Heaven and Hell
Let me be frank: I hated Agra. Before we arrived, I expected it to be a lush, green wonderland from which the Taj Mahal sprung like a beautiful flower. After we left, I thought it was a festering cesspool, to which I never wanted to return.
Our train from Delhi left before sunrise, so as we sped backwards through villages and fields, I was able to watch the sun climb over India. As we approached Agra, people started to emerge from their villages and we passed dozens of men squatting by the railroad tracks. I am enough of an uptight WASP that seeing people defecating ten feet from my comfortable train seat, where I am trying to drink my delicious mango juice, is a scarring event. There was something too animalistic about it, too human. And also, I saw penises. Even more traumatic than looking out the window and seeing poor people pooping is looking out the window and seeing male genitalia flapping in the wind. I left the train shaken and disturbed, despite the fact that I knew I was being perfectly ridiculous, and where were these people supposed to go? Their marble bathrooms?
Our hotel was outside the Taj area, which ended up being most fortunate, but when we arrived, the room was not ready, so we sat in the courtyard area as I became increasingly crabby. When our room finally was ready, it was more like a prison cell than anything else, and I lost it once again. I decreed to T that I was ready to stay in nicer places: places that cost more than $10, because getting crabs from dirty blankets or a lifetime of therapy would cost more than the room charge in the end.
After a long nap, we decided to venture out to Agra. Immediately after we emerged from the hotel, a scrawny man on a bicycle rickshaw pulled up next to us. Hello sir, what is your country? T told him England and kept walking. The man kept on pedaling, slowly enough that he kept time with our pace. You want rickshaw? No. This your friend? No, my wife. Oh, you lucky man, sir. She is like film star! T tried not to choke on his laughter and I smiled at the man for his compliment. Sure, I look like a matted, sleepy, dirty film star, OR you are just lying to get a fare! Regardless of the fact that he was probably fibbing, I have reminded T of how much I look like a film star almost daily.
The man continued to follow us despite the fact that we kept walking and saying No thank you, sir with nearly every step. We soon discovered that this is how it works in Agra; you will be walking down the street, minding your own business when you will suddenly sense a presence nearby. It is a bicycle rickshaw driver, pedaling just slowly enough to remain within 5 feet of you, silently following you just in case you suddenly change your mind and decide YES! I NEED A BICYCLE RICKSHAW NOW! AND I NEED ONE WITHIN TEN FEET OF MY PERSON, BECAUSE I REFUSE TO WALK FURTHER!
After lunch, we went to Agra Fort. It was a mammoth place, with endless halls and rooms and a mosque which you had to remove your shoes to enter, but which no one could find. The design was beautiful, and there was a distant view of the Taj Mahal from one side. The view is the same as Shah Jahan had, after he had built the Taj and his son imprisoned him in Agra Fort, where he spent the rest of his life staring out the window at the memorial. In a place with karma like this, I should have known better than to document the moment, but I didn’t. Why? Because I am stupid. So I stood at the very edge of one of the windows so T could take my picture and I wouldn’t interfere with anyone else’s.
When he was done, I quickly got out of the way so other people could take photos, but I found myself in the face of a snarling Frenchman. T asked, Oh, do you want to take a picture, sir? And the Frenchman sneered Yes, I deeeed. Is zis posseeble?all the while glaring at us. I will be honest: I love France. It is one of my favorite places in the world. But sometimes I find myself completely incapable of dealing with the French. This was one of those times. I called him a bad nameunder my breath (sort of) and we went on our way. Unfortunately, we were soon to realize that Agra (and much of the rest of India) was full of middle-aged French prigs who were just as obnoxious as this man. Oh, hooray.
After wandering the Fort for ages, marveling at all the astounding carving and the sheer size of the place, we decided to walk to the Taj. This was a colossal mistake. We walked down the road and passed dozens of Indians, some of whom wanted our picture, and some of whom wanted us to take theirs. It was a pleasant enough walk, down a wide street lined with green trees, until it happened.
