Agra. City of the Taj Mahal. This is why people come to India. Agra was like Amritsar: A shit hole with a gem in the middle, in this case a marble wedding cake. I stayed near the eastern gate and thought why not get it out of the way and do the Taj first. It was Friday and the Taj was closed as the mosque inside the complex is used for Friday services. Great! So I have to wait until tomorrow to see the main attraction but that’s ok. I walk to Agra fort, about 2 km away and as soon as I was on the main road I was chased by rickshaw wallahs. It was a nightmare. “no thank you, no, no, NO!” I can see my destination in front of me, I don’t need a ride. I just want to walk, I like the exercise. They don’t understand. Since I’ve been to India I’ve actually walked very little because of this. It is almost impossible to be a foreigner and try to walk down the street without being attacked by people who are convinced that you absolutely need their services for exuberantly high prices of course. When I travel I like to walk, I always thought it was the best way to experience cities. Here I am forced to experience India from a rickshaw. So, having to choose between bad and worst I’d rather go for a bike rickshaw since it is slower, closer to the pace of walking. They fight over me and I finally take one of them to literally cross the street with me into the fort. He then proceeds to offer me a full tour that he will provide me after I am done at the fort for a few hundred rupees. I said no thank you and left. Another rickshaw guy approaches me and tells me he will be waiting for me, almost like a threat.
The fort in Agra was actually the nicest architectural site I have visited thus far. Architecturally speaking, India is disappointing. Cities are not distinct, they all look and feel the same but they vary in size. Monuments are few and grand architecture is not so grand. Religious architecture is not noteworthy. What are people talking about when they speak of the wondrous cities of India, have they even been here? Anyway, the fort was very nice. Beautiful courts and rooms, nice details and volumes. As I exit the fort where Shah Jahan was imprisoned by his own son and put in a room where he can look at the Taj Mahal from across the rover, I find the rickshaw wallah that threatened to wait for me.
He lures me in by giving me a very low price for a ride. He fights off a few others who are also trying to pick me up. All this is very exhausting. We finally move and we are followed by a motor rickshaw who tries to crash into us and picks a fight with my wallah. By this point I want to punch them all in the face and take the first plane back to JFK. They fight and I watch like I am supposed to proclaim a winner. I give the final verdict, I am staying on the bike, I hate the sound and vibration of the motors.
My wallah was a pleasant man, he understood and spoke enough English for us to carry a conversation. Our conversations were symbolic, meaning it was never really a personal one, but one built on our symbolic relationship. I am the stranger from another land here to spend my money and see some culture and he was the provider of a service I need. At times our conversation would get flirtatious. He asked me what my religion was, which to me is a very personal thing to ask but here everyone seems to ask. I would be asked what my religion was when I go buy a bottle of water. That and the question about marriage. Literally every man I have talked to seems to want to know these two things right off the bat. I told him my family is Muslim. He said he will take me to the Jama Masjid, a historic mosque, I said fine. The mosque is nice, reminded me of the mosque in Delhi. I was wrapped with a fabric to cover my exposed legs. Kids ran to me as soon as they saw my camera. All they wanted is their picture to be taken. So interesting to me why they would want that. Is it because they want to see themselves on my little camera screen? Is it because they want me to remember them? Is this their collective subconscious attempt at immortality? I have no idea but I snapped a few pictures of the kids rather than the mosque and they were happy. I was too. As I was leaving an old man, who wrapped me with the fabric, asked me for a donation. He said “here in India were are minority, Muslim, Sikh and Christian are persecuted.” I thought to myself “wow, I would have given a donation without that explanation,” I was impressed he referred to persecution, minorities and even listed others.
We went to a couple of unremarkable sites and ended up at a garden across the dried up river from the Taj Mahal. There it is, I’ve seen it, done. A part of me wanted to skip paying the exuberant 750 rupee entry fee to see the Taj having seen it clearly and taken a token picture already. My rickshaw wallah (I failed to remember his name) and I sat in the shade of a tree and looked across to the Taj. He was telling me this is a romantic spot where couples come and hide among the trees and bushes and play. “just kissing or more?” I asked, he said “the further away the more they do.” I frankly asked him if he wanted to go back there with me, continuing with our vague flirtation. He looked at me as if to see if I was serious. I was. Then he laughed and put his hand on my shoulder and said “you are funny, you joke.“ I wasn’t laughing. He asked me the ubiquitous question about whether or not I was married or have a girlfriend. “No.” “why not?” he asked. “I’m not interested.” he smiled at me and said he will be married by 25. He already had a plan. But I thought he was older, he looked at least 30. He was only 21 and when he learned my age he was surprised and almost looked at me like an old man. He was even more confused to learn that I was 28 and not interested in marriage. He said “here in India you have to marry young or else people will think you are an old man and not want to give you their daughters.” I said why do you want to get married? He seemed perplexed by the question, it was only a natural thing to do, getting married was as inevitable as loosing your first tooth, going through puberty, growing old and dying. He never answered and looked at the Taj.
