A Prayer for the Taj

by

Jay Antani

In December 2002, my wife and I set out on a month-long trip to India. The trip was a return to my roots; I was born in India, and most of my family still lives there. I wanted to catch up with my relatives and introduce them to my new wife. Wisconsin-born and -raised, she couldn't wait to explore an exotic land, and her husband's country seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

More than anything, I wanted to return to the Taj Mahal, that "teardrop on the cheek of time" as Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore called it. In the 14 years since my first visit to the Taj, my thoughts often returned it, to how my heart leaped the instant I saw it. I wondered then if the Taj weren't some great celestial ark, brought here by a higher, more divine intelligence. I wondered if the Taj was just a dream.

News I'd read in 2001 of a public-private consortium for revamping tourist facilities at the Taj had me excited. Online news and travel sites spoke of an ambitious project that would include restoring excavated gardens, building a high-tech tourist information center, and launching a fleet of electric buses that would shuttle visitors between the Taj and a parking area some distance away in an effort to minimize pollution. It was a welcome turn of events for the Taj Mahal whose future was beginning to worry me. Over recent decades, pollution, and soil erosion had begun taking a toll on the delicate white-marble wonder.

The Indian Supreme Court's decision in the mid-90s to shut down factories in the Taj's vicinity, followed now by this fresh announcement of renovation plans, galvanized my spirits. I'm not a conservationist, a scientist, an activist, nor a Taj historian. I'm simply an Indian who cares deeply about the fate of his country's heritage in its frenzied crush towards modernization.

In the 1990s, India put on its party dress. Prior to that, the country was a bit like that pretty girl kept under lock and key by her prudish, overprotective father. Then, as I was undergoing my own transition from college to adulthood, from Wisconsin to California, India stepped out from behind its till-now bolted doors and squinted in the broad daylight of the free market and satellite television. By the time our trip rolled around, I was eager to get a glimpse of India's new incarnation, and the destiny the Indians, my "people," were staking out for themselves.

* * *

"Let's not bring all our cash," I told my wife as we readied for our excursion from my cousin's house in New Delhi to Agra--the site of the Taj--roughly three hours away by car. "We don't want to risk it getting stolen."

As our driver navigated our rental car down a two-lane stretch of highway to Agra, I got an eyeful of the conflicting realities marring today's India--realities that left me dumbfounded and my wife nauseated, owing to the lurching stop-and-go traffic. Yes, the evidence of the free market was there in the form of glass-encased shopping malls fronting both sides of the road, touting upscale Western and domestic clothing brands, and ultra-sleek office parks where multinational software firms had put down their flags. Various brands of cellphones, cars, and televisions screamed over each other from billboards above the malls. On the roads, I noticed a staggering variety of cars--Fords, Hondas, Hyundais alongside Indian models whose designs had truly stepped up since my last trip, when boxy Fiats and bulky Ambassadors were the only cars you'd see.

All that month in India, I sensed a restless confidence: In Ahmedabad, Mumbai, and Delhi, sleek new private banks had opened, shops and restaurants were bustling, internet cafes mushroomed on every city block. The Indians, after rattling their socialist cages for nearly five decades, were storming the streets, eager to parlay their ambition and education for the suddenly available opportunities to rise in their world.

The highway passed through greater Delhi where the roads were narrow and potholed, unable to contain the bursting melee of cars, trucks, bicycles, and the knots of pedestrians scrambling around it all. Headlights stabbed holes in the wintry nighttime pall, and acrid traffic fumes thickened the air. Somehow, ably and energetically, a lone traffic cop uniformed in a white helmet, shirtsleeves and khakis, gave order to this madness--the steady eye at the center of that crazy storm.

It was pitch dark when our driver dropped us off at our Agra hotel. Worn-out, happy to have survived the ride, my wife and I hit the sack, eager for a full night's sleep before our Taj experience. At 5:30 the following morning we woke, groggy but punctual, ready to go. Fifteen minutes later, our driver picked us up, and off we zipped through Agra's chilly streets, still silent in the blue-gray of early morning.

