Perfection

So about the most awe-inspiring hours of my life…after the bumpy jeep ride we got dropped off at the Hennur road-Ring road junction, next to a nice cow who was mooing as if there was a tornado coming (btw, cow moos here in India are quite sophisticated, they hold the note for longer and seem to have the vibrato technique in the bag ;); it’s actually really annoying), but at least it didn’t take a deposit. We then took an hour bus ride to the Bangalore international airport, then a 2 and half hour flight to New Delhi, then a 5 hour car ride to Agra, arriving at our budget hotel, the Taj Plaza, at 2 am where we napped for 3 hours to then wake up, put our new saris on and walk to the Taj Majal to witness it at its best, sunrise.

You’d think that two females, easily identifiable even in a sea of Indian people (again a crazy ratio of like 8 men to 1 woman), and both kind of oozy looking, with huge grins of anticipation on their face would not be safe taking that 14 hour excursion in the somewheres and nowheres of India; but we made it and we actually had a blast on the way.

We wrapped our saris as best as possible, pretending to know how to do it after a 5-minute training session from Suparna (the awesome volunteer from Boston, of Indian background) before we left. We stepped outside into the revitalizing, crisp breeze of dawn and took a short 10-minute walk to the Taj Majal. The hotel, although unrefined to say the least, had a perfect location, just 500 meters from the East gate, which is the least crowded gate. The walk was quite amusing in itself. We certainly got many stares from Indian people on the street, none of which seemed vindictive but perhaps baffled. After all, here were a short, fair skinned girl and a tall philippino girl wearing saris probably very erroneously draped walking down the street in Agra, India. We felt a bit odd but we chose to overlook the awkwardness, we wanted our picture in front of the Taj wearing the very beautiful, traditional Indian dress. