Tales of marble corridors: The Imperial and the Taj Mahal

I put off writing about the Taj Mahal because it really does defy words.  But for my own sake I should recall our day there before it recedes into my increasingly goldfish-like memory. 

We were staying at the Imperial hotel – supposedly one of the best hotels in the world and certainly in Asia.  Yes it was very expensive, but because the pool was closed for renovations it was less expensive than usual, so we took advantage of an opportunity to stay at one of the world’s truly historic hotels.  It was built in 1935 and was the only hotel planned it Lutyen’s New Delhi.  Ghandi, Nehru, Jinnah and the Mountbatttens all met here during pre-Independence negotiations and Jinnah was actually ambushed here by a mob of rampaging Sikhs (from memory about the Sikhs).  The corridors are marble, the breakfasts are amazing, and the service is immaculate.  Anyway, why am I talking about this in a post on the Taj…because I was unwell and needed cosseting so we opted to take the hotel car for the day rather than the train, as we had originally planned. Costly yes, but my God was it worth it. 

We had to leave the hotel at 6am in order to get to Agra by 10:00.  The car was not a limo but it was certainly comfortable – much more so than the previously mentioned cute but cramped padded Ambassador.  The comfort factor was also greatly improved by the provision of a huge picnic basket by the hotel including breakfast (birchermuesli, thermos of tea, pastries) and lunch (sangers, more pastries, potato crisps, orange juices etc..).  So all I needed was my trusty feather pillow and Jon to wake me up.  I think I made it as far as the car before falling asleep and waking up at a pitstop on the way to Agra.  The pit stop was something to do with tax that had to be paid for crossing into the next state. While our wonderful driver (who had that rare driver ability to know when to be chatty and when to shut up) went to pay the tax, we were surrounded by various hawkers and beggars tapping, then banging loudly on the windows in order to encourage us to buy chess sets (why is it always chess sets?? Bali too), bangles and other rubbish.  A monkey on a chain then jumped onto the car, also in an attempt to extract money I presume, but I was only thinking ‘thank God it’s not my duco’. Jon grimaced back angrily at the monkey and knocked back on the windows in an irritated manner, scattering the hawkers and worrying the monkey into jumping down just as our driver returned to rescue us.  I wasn’t harassed by this really, just annoyed that they woke me up for the second time that day and it wasn’t yet 9 am!



Unsecured bricks

From then on I watched the passing parade on India’s Grand Trunk Road.  There really is evidently no limit to the amount that can be fitted onto a truck and with no ropes securing loads yet I didn’t see anything fall off despite considerable speed and the inevitable dodge’em car efforts.  I guess after six months of driving in Penang – which can be pretty haphazard – I was totally calm about the fact that cars, trucks and buses were hurtling towards us head on, on the wrong side of the road.  The goats and cows were a new addition though, but it’s amazing how quickly that becomes normalised.

 Eventually we arrived in Agra and picked up our guide.  I had been extremely clear at the outset that we did not want a guide, but was convinced to take one because otherwise we would have to queue for hours to get into the Taj.  Any other time I would have taken the evils of a queue over the evils of a guide (I hate being ‘guided’) but my flu was not encouraging me to want to join a long queue (I had heard that you can queue for up to two hours) in the cold so we opted for the guide.  I still wish we hadn’t, he wasn’t bad but was quite bossy.   Anyway, to get into the Taj you have to buy tickets at Indian Geo Survey office (there was no bloody queue) and take an electric car to the Taj – no filth-spewing vehicles are allowed within a certain distance of the Taj itself.  There is no doubt that that first sight of the actual Taj when viewed through the entrance gates is a lump-in-the-throat experience, although somewhat tempered by the absolutely necessary requirement to go through security scanners and pat-downs.
The building itself is everything that is said about it, ethereal monument to love, astounding workmanship and architecture and all that. I must say that the crowds, and the guide going on and on, took something from the experience for me.  On reflection I would have loved to be there alone just with Jon, but of course that is impossible for everyone except Princess Di.
Speaking of her, there was a scrum to sit on the seat she sat on (now dubbed the Diana seat) and be photographed with the Taj in the background.  I don’t know how people get all those romantic shots of the Taj because at the time of year we were there it was simply over-run with people.  Sadly, even the internal chamber with its sublime carved marble and pietra dura work was a bit like a rugby scrum, with a guard actually constantly blowing an ear piercing whistle which reverberated around the inside to stop people from taking photos, which was ineffective and made what should have been a very reflective, romantic place something I actually felt that I wanted to get out of quite quickly.  

