Without Reservations

Walter gets a little metaphysical about the Taj Mahal.

Our automated wake-up call jangled at 0500 Saturday, and we were in a cab on our way to the Taj well before 7. The hotel driver agreed to meet us in three hours at the drop-off point.

Before he could even open Liz's door, we were swarmed by rickshaw-driving touts. Polluting vehicles aren't permitted within a click or two of the great mausoleum, so rickshaw-wallahs have an easy time finding clients. It was my first trip by rickshaw -- our other three-wheeled rides were by auto rickshaw.

I'd avoided them in other cities. The last time I was in a pedaled rickshaw, a bored kid was towing me and some other high school friends down a boardwalk at the Jersey Shore. His summer vacation gig was not his vocation. Hiring a well-fed American to tow you from a Nathan's Hot Dog stand to a Ferris Wheel is one thing; paying a skinny old man with a few teeth and stringy legs to take me the same distance felt like another thing altogether.

A very aggressive young man offered to be our tour guide. I resisted repeatedly, but he politely, blithely ignored my protests. He trotted along side my rickshaw, breathlessly explaining that without a guide, we'd merely be "taking a walk" around the Taj Mahal, missing out on its secrets, its essence.

Maybe I was too weary to argue, but I turned my head to make sure that Liz wasn't far behind in her rickshaw, and he clambered aboard, riding the handlebars.

Ten or so plodding minutes later, we arrived at one of the visitors' gates. The rickshaw-wallahs tried to defer payment, insisting that they'd wait for us until we came back. Unlike the U.S. Congress, Liz and I have learned that you're far better off using the "pay as you go" scheme. After much animated discussion and an intervention from our guide, we gave 100 Rs to the drivers, and they pedaled away.

"Agra-phobia" is the term Lonely Planet uses to describe the maddening phenomenon of Agra's aggressive merchants, touts and cab drivers. Everyone has a cousin with a shop; everyone can get you the best deal, everyone has an object of interest to sell that you absolutely must see.

It was worse than LP described. We were literally surrounded by folks who wanted to drag us to a store, guide us on tours, or sell us some truly crappy tchotkes that had nothing at all to do with the icon behind the fortified walls -- wooden chess sets, bamboo cobras in woven baskets, you get the idea. (It was several times worse on the walk back to the parking lot afterwards.)

We went through security (different lines for ladies and gents -- Liz's check was behind a modesty curtain, I got a not-so-gentle pat-down), and the tour began. She'd forgotten to leave her iPod back at the Hilton, so I checked it with no degree of confidence at the cloakroom for banished articles. It was given a number before being berthed with scores of confiscated cell phones, CD players and cigarettes.

If you can't bring it into a mosque, you can't bring it to the Taj, pretty much.

The guide began hastily, steering us almost immediately toward a photographer in the first courtyard who does color prints in 30 minutes. This didn't bode well.

His knowledge of the complex was about an inch deep and a mile wide. He rattled off facts I'd previously absorbed via guidebooks and Web searches. I tuned him out, despite the 475 Rs I knew I'd be slapping in his mitt later. Not that much cash, big picture, though we'd already paid Rs 500 each for entry, as well as a photography fee. Still, we didn't want to miss a thing, so off we went.

He took us through the gate into the mausoleum complex, and there it was.

We used Liz's pocket Nikon, passing it back and forth as things caught our eyes. (We'll post photos in a separate entry -- there are many for your consideration.) Most of our fellow pilgrims were Indian families on weekend holidays, but Westerners were well-represented -- the sunburnt Kiwi who looked like he'd just stowed his surfboard, three frat boys, one sweating entirely through his Villanova T-shirt, businesslike Germans, laden with cameras.

Old news: the Taj Mahal was built by Emperor Shah Jahan, who was so moved by the death of his young wife in childbirth in 1631 that he created this mausoleum as "a monument to love." Work started shortly after her death, and it wrapped up in 1653.

"Monument to love." I put that in quotes because the phrase is repeated in guidebooks, tour-booking flyers all over town, and even in the padded hotel info binder on our night stand.

Standing there at the end of the reflecting pool, the phrase struck a dissonant chord. Twenty thousand workers labored for twenty years to erect a "Monument to love?" More like ego.