We soon pulled over at a roundabout. Our driver gestured towards an ordinary-looking wrought-iron gate a few yards away. That was it: the entrance gate to the Taj.

Just inside the gate, a half-dozen or so souvenir hawkers had already gathered. We scooted past them, joined the trickle of early-morning visitors, and followed a winding, tree-lined path deeper into a park fronting the Taj complex.

"Any minute now," I told my wife, "you'll catch a glimpse of it."

Small monkeys milled about in the trees and on benches along the path. As my wife snapped pictures of them, I peered over the treetops for signs of the Taj.

"Postcard, sir," called out one of the hawkers--lanky, in his teens--trotting up from behind us, brandishing a fistful of postcards. "Postcard, madam!" In his short-sleeved shirt, slacks, and flip-flops, I wondered if he wasn't freezing; December mornings in northern India are bone-cold. Even in our jackets, my wife and I were shivering.

My wife politely smiled and gestured 'no postcards,' and we hurried along. Promptly and due to my near-total inability to read the Hindi language, we misinterpreted a signpost and made a wrong turn at a T-junction.

"No, this way, sir, this way." The hawker called to us, motioning that we ought to continue down the path from which we'd just turned.

"Sorry," I muttered to my wife. "I wish they'd put up at least one sign in English. It's not like only the locals come here."

Huddling against me in the chill, she took my hand. "We'll find it," she answered and, moments later, we did. Rounding a bend in the path, we arrived at the crenellated sandstone wall that formed the Taj complex's outermost boundary. Above the wall, I spied what I was aching to see: the Taj dome's finial topped with the Islamic crescent moon.

Here we came upon a pack of "tour guides," all wrapped in knit caps and shawls, some smoking cigarettes. These weren't official tour guides, but the ad hoc variety, guys off the street with a worked-up spiel about the Taj--hodgepodge about its history and architecture cribbed from here and there. Their target, of course, were tourists gullible enough to shell out a few hundred rupees in exchange for their "expert" services.

Ignoring their offers, I approached the ticket window--housed in a worn-down shed-like structure that stood apart from the wall. Through the barred window, I saw a drowsy-looking clerk, thumbing through paperwork. Behind him, a couple of other clerks moped about a dark, disheveled office furnished with a fluorescent tube-light, a desktop fan, a careworn filing cabinet and heaps of old files. It wasn't the most attractive sight to welcome tourists. Rather, it resembled any other Indian government office and it was just as depressing. As I gestured to the clerk for two tickets, my wife nudged me with her elbow and pointed to the sign posting fares. The entry fee for foreign visitors--like everywhere else in India--was several times what Indian nationals paid.

"I don't think we brought that much money," she said edgily.

"Relax," I replied, "we'll use a credit card."

"No credit card," the clerk interrupted. He shook his head, raising his heavy-lidded eyes over his paperwork to glare at me. His mouth worked over the paan masala--a tobacco and betel nut concoction--as indolently as any of the cud-chewing cows I'd seen lazing on Indian streets.

"What?" I asked, like I'd just been hit with a piece of the Taj stonework.

The clerk wagged his head from side to side. "No credit card."

The Taj Mahal does not accept credit cards?

I leaned closer to the window and fixed my evilest stare on the clerk. My wife, fearing my head might pop off any moment and release a jet of steam, shushed me. But the clerk merely shifted his glance from his paperwork to the line of visitors forming behind me. He couldn't care less. And why should he? It wasn't like he was going to lose his job over ignoring a customer.

"Get with the 21st century!" That was the wittiest thing I managed to spout, before my wife took my spluttering self aside so that other visitors--all of whom surely brought enough cash--could purchase their tickets. I re-counted our cash, but we were hundreds of rupees short. The prospect of seeing the Taj at sunrise instantly dropped out of sight, through a trap door in the floor of my heart.