I much preferred the rear of the building where you could admire the workmanship in peace and also watch the locals crossing the Yamuna river on tiny boats that emerged through the fog.

We spent about two hours in the complex in total. It was incredible, I wonder if perhaps we become a little numb to these ‘wonders of the world’ after having seen their images so many times.  I couldn’t help but compare my ‘Taj’ feeling with my feeling at seeing the pyramids in Giza – a little underwhelmed even though I had longed to see the Taj all my life.  There it was, and there I was, tick. Now it feels unreal that I was actually there.  The Great Wall wowed me more, and on reflection I think that was because you can never see the entire thing in a photo, you really need to be there.  But I guess I am comparing the incomparable and would never for a second discourage anyone from visiting the Taj Mahal – it’s a stunning building.  Perhaps go earlier in the day than we did, and don’t take a guide.

The trip back to Delhi was long and torturous. Apparently one of the lanes of the Grand Trunk Road changes direction around that time, and to describe what we hit as a traffic jam is insufficient.  We left Agra, after a stop for lunch and the obligatory stop at a pietra dura factory, at about 3pm.  We got back to the hotel about 9:30 pm making for a very long day which was certainly worth it.   Having been unwell, I’m glad we did it the ‘easy’ way.  Perhaps one day I will return and see the Taj at dawn, hopefully with less of humanity there….but it’s India so you can never be sure of that.

 

Saree Shopping in Chennai

 Downtown Chennai is about heavy duty saree shopping.  Not much else, particularly just prior to Pongal, the Tamil harvest festival.  When I say ‘saree shop’, don’t imagine that I mean an ordinary shop, selling a few hundred sarees such as you might see in Singapore or Malaysia. Oh no, I mean SEVEN STORIES of sarees, cavernous interiors and packed with people all intent on saree shopping like there is no tomorrow. Add to that the fact that we have caught up here in Chennai with Rani and Kylie, Rani’s sister Shanthi and her daughter Thiva Shini and Jon is in trouble.  In fact, Rani and Kylie are here to purchase all the things required for Kylie’s Bharatha Natyam Aurangetram (her Indian dance graduation concert).   Therefore, many sarees have to be bought – for anyone even vaguely associated with the concert, and all family members.  Add to that the fact that Rani comes from a large family and that I was also buying sarees for Rani’s three nieces in Malaysia to thank them for their great kindness towards us during our six months there, and you have Saree mayhem.  I was greatly impressed with Jon’s patience as he sat on velvet covered stools in various Saree caverns providing entertainment to small children while we shopped.  People watching would have been interesting though. 

 At a saree store, the salespeople are all men.  They have the patience of saints.  Each saree consists of at least six meters of cloth and they throw them out on a b  ench so that the potential buyer can see the embroidery, the multi-coloured end piece and the part that will become the under-blouse.  It is nothing for each woman to look at twenty or more sarees per purchase.  Thus these guys are literally standing behind mountains of cloth, patiently folding and unfolding.

Kylie has a good eye for fashion and Thiva Shini also knew the girls I was buying for well, so we were sometimes quite quick to buy – ‘yep, that’s her colour, that will be good for her,  we’ll have that one please, Ok.  who is next?’.  We visited a few of these leviathan stores and bought up big.   Once you have decided on a saree, you get a docket from the sales person.  It seems like a complicated process but everything works like clockwork actually.  You collect your dockets and at the end you take them to a counter. Behind the counter each man has a job, one takes your docket, another takes your money, yet another issues a receipt.  Then you go to another counter with your paid docket and collect your sarees.  Often there is also some sort of free gift involved, such as a carry bag, calendar, mug set or even a suitcase! We left there with so much to carry and headed off into the traffic – the yellow three-wheeled auto-rickshaws all vying for your trade, the beggars, the guys selling peacock feather fans, the fruit sellers, and the one guy who was quite intent on selling me a small plastic guitar emblazoned with spiderman.   He was less successful than the saree stores.