Feel free to assume that I'd built the Taj up in my head so much that it could never have matched my expectations. There's some truth to that. But I also suffer from something Liz calls CEO Syndrome:

an abiding resentment of "great men" who take the credit for "getting things done," even though their only talent is that they've acquired power enough to demand the energy of people far more talented and creative than themselves.

Liz believes these people are necessary, and she's probably right. The Golden Gate Bridge would not exist if not for Joseph B. Strauss. Today, his statue stands at the south anchorage, boldly pointing north as if he'd conjured the span with a single blast from his index finger.

What you won't see is any mention of Charles Ellis, the senior, more knowledgeable engineer who knew Strauss' initial design would never work and had the stones to speak up. His insolence got him fired, but the Ellis design is the one that was realized. Engineers agree: Strauss' creative vision would likely be a pile of buckled, rusting steel at the bottom of the bay.

Lore has it that the architect who drafted the Taj's blueprints was Isa Khan, but it's not a concrete fact. There is little debate, however, that Shah Jahan had the architect's thumb lopped off so he'd never be able to create a rival or superior structure.

I've never endured CEO Syndrome to that extent -- these days, they just amputate employees' spirits.

I might have appreciated it more if each guide hadn't been reading from the same page. Hearing identical stats jawed for the gawkers -- "these flowers are made up of 64 different stones, each cut exactly to fit," -- was a phrase I heard at least three times as we circled the false tombs under the great dome.

The crowds weren't of a reflective, contemplative mind, either. The mausoleum itself was anything but somber; yelping children chasing each other, loud conversations in several tongues, and not least, the rattle and shaking of a rolling steel gate that blocks access to the actual resting place of the Shah and his bride in an antechamber below.

The gate was installed because tourists had been working precious and semi-precious stones out of the pietra dura for souvenirs -- now, they just tug and yank at the barricade so they can squeeze their heads in for an illicit peek.

Everything at the Taj is symmetrical -- as a result, everyone stands in the same spots with their cameras, straining to frame each shot perfectly. Each building, each arch, each minaret -- all has its mirror opposite. "Balance," was the word our guide used repeatedly. Perhaps so. I don't know much about these things, but in terms of craftsmanship and design, the Taj Mahal is probably one of the most perfect buildings on Earth.

The guide left us to sit on a shaded bench to sit and contemplate. Liz asked what I was feeling, and I struggled with an answer. Unlike everywhere else in India we've visited, the Taj Mahal felt antiseptic, cold.

The Taj Mahal called to me -- but it did not speak to me. I could not feel its pulse.

I was trying to formulate this thought, but then a bird crapped on my leg, and I lost the thread.

I was still considering our visit hours later, after checking out of the hotel and relaxing in the bar before our train back to New Delhi. On a friend's recommendation, I was reading Hesse's "Narcissus and Goldmund," a yellowed paperback I hadn't touched in 20 years.

Briefly, Narcissus lives the life of the mind in a cloister as a monk; Goldmund is a student who lives in a world of images, flesh, and emotion. After I finished page 183, I stopped and looked very thoughtful.

Liz looked up from her novel.

"May I read you something?" I asked. She smiled her assent.

"At this point in the novel, Goldmund is an apprentice to a master carver, and he's reflecting on art and beauty while looking into a stream."

She nodded, green eyes engaged. I cleared my throat.

"He could not understand how that which was so definite and formal could affect the soul in the same manner as that which was intangible and formless. One thing, however, did become clear to him -- why so many perfect works of art did not please him at all, why they were almost hateful and boring to him, in spite of a certain undeniable beauty.

Workshops, churches and palaces were full of these fatal works of art; he had even helped with a few himself. They were deeply disappointing because they aroused the desire for the highest and did not fulfill it. They lacked the most essential thing -- mystery. That was what dreams and truly great works of art had in common: mystery."

I've seen the Taj Mahal with these two eyes, and with the woman I love. I'm very grateful on both counts. But as my experience suggested and Hesse confirmed, there's the potential to find great beauty whenever you blink, or turn your head.

Regard a child's face, gaze into your lover's eyes, study a slice of fruit. Each is beautiful; none are perfect.

But they're all precious, and far more wondrous to me than the Taj Mahal.

Posted by Walter at June 26, 2005 01:25 AM