The Taj Mahal

If the traveller considers himself a pilgrim in Agra then he is assured of joining one of the grandest pilgrimages he’s ever known, for no sooner does he enter the city beneath the government’s propitious welcome sign, beckoning him to the splendor within, than he is joined by a throng of thousands, maybe tens of thousands or—as they say—many lakhs of fellow pilgrims surging inward to the great monument of the world.

And as he enters the mighty gates, and as he lifts his eyes to behold that which is so awesome, the traveller knows he will remember this moment for his mind’s eternity, because it has been for him thus prescribed: Every eye before his to behold the awe of the monument has fallen shut in humility; every description writ before his to express the wonder that is the monument has been ill-formed; every stone kicked aside on the traveller’s road to the monument has done it more honour than words or pictures ever can.

All that stands before the traveller is etched upon his mind and will not leave him. In lines and in shadows, in tones and in textures, in memories and in glimmering white marble, the great monument says everything the traveller must know. The monument defines itself by what it reveals to each traveller. This is the heart of its awe.

{Taj Mahal Photo Gallery}

On Mathura Road

Leaving behind him two Delhis—the Old and the New—as he makes his way southward on the Mathura Road, the traveller encounters a third Delhi, one comprised of an infinite line of dioramas which disappear into the rising dust with each lost moment.

Shrouded in the foreboding, spine-like shadow of the Delhi Metro—an elevated-train track under construction in colossal volumes of tan-grey concrete—this Delhi in its patina of everyday life is a living monument to all of the Delhis that have come before it along the banks of the Yamuna River. It is what Delhi has long been and probably long will be, a city that spites the traveller’s fleeting gaze simply by existing; for to exist in Delhi is to change.

Here are motor shops and dry-goods stores, and next might come a toy shop, a bank, a row of tailors, a sandal maker. Passing quickly is the ‘Good Luck Furniture House’ and next to it the ‘Sawag Restaurant’ promising Indian and Chinese cuisine. But the next time you pass by, the order will have changed, so quickly does the city of Delhi evolve and reconstruct.

So much brick and stone slab blurs the traveller’s eyes, while every door is corrugated metal sponsored by Vodafone; every shop sign brought to you by Pepsi. The traveller is easily lost; should he linger too long, perhaps the city will transform itself along with him.

This Delhi that constantly changes may be known to the traveller as kal* Delhi—the Delhi not of today, but both of yesterday and of tomorrow. And it remains along the Mathura Road until the city releases its traveller to Haryana.

From Haryana to the boundary of the next state, Uttar Pradesh, is easily mistaken for a blighted hinterland. Then, at the latter’s crossing, the traveller slows to declare himself to border agents, and while he sits in the heat of the morning sun he is startled to be set upon by a scrawny monkey crudely leashed to a master.

But no amusement deters him, for the traveller is nearing the end of his morning’s journey: Agra, alluring city of marble and red sandstone, city of Shah Jahan and his Taj Mahal.

(To be continued...)

* kal is a Hindi word that, depending on its context, can mean ‘yesterday’ or ‘tomorrow.’ Thus kal should never alone be the answer to a question, nor should the traveller ever pose a question whose answer can only be kal.

The Traveller departs Delhi for Agra

The alacrity with which the traveller first greets Delhi inevitably—in the subsequent phase of his visit—gives way to a kind of malaise, a result of the combination of heat and foul air, dust and dirt, and public places utterly swollen with humanity, much of it, by appearances, destitute.

It must be said that New Delhi is a sprawling city, a very green city, with wide boulevards under canopies of palm, ashoka and peepal trees, with grid-patterned outdoor markets and gated residential neighbourhoods, and with myriad parks visited by enthusiastic Delhiites, often for vigorous morning exercise, afternoon naps or evening strolls. And where green transforms into glass, the heavily air-conditioned shops and cafés of New Delhi bring the traveller respite from the heat as it ticks upward of thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight degrees Celsius.

Old Delhi—Shahjahanabad—presents itself in all the layers of its history, a panoply of innumerable eras and ages—where mosques ride shotgun with temples, where the same two alleyways might intersect a dozen times in a dozen different bazaars, where classical Sanskrit begat modern Hindu-Urdu—as though it contains both its past and present “like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of streets, the gratings of windows, the banisters of steps, the poles of flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.”*

Together, the new and the old coalesce into a teeming, sprawling, relentless metropolis that is beautiful and even serene at certain extreme close-ups, but almost impossible to appreciate through a wide-angle lens. Indeed, viewed from the perch of three increasingly insufferable weeks’ worth of stay, Delhi becomes repugnant, albeit through no fault of its own.

Thus, despite the traveller’s eagerness to discover Delhi, the city itself rejects him and sends him away; punishes him for deigning to curse the city for the hellishness of its air.

And so the traveller will reflect upon Delhi from the nearest point of exile, which for most travellers is the city of Agra—the city of the Taj Mahal.

(To be continued…)

* A passage from Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino; from “Cities and Memory 3,” pp. 10-11.