I wracked my brains for a solution. From behind a line of trees to our east, the sun was starting to stretch its fingers. So much for the Taj Mahal at dawn. No cash, no Taj.

Non-credit card-taking cretins!

A "tour guide," sensing our distress like a shark nosing in on the scent of blood, said he'd usher us down a slope that skirted the Taj complex. He said he "lived" down there, and from his place, we could catch a view of the sun rising over the Taj.

"Beautiful view, sir," he beamed. "Beautiful."

Of course, he'd charge us a small fee. Like a dazed zombie, I found myself following him down the slope. But my wife snapped me out of it. "I'm not going down there with some strange guy," she said. She was right. But I was still angry.

I turned and charged back up the path toward the entry gate. My wife yelled for me to slow down, to figure out where and how to get cash.

But what was the point?

The dawn. It was all about the dawn, that first flush of sunlight opening over the dome like a blooming rose--that's what I wanted to show her. It was the one experience in exotic India I wanted for her, the experience to make up for the past three weeks of polluted air, the relentless, lurching car rides and the dizzying swirl of family get-togethers. But that dream now began to evaporate like December's morning mist, and, to top it all off, I felt so stupid.

"Sir, postcards, sir!" It was that damn hawker again, still working the tourists as they passed through the gate.

I brushed him aside and blurted something mean, something lame. But did he care? No. He snickered coolly--"Oh, angry, sir?"--and drifted away towards other, happier tourists. No one cared.

I guessed the final mockery would be dealt in the next 15 or so minutes by the sun lumbering awake, grinning at me with its spoke-like teeth.

What was with these fly-by-night hawkers and self-appointed tour guides?

"Why can't the government do right by this place and build a proper gift shop?" I fumed. Couldn't the government employ these hawkers--all men in obvious need of jobs--as part of putting up an official Taj Mahal gift shop? What happened to all the talk about the state-of-the-art tourist center? And those guides--were they officially employed by the Archeological Survey of India? It didn't seem likely, judging by the rather informal nature of the arrangement.

No proper signage, no gift shop, no credit cards.

But, as I settled down, I realized I wasn't angry with the hawker, the clerk, or the tour guide. No, they were just passengers in that immense rattletrap bus, the one with GOVERNMENT OF INDIA scrawled in faded, chipped letters along its sides, plodding its way along India's potholed roads. The bus blocked the way for India's faster, sleeker, more efficient vehicles. And it wasn't the bus's passengers, but its driver--the Indian government itself, grizzled, dozing at the wheel in its post-Nehru hangover--whom I wanted to throttle. Then I wanted that bus dismantled and set on fire.

Agra's streets were beginning to fill now with vegetable vendors pushing along their carts, rickshaw drivers huddling at paan shops, office workers congregating at steaming chai stalls. We walked up the street, searching for our rental car and driver.

I sensed a blasé quality to the rackety street scene--a complacency in the midst of so much brokenness--that irritated me, not least because my wife was the only woman--and a white woman at that--around and the focus of every pair of eyes. I wanted to shield her, but felt totally helpless. Presently, we found our car parked in front of a hole-in-the-wall café, and our driver breakfasting there.

We piled quickly into the car, and the driver took his seat behind the wheel. Before switching on the engine, he eyed me quizzically.

I shrugged and shook my head. Using hand gestures and pidgin English, I communicated our distress before slumping in my seat, arms folded. I considered the fifth of scotch that I knew our driver stashed in his glove compartment.

Then, our driver said something: "You…ATM…cash. There," and he pointed up the street. "Pizza Hut."

ATM? Did he say Pizza Hut?

In that state of mind, harried and thwarted by old-world India, anything as modern as a cash machine never occurred to me. Within minutes, though, we pulled into a tiny strip mall. There it was: the Pizza Hut and next to it, behind the plate glass doors of ICICI Bank--one of India's newly established private banks--I spotted the cash machine. A security guard, smiling, opened the doors for us. I took out my debit card. The push of a few buttons later, I had enough cash in my pocket to get us into the Taj and give our driver a healthy tip.