A little boy spotted me from miles away and saw the invisible mark on my forehead that reads SUCKER. He trotted alongside us, trying to sell us a snowglobe. One hundred rupees! he cried. No, we said, sadly. He followed us for at least a mile and a half, with his enormous, sad eyes and his plastic snowglobe, breaking my damn heart with every step. He would shake it and look up at me, dropping the price. I would shake my head and look down at him, trying not to cry. Eventually, I started to whisper to T that we should just buy him food, but he didnt want to because he was afraid hundreds of other kids would appear, hands outstretched, and we would be picked clean.
Finally, the boy turned around, and I asked T why we didn’t buy him food. And then T lost his mind. He collapsed into a shaky pile on a park bench and handed me his wallet. Take it, he said. You give people the money. And that was when I knew for sure that I hated Agra. It even managed to break T.
We managed to recover and keep on walking, and then the boy appeared again. That’s it, I decided. T and I bought three boxes of mango juice and tried to give one to the boy. No. He didn’t want any mango juice; he wanted the change we had from the mango juice for his snowglobe. And then, he vanished, without any change or juice.
We ended up walking into the Taj Ganj area to see if we could get a rickshaw home. Taj Ganj is one of the few places I have ever been that I hate more than Times Square. It is full of tourist shops selling postcards and marble and touts that run out in front of you in the street, trying to sell you crap. We managed to battle our way through, and I even made it past a sadhu with coke-bottle glasses who grabbed my arm and clung to it, the way skeletons do in movies when they arise from the dead. I wrenched him off and said to T, we need to go back. Now.
We ate dinner in the hotel courtyard that night because we were too exhausted to leave the complex, and we spent most of the night saying to each other, India is kicking my ass and watching the other person somberly agree.
The next day, we gathered up our courage and went to the Taj for sunset when our friend Dennis said the light was best. But first, we went to Sadr Bazaar, where things were slower and quieter and more managable, and we spent about 14 hours on the internet. Then, we hit the Taj. There were two lines for security there, as is common in India. The men’s queue looked endless when we first got in line, and for a second, I was smug about how womanhood was finally going to pay off. Then, God decided to punish me for my smugness and the men’s line sped past and I stayed in exactly the same place for about half an hour. I was in the line for so long that T went through security and came back through with his bag as I was stilll waiting. No bags in the Taj: no guidebooks or computers allowed. He had to take our bag with the new computer and check it. That’s it, I thought. Bye-bye computer, even though the bag is locked and so is the locker. It was nice knowing you.
When I finally got through security, we entered the complex. When we walked through the gate that leads to the Taj, I felt a profound disappointment. I had been expecting lightning to strike and stars to explode and to hear the voice of my high school art history teacher saying, Cleeeearly, this is the Taj Mahal. Instead, all I saw was hundreds of people milling about, pushing each other out of the way to get a picture–or worse, staking a claim on a good photo site and refusing to move. There were people everywhere, like maggots on a corpse, and even with the grandeur of the Taj, there was no escaping them. Don’t get me wrong—the Taj was stunning in its enormity, and was a beautiful creation. The best part was the inner sanctum inside, with the tiny tombs and beautiful marble latticework and the overwhelming stench of feet. But after being battered about like pinballs, we decided to leave.
Every tourist town has a special item it sells for the tourist suckers, and in Agra it appears to be snow globes. As T went to check on the bag (which remarkably still held the computer—I will give Agra credit for that and only that), I saw a man with what looked like cerebral palsy selling snowglobes. Our buying approach is to only buy things we like, or from the disabled. T had 15 rupees, and when he handed it to me, the snow globe man saw it from about 100 feet away and immediately came over. I pointed to his snow globes. He nodded and held one out. I tried to give him the 15 rupees, and he smiled and said 50. I shook my head and held out the 15, and he grinned, took it, and gave me the snow globe. As we were walking away, T said bless him, he tried to rip us off. Even the handicapped in Agra will try to scam you.