After the saree shopping extravaganza Jon and I went to the post office to send home our excess baggage, mostly our cold weather clothes from Delhi.  Why would I write about that in a journal? Because it was a fascinating experience and a study in how things are done differently.  To post a parcel from India you have to complete several forms in triplicate, but not with carbon, thus you fill each one in three times etc..  Then, each parcel has to be sewn into a calico cover.  This sounds worse than it is, because there is a small shop in the post office where a couple of guys and a lady spend their day sewing up parcels.  Actually it’s a great idea if you can afford the labour costs.  The calico holds the parcel together really well and it will be absolutely 100% obvious if anyone has tampered with its contents.  The cost for sending twelve kilos home buy airmail was about a fifth of what we had been quoted by DHL, so let’s see if they arrive.  If they do I’ll be really seriously impressed.

Just a poolside conversation

 ‘Madam, I am Indian’, he said, in what certainly amounted to the most profound statement of the obvious I have heard so far this year.   I was at the rooftop pool at the very newly opened Raintree Hotel in Chennai. The pool attendant was, not to mince words, a Dravidian Tamil with skin as dark as dark can possibly be. In fact, particularly as he was facing me with the sun behind him, it was difficult to make out any of his facial features save for the brilliant white smile of his perfect teeth, which had no doubt never seen anything remotely approaching cosmetic dentistry.  Mr pool attendant was bristling with enthusiasm over his new domain and the fact that someone had come to make use of it.  For the past half hour I had been the sole focus of his attention.  In fact, it was really windy on the roof of the hotel and not all that pleasant, but I was loath to disappoint him and leave as soon as I wanted to.   In fact, when I walked out of the lift onto the pool deck and was met with a gale spraying the pool’s contents onto the deck below I commented on the fact that it was rather windy.  “Oh no madam, just a light b

reeze’, he said as he grappled with a chair that had intentions of moving Eastward.

Mr pool attendant went to get me some towels, and about ten minutes later returned with them while I admired the view and gave up on hair control,  however he did not bring them to me immediately.  First he went inside again and emerged with a long cushion for the deck chair – I suspect that they were kept inside so that they did not become airborne. ‘We are having these for your pleasure and comfort madam’, he beamed.  I thanked him and he brought me the towels. “Nandri”, I said  (thank you in Tamil). ‘Oh madam, you are speaking my language, that is very exciting.  So very nice….  But madam – he looked at the sky – there is the sun’.   Ah yes, I thought, that is the intention.  ‘Madam will get burned’.  ‘No’, I said, thinking that I was not going to be there long enough to get burned, ‘I actually want to change colour, like your skin’, I joked.  ‘Oh, madam is speaking my language and liking my skin, but our skins are very different (at this point, he compared his arm to mine) would you like me to rub some oil on you?’  ‘Ah, no thanks’ – I was starting to become a little concerned about intercultural faux pas at this point.  ‘Just your shoulders madam’.  ‘I already have some on’, I lied.   This seemed to stump him and he then just stood and watched me for some time.  I attempted to relax but it’s a little difficult to do so when you can feel somebody watching your every breath.   I am not suggesting for a second that this gentleman fancied me: a fat woman on the wrong side of fifty.  He was just very, very keen about his job.   It was after about the third time I tried to pretend he wasn’t there that I opened my eyes and met his, and the proclamation of his nationality that commenced this memoir.  I wasn’t quite sure where to go with the rest of that attempt at conversation but thankfully, just at that moment, Jon appeared.  

Chandni Chowk to Rajghat

 

Yesterday we went to Chandi Chowk.  I am at a loss to find the words to describe the place really.  Knowing that Jon hates crowds I warned him that he would probably not like it, but that from my years of reading about India I felt that a trip to Chandni Chowk was a sort of a rite of passage, and so we should go.  I could have excused him from coming, but I am still not terribly well and I needed my partner in crime, not least at all to help me cross the road. I am strange; fearless about things that worry a lot of women travellers but actually quite hesitant about traffic, whereas Jon will step out in front of oncoming cars with (possibly misplaced) confidence. Anyway he gets some brownie points for accompanying me because right from the start when he saw the crowds  I could feel that he didn’t even want to get out of the car and would have been happy to turn around and go straight back to the hotel.  Chandni Chowk on new years’ day was the second most crowded place I have ever been in my life (first place going to Shenzhen metro on Golden Week day which was very nearly a dangerous stampede).