* * *

I have a picture of my wife in front of the Taj from that morning. It proves that, for a few moments anyway, we did get there ahead of the sun. In her zipped-up fleece and Capri pants, my wife looks cold, tired, but happy. Behind her, steeped in ethereal blue stands the Taj, forever magnificent, otherworldly. Except for one winter-garbed tourist in the picture's far background, it seems we have the place to ourselves.

After we snapped photos in front of the Taj, my wife and I got anxious for a closer look. We took off our shoes (this is a mausoleum, after all, so a certain religious deference is due), and climbed up the steps to the Taj's marble plinth. That December morning, the plinth's surface was ice-cold under our feet, but we hardly minded. To walk this vast space, as smooth as glass, with the soles of our feet in direct contact with 350 years of aesthetic perfection was a thrill in itself.

We took in the elegant inlays of Persian calligraphy and the graceful tracery carved into the spandrels. We peered up at the soaring vaults of the archways and marveled at the cosmic symmetry of the dome, the chatris, the minarets. Behind the Taj, the Yamuna River, like a gold-pink sari, flowed into the misty distance. The river ran thinly, the bed having dried up in the months following the last monsoon. A pair of village women on the opposite bank washed clothes, going about a routine in their lives in a manner preserved for centuries. This was an ancient and peaceful silence--a singularly Indian silence that I felt proud to share with my wife.

As the sun rose, it cast a soft amber glow over the dome. It warmed our faces and lit up the surrounding countryside. We watched its mystical play of light against the Taj's marble curves and lines. But soon enough our bare feet, chilled to the bone, cried out for covering.

Back down the steps, we retrieved our shoes. Enjoying the morning stillness, we sat at a bench to put them back on. That's when I noticed something that jolted me.

Reaching down, I picked up a discarded water bottle, left in the grass by a long-gone tourist. I threw the bottle into a trash bin close by. As we walked back to the main gateway, my wife and I found and picked up a dozen more bottles, similarly chucked away in one corner or another.

So taken with the panoramic grandeur of the Taj, I didn't notice anything as minute as a water bottle till now. One by one, we put them into the same trash bin or handed them to the sole groundskeeper, who we saw buzzing here and there, sweeping things up with a broom and pan. I also picked up paan masala and candy wrappers. Just the crinkly noise they made as I balled them up and threw them away seemed to profane the air, and ripple the timeless, immaculate beauty of the place.

As we neared the gateway, I kept an eye on a security guard as he ripped open a paan masala wrapper. He and a fellow guard stood before the gateway arch, joking together. He quickly jiggled out the contents of the wrapper. Then he dropped the wrapper from his fingers to the stony path at his feet. My heart sank.

We crossed through the gateway, but before rounding the corner into the forecourt that led out to the garden path, I snapped one last picture of the Taj. I lingered there a moment, my eyes on Tagore's "teardrop," reluctant to leave.

From what I'd seen that month, the private sector-free market India, the country behind the tinted office towers and shopping malls, was clearly thriving: hustling, dreaming, striving, all on a dazzling scale. That’s the India that continues to thrill and make me proud everyday.

But turn your eyes from the snazzy high-rises and billboards down to ground level, and you'll see and smell the India that's closer to the truth, the India of pell-mell traffic and acrid pollution, of untended garbage, of ill-managed roadways and of poverty so harsh it seems to belong to distant, darker times. And who lords over all this shambolic turf? Not the entrepreneurial India, but the bureaucratic India. The same people looking out (or not) for India's infrastructure are, frighteningly, also in charge of the Taj Mahal. As I write this, they're still dragging their heels on any substantive improvements to the Taj's infrastructure; what became of the much-touted public-private consortium is anyone's guess.

Slowly, I turned away from the Taj, now a rapturous golden, and joined my wife waiting a few steps away.

"Just saying a prayer for this place," I said, wrapping an arm around her.

The Taj Mahal is a teardrop on the cheek of time. And not just in the way Tagore meant.

End