrip so long as you don't mind getting back late.

I've hesitated to travel on my own because I don't know what lies between points B and C. Point B is the terminal (rail, air, etc) in my destination, and point C is my hotel. Agra is two things at once. It's a developed and bustling tourist attraction as well as a dusty and somewhat small town. We arrived on the aptly-named Taj Express train, which took us into Agra Cantt station at 10 am. Once out the gate at the end of the platform, I immediately filled in that missing leg of my journey (the mysterious and defeating B to C). We were overwhelmed by drivers.

There is a prepaid taxi stand but I couldn't sort it out for my life. It was mobbed by auto drivers. One driver told us he'd take us to Taj Mahal Town (a km away from the main attraction) for 30 Rupees, but then left us standing in the blazing midday heat for twenty minutes. We eventually hooked up with the driver of a car who charged us 20 Rupees + a 5 Rupee government surcharge. He paid at the prepaid stand and then put the amount on a slip which he gave to us. A policeman wouldn't let us out of the station lot until we showed him this slip.

Along the way the driver told us something interesting: the government sets the rate from the station to the Taj Mahal at 20 Rupees. It's a total distance of 18 km for the drivers. To get 18 km for 20 Rupees is painfully cheap. The driver told us he'd given us the government rate but that he had been hoping we'd need his guide and driving services, which we'd agree upon separately. This would constitute his profit, and then he wouldn't have to return to the station.

I felt bad for him, but my cousin and I had no further need of a car, and so we took his card and sent him back. We went into a glistening glass and chrome Pizza Hut. It was the only foreign joint in town, but it was abandoned when we went in at 10 am. The proprietor had an unusual approach to service. We sat down and waited. After five minutes we got our menus. I kept making eye contact with the owners, who sat at a table in the back of the empty restaurant and seemed to be having a good laugh at my expense. Finally I hollered,

"Are you open?" Yes, yes, they were open. Still no service. We went up to the takeaway window.
"Would you like takeaway or service?" the man asked. I was confused.
"Do you have service?" I asked.
"I will give you service," he said, as if I'd ordered it off the menu.
We went back to our seats and were eventually served.

The Pizza Hut was a lovely restaurant, with two floors, polished wooden tables and wide glass windows. At first I was upset, thinking that we'd gotten the "Indian special." But two foreign women entered a few minutes later. They too were left to wander for a few minutes through the restaurant's echoing interior. Finally a waiter approached them.
"Would you like to use the washroom?" he asked.
"Actually we would like to order pizza," one of the women replied.
The waiter appeared flummoxed. Eventually this couple too was served.

Despite all this, the place was packed by the time we left. My cousin and I were the only two Indians in the joint, everyone else appeared to have backpacked in from somewhere else. (Most foreign tourists in India seem to be of the threadbare backpacker variety, rather than the
established family variety.) We wandered into a crafts emporium where a man spread some lovely printed shirts over the display counter.

"What fabric is this?" I asked. He fingered the smooth print.
"Cotton and silk blend," he said.
"How much?"
"350 Rupees." ($7). We didn't buy it, opting instead to look at inlaid marble tabletops. (Agra is famous for marble work, because of the elaborate inlay work on the Taj Mahal. That said, most of these tabletops had been manufactured in nearby Udaipur)

In the next store we saw the same shirts again.
"What material?" I asked.
"Synthetic." The man told me, meaning polyester.
"In the last shop they said silk."
"Ma'am, do you think you can buy real silk for 350 Rupees? Just tell me that."

He was right, of course. India may be cheap, but it's not that cheap. Interestingly, the previous place - where we'd been lied to - was a very established looking venture. It just goes to show that you need to keep your wits around you.

We killed another hour in the nearby Costa Coffee, a Starbucks-like chain that's set up shops in malls, airports and tourist spots. We enjoyed the air conditioning - like in Delhi, the outside temp topped 90 F - until we met up with my uncle.

We drove the last 1.5 km down Fatehabad Road, the main road that runs straight from the station through Taj Mahal town and down to the Taj Mahal itself. We scored tickets and thankfully spent a maximum of 10 minutes in the line. (The line for men's security was longer, for once)

The Taj Mahal grounds are vast and hold a total of seven buildings besides the most famous. The story of the Taj Mahal is ancient legend so I won't repeat it. There is some story about seeing it in the light of the full moon. I've seen it twice now but only in the glare of noon. We photographed ourselves on the bench outside, then inside, then all over the grounds. We left our shoes with a guard and went into the Taj Mahal itself.

When I first came here twelve years ago the underground tomb was still open to the public. Now it's closed off, part of a depressing trend in India where monuments are being removed, by bits and pieces, from public view as they suffer the ravages of time and visitation. The famous white marble of the Mahal itself has begun visibly to yellow and crack. The interior was very cool. The central atrium consisted of a carved coffin surrounded by an elaborately carved set of jharokas. I read recently that the Taj Mahal has been mapped and scientists have discovered the inherent ancient mathematics of its design. It was constructed along known measures. The perfect
hexagons and symmetrical towers speak, perhaps, to people's innate yearning for symmetry. Certainly it would not be so impressive if it weren't so math-ily planned, with its set of rectangular pools leading to the arched doorway. This mathematical sensitivity is obvious in
every element of the Mahal's design, from the way it can be glimpsed from the gateway entrance, a straight shot along a set of pools to a perfectly balanced monument.

We didn't have time for anything else and hightailed it back to Delhi after that, missing the nearby Agra Fort and Akbar's imperial city Fatehpur Sikri, an hour's drive away. I suppose what moved me most about the Taj Mahal was not the "monument to love" angle. I may have become a cynic but I feel the Taj Mahal is less about love than vanity. But what a just cause for vanity! The werewithal to construct such a place is hardly common...

What did move me was that I saw a man without feet crawling into the Taj Mahal on his hands and knees. (In India such deformations are more common and more visible than they are in the West. People seem to suffer more) I thought of the graduated entry system, which charges foreigners 250 Rupees for entrance and 10 Rupees to Indians. It's perfect price discrimination, but it might also be fair. It is hard to distinguish, from a first glance, who can and can't afford to pay more. This is an easy method. After all, $5 is a cheap price to see one of the wonders of the world. So is 10 Rupees. Who cares if the two are not exactly the same? If some American teenager was subsidizing that man's entry into his own country's most majestic mausoleum, I'm not sure I can condemn it.

And I saw another thing that made me question that system all over again. Indians used to chew vast amounts of tobacco and then spit it out everywhere. The spit leaves indelible red stains. Previously it was everywhere. On railway platforms, in offices, in houses. Now the practice has become much more rare. But there in the Taj Mahal, in some of the less-used corridors, I saw the faded rusty marks of tobacco-flavored spit. I was furious with those spitters who had in
such a casual moment decided to deface this monument. The fact that they were almost certainly Indians does not help the matter. Then I thought the entry fee should be not 10 Rupees but 1000. Because after all, who would dare to spit on something they paid a month's wages to see?