Chandni Chowk was bedlam, a total crush of people, traffic, bicycle rickshaws, motor bikes and animals.  The first thing that happened when we turned the corner into the Chowk was that I realised I needed to go to the toilet.  This was a major problem actually, even though I only needed what they describe in Malaysia as ‘light usage’.  What do Indian women do?  There are nasty little toilets for men all over the place.  These constitute extraordinarily smelly, invariably blue and white tiled compartments where they can pee, and everything is open to the air excepting a waist height wall behind where they stand to preserve some modesty.   Not that modesty is a huge issue because there seems to be an acceptance of men peeing in corners just about anywhere.  But women, I have yet to see a woman peeing on the street.  About half way down the main street I was getting to the point where I would have been fully ready to squat in a corner when I spotted a McDonalds.  Yay! It required crossing the road, which would have taken me all day without Jon, but with only one argument about ‘you’re going to get me killed’, he got me across the road, only to find out that the Chandni Maccas is the only one on the planet with no toilet.  I put on my ‘very desperate’ face and the lady there pointed me towards Haldiram’s Indian sweet shop about a block away.  Fortunately they did have a toilet and all was well after that, I was much relieved but I doubt that Jon was any happier.  And I still don’t know what Indian women do if they don’t have cast iron bladders.

We emerged from Haldirams to find a man standing on the corner selling one of the strangest things I have ever seen.  Why would anybody want a photo of a Chinese baby on a stick, with paper arms and legs wearing pink booties that flap up and down?  Perhaps nobody did want one, as he didn’t seem to be moving much stock.  Whist thinking about this I noticed that I was standing in the direct route of an oncoming procession with loud and frantic drummers,  a brass band, followed by a horse and carriage drawing a  huge Lord Ganesh, followed by a group of men and a group of women bhangra dancing.   All this was occurring outside a Sikh temple but it didn’t appear to be a wedding.  Still not sure what it was but everybody was in high spirits and didn’t mind at all having their photos taken.  Another saving grace was that the police blocked off the road for a time which allowed us to make quite a bit of distance walking down the centre of the road instead of negotiating the crush of humanity.  I adored this part of the day, and then really enjoyed some street life photography down a couple of the bazaars that run off Chandni Chowk however poor Jon just looked irritated, not being one for having his private space invaded, so after an hour or so we left and by then I must say I was more than ready to go too.  Chandni is something one can take in small measures I suspect.

 The next place we went couldn’t have been more of a contrast: Rajghat, the place where Ghandi was cremated.  The first thing one noticed about Rajghat after Chandni was the incredible, indescribable difference in noise.  In stark contrast the people at Ghandhi’s memorial were hushed, quiet and clearly in a reflective mood. The simple black marble block and eternal flame that mark the place where Ghandhi’s remains were cremated is beautiful.  Very tasteful, this monument could have so easily been overdone, but it is perfect in every way. On the way back to our Ambassador taxi, we saw a snake charmer.  The quintessential Indian experience I suppose, we watched for a few minutes until Jon said what I thought really, ‘how boring’…. we gave the guy some money for his sleepy snake show and set off back to the hotel. 

So much has been written by so many people about the contrasts and confrontations that face the traveller in India.  Jon and I exchanged a few thoughts in the car about what could ever be done to reverse the poverty of the masses but we were stopped mid-conversation by a bunch of begging urchins by the lights and a small lad doing contortions on the road involving a metal ring while his mother beat a drum in a half-hearted and exhausted manner.  We have been giving small amounts to beggars randomly, when we can’t bear it any more. What bothers me more is my own capacity to ignore them.  We have been told that giving encourages people not to send their kids to school and perpetuates the problem.  But when you have a small, unspeakably filthy child, saying ‘chapatti chapatti’ and holding down the window so you can’t wind it up in order to shut out their whining, and while you sit there nursing a camera that is worth more than they will see in five lifetimes, how do you reconcile your feelings?