“its amazing, this one building gives life to this entire city, everyone here needs the Taj to survive.” I said. He laughed and agreed with fervor. He said “without the Taj Mahal there would be no life in Agra, nothing.” he added, “Thank you Shah Jahan! Thank you Mumtaz!.” He was thanking her for dying unexpectedly, otherwise this monument would have never been built and the lives that depend on it today and for decades would have suffered more or may not have even existed. The death of one woman a few hundred years ago seems to have given livelihoods to millions since. But death is everywhere in India, people don’t really seem to think much of it. I’ve already seen two dead mules, a dead dog and a dead man, in the street. Life went on right around them, people would literally just pass a dead body, a man or animal, and go on. It is very public, there isn’t even an urgency to clean the scene even out of health concerns for the living. Is there value to life at all? Have people subconsciously accepted the fact there is surplus life in India and that if one is dead, maimed in motor bike crash or if a child gets sick from playing in open sewer that it doesn’t matter? This is not about being poor, this is not about not having resrouces, even the poorest person can know that rolling in your own shit can not be good, yet people seem to just go on doing it. I remember seeing some of the poorest people I’ve ever seen in Cambodia, yet they were pleasant, happy people and their makeshift shacks were spotless and swept. In India the living are slowly dying, waiting their death literally on the sides of the road. Families with little children live under the most minimal form of shelter on the sides of roads. All they have is a single makeshift bed, if at all, made of a simple wood frame and straps crisscrossing to make a surface to sleep on. They take turns and most sleep on the bare asphalt. Some even have a pot and a burner to prepare food. But they seem idle, not doing much, waiting. They were born to wait for their death and they seem to have completely accepted it. But why do they have children? To keep them company while they wait to die? I know that nothing is more inevitable than the fact that once we are born we will die some day and it doesn’t really matter when or how. But most people make some kind of use with their lives while it lasts, sometimes for better and sometimes for worst. Some would think of it as a distraction from the inevitable, I disagree. But these people, those miserable people literally looking at a dead mule while their children play in the dirt, the father sleeps helpless and the mother picks lice out of her child’s head, what are they doing? They too are distracted, with making it day to day, picking lice out their heads, and watching cars and rickshaws go by. You ask any of these people how they like India and they say “the best!” They don’t know that things could be better, that sewer could be covered that collective housing could be built, that education could be available. They completely buy into the government’s propaganda and the glossy fantasy images they see on TV and genuinely believe that living by the side of the road is completely acceptable since millions do it in India. A massive population pacified, made ignorant and left on the side of the road to rot and they don’t raise a finger to change that.
Anyway, I was thinking all this as we were on our way back to town. Traveling alone is nice because there is time to think of all these things and to notice things that otherwise one wouldn’t. when I’m traveling with someone, we look at each others faces most of the time, we talk, we rely on one another to capture our surroundings. Its ok not pay full attention to life around us because if one misses something he hopes that his companion will fill him in on what he missed. But sitting alone in the back of a rickshaw I can’t help but look at everything with a new eye. We turned to a relatively quiet street, a rare occurrence in India. And for once my mind was blank. Not really blank but I had the most random thoughts totally irrelevant to where I was. My random thoughts were “goats really do have demonic eyes.. I really like the way French people say money, Moonaaaaay… and I would love a burger right now, medium done with blue cheese and avocado on the side.” we turn back to the typical chaos and I snap back into high alert mode as my life could end any moment from the encroaching traffic.
Somehow I was enjoying myself but the heat started to bother me and humidity was suffocating. I wanted to go back to my hotel as I was done for the day. My rickshaw wallah had another plan. He had always intended to take me to a few shops so that he can make a commission. He even told me this thinking we are now friends. “if you come with me to these shops, you don’t have to buy, just look 10 minutes and I get 50 rupees.” I actually wanted to help despite how exhausted I was feeling so I agreed. I should not have but looking back I don’t think I had a choice. I was held hostage and taken from shop after shop selling the same waste of resources, paper weights, overpriced fabrics and knickknack, soap stone made to look like marble. “who needs a mini marble Taj or an elephant?” it was the most tiresome two hours in a long while. He still wanted to take me to more and I said that I was done and he must take me back now. I insisted and he seemed unhappy as if wasting two hours of my life for his cause wasn’t enough, and I was still going to pay him handsomely. Greed my friends, its ugly.
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