As we walked back to get another rickshaw, we had to go back through Taj Ganj. I spotted the grabby sadhu and tried to leap away from him, but the bastard grabbed me with his skeleton fingers again, despite my jumping away. What the %$#, sadhu of doom? I dont care if you are holy, DO NOT TOUCH ME! As we were standing, waiting for a rickshaw, one sped by and nailed T in the shin. He was bruised for weeks afterward. And then, as we stood there, battered and bruised and exhausted and hating this place, it got even worse.
A rickshaw driver came over to T and tried to start bartering. He wanted 50 rupees to go to our hotel. We had been paying 25. He pointed to me and then to T and said 20 and 20. I laughed and pointed to each of us, saying 10 and 10. Apparently, this was the wrong move. Apparently, women are not to speak to this $%#*&^%. He turned purple with rage and turned on me, screaming INDIANS CHARGE 40 RUPEES! My first thought was What, for everything? My second thought was Oh. No. You. Did. Not. Dude, I have just enough Haley rage in me that if you ever speak to me like that, I will nail you somewhere that will make it very difficult for you to contribute to the overpopulation of this country.
Instead of kicking him with the same legs that broke someone’s jaw playing soccer in elementary school, I walked away. And then the MF offered T 20 rupees. T turned to me, pained, and told me. Furious, I marched back to his rickshaw, where we sat in the back while he conferred with his friends before turning back around and saying, no. Forty rupees. That was it. I got out of the rickshaw, yelled a VERY bad word and stormed off, ranting loudly about how Agra is hell on earth and I don’t care if the Taj Mahal is the most beautiful place in the history of time, it is NOT worth it. And as I was stomping down the street, another rickshaw driver had the balls to approach me. He carefully pointed to his rickshaw and asked, Madam? I looked at T and told him to negotiate, because I was busy losing my damn mind.
He took us back to our hotel for 30 rupees and it was the best money we ever spent. Like an angel sent from heaven, Sunil restored my faith in India (though not Agra; Agra is dead to me). Sunil was a skinny man in his 50s with eight kids and a very fat wife. No, she is SO FAT! Your wife is nothing compared to my wife! he told T. But he loves her very much and is happy. No wife, no life, he told T. I wholeheartedly agree. T loved Sunil because Sunil loved T and kept looking back at me and saying I was very lucky. FINALLY! Someone realizes YOU are the lucky one!, T crowed when Sunil dropped us off for sundaes at a nearby restaurant. Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Sunil, for reminding us–don’t worry, chicken curry.
There was a lovely retired schoolteacher from northern California staying in our guesthouse in Agra who told us to go to the Baby Taj. It is a feast for the eyes, she said. Our friend Dennis had told us we needed a couple of days for Agra, but the train we wanted was booked, so we ended up having three. So, the Baby Taj it was.
Our ride to Itmad-ad-Daula was hellish—all honking and traffic and belching exhaust. But when we arrived there, Sunil popped out of nowhere to say hello. That was when I knew I was going to love the goddamn Baby Taj. That teacher was right. There are not enough adjectives to describe it. Itmad-ad-Daula was built by a daughter as a tomb for her parents (keep dreaming, Crust) and was another precursor to the Taj in the Mughal style. It was a tiny little oasis in the hellhole that is Agra. It was built inside tranquil gardens on the river and is exquisite, with the most ornate and beautiful detail I have seen since Angkor. I loved it so much, we walked through twice and around countless times. Finally, I was at ease in Agra.
With visions of the Baby Taj dancing in our heads, we got on our train to get the hell out of Agra. Of course, there was a super-creepy Indian man sitting opposite us on the train who spent the entire time openly staring at me, refusing to look away even when I looked right at him. I tried to conjure up memories of the Baby Taj and breathe deeply. Eventually, I turned on my iPod and listened to Nessun Dorma repeatedly while saying my mantra over and over: India, I will not let you beat me.
No Comments Yet
Be the first to comment!
