The next day it was to be Agra as well as the Taj Mahal. Alas, arriving at an even dirtier hotel in an even dirtier city was a poor introduction to the rigours of running the gamut of beggars and going through the demeaning security frisk before being allowed to enter the sacred precincts of the much-praised wonder of the world. It left me curiously cold, this most famous of all mausoleums. I suppose if pristine perfection equates with beauty, then the building and grounds are indeed beautiful. But I felt only a sense of unreality tinged with distaste as I sat beneath the steps leading to the tomb.
The famous view The portal
Around me hordes of people were all but genuflecting, and among them one young lad was noisily vomiting into the trench alongside the seat on which I sat. I gave him my water bottle and wiped his face with my tissues. His nausea seemed to reflect my own disquiet. There had been a previous encounter like this during our marathon drive from Delhi to Rishikesh two days before, when we had stopped for a brief lunch-break at one of the more successful tourist stops—a garden centre with a good lunchroom and spotless toilet facilities. On returning to the car I found a group of Indian women anxiously requesting directions from Sashi. Evidently one of them was in some kind of physical distress and as I moved towards the car she lifted her sari and spattered the driveway—and my feet—with faeces. So it was back to the toilet in gratitude that it was there and so close. Now, as I helped this poor pale boy to his feet, the incongruity of the coexistence of the artistry of human hands and the corruptibility of human flesh struck me afresh. This seemed to epitomise all of India: squalor and sickness fouling the most beautiful of artifacts and architecture.
Meanwhile Alan was climbing to the interior, which he later declared was magnificent, with our urbane and verbose guide, who had challenged us to find a single instance of asymmetry anywhere in the edifice or gardens. He seemed to think symmetry and beauty were somehow identical. It later appeared that the lack thereof could be seen only in the tombstones within the mausoleum, which were ivory and ebony, instead of being made of one substance. Somehow that seemed to me singularly unimportant when placed beside the human suffering—eyes put out and hands cut off—endured by those who had built the mausoleum. My happiest memory of the entire visit is of the soft nose and tender eyes of the sacred cow that I petted on the lawn.
No folly or arrogance here.
We ran the gamut of begging children between the palace and the car screaming "NO" all the way, and then had to repeat the "NO" to the guide, who now wished to take us to a jewellery store. So he was disgruntled as he said "goodbye", and we went (sadly) early to bed after an indifferent dinner.
Nor any arrogance here. This patient beast, the first of many we were to see close enough to touch, was waiting to say goodbye to us as we left Agra.
Next day we found ourselves on the best road we had yet encountered—a double highway from Agra to Jaipur with stretches where one could travel at 60K per hour without fear of colliding with other vehicles, whether these were trucks or carts being hauled along by camels (instead of the water-buffalos of the north). Unfortunately, this road was still under construction, so that from time to time Sashi had to stop at a barrier, and then backtrack to rejoin a single-lane stretch of road. We still made better time on this journey however, and despite a brief visit to the abandoned red city of Fatehpur Sikri, now occcupied solely by goats, we reached the pink city of Jaipur by 1 p.m. En route we were able to laugh at the humour of a truck driver who had a mysterious new sign painted on the rear of his truck: "WAIT FOR SIDE". Sashi evidently knew what this meant; he duly waited for the right opportunity to pass, and then pointed out to us the sign on the front of the vehicle: "O.K.TA TA". This childlike sense of fun demonstrated itself to us several times and in several ways on our journey, and endeared us to a touchingly ingenuous people. It was of a piece with their valiant decorating of every means of transport, tinselly ribbons and garlands in every bright hue imaginable
Fatehpur Sikri
A totally abandoned site; we wondered---who feeds these goats?
The approach to yet another—and mercifully our last—fussy and unclean hotel (beside a gasworks!) was through streets lined with fascinating red sandstone facades.
and among them, the famous Hawa Mahal
These promised some good photo opportunities, and sure enough, once we had checked in successfully we were able to take many shots of the City Palace, or Chandra Mahal. Our new guide was full of fervour as he extolled the virtues of the prince who had first conceived this extravagant complex, and those successors who had added to it, until it became the sprawling seven-gated mixture of Rajput and Maghul architecture it was today. He regaled us with the history of prince after prince and conquest after conquest from the twelfth century on, and though I tried to show enthusiasm for the exploits of Maharaja Ram Singh and Madho Singh II (“he went to England, don’t you know, in 1990, the first Kachchwaha ruler to do so!”) and all the other Muslim rulers with unmemorable names, I was actually entranced by the elaborately carved screens, the scalloped arches, the marble elephants, and the two colossal silver urns. The guide wanted me to linger in the museums, but I was more interested in the décor of the buildings—for example, each of four gates in one of the four courtyards depicts the mood of an exquisitely rendered peacock. Yes, in Hindu lore the peacock changes its mood according to the season!
This rambling palace, with its mosaic covered harem walls, was to me more beautiful than the pristine Taj Mahal could ever be. It celebrated life, not death, and I was loath to leave it. So, clicking happily away, was Alan, but there were more pictures to be taken in the market area, such as the one shown above, the five-storeyed Hawa Mahal, the most photographed monument of Jaipur. So we reluctantly prepared to leave, and bade our loquacious guide farewell. Our last impression of the museum rooms in the palace was the hilt of a sword—an emerald, a sapphire, a ruby and a diamond each huge as the Kohinor. As large, in fact, as the eyes of the tiny wizened child held by his mother against the window of our departing car as she pleaded for a rupee.
(We have no picture of the baby, except in my mind, where it will stay forever as the final image of India).
More pictures of the pink city environs
as we were leaving
These last images were recorded on our journey from Jaipur to Delhi the following day, as we passed through Amber and were able at last to stop by the roadside to thus capture elephants and camel at Shapurah. This was a day of sickness, my having succumbed to Delhi belly the previous night, and also of frustration, for once we had said our goodbye to Sashi at the airport—which we did three hours earlier than we needed to for his sake—there followed eighteen hours of waiting around in airports and travelling wearily east to Singapore and south to Western Australia. By the time we were descending (two hours late) into Perth, Alan too had the trots, and for him the nausea was to continue for a couple of weeks severely enough to require medical attention. In fact, like my retina image, Alan’s indisposition seems to have occasioned a lasting malaise. Never mind, we were safe in the bosom of the family at last, and our customary festival could follow its accustomed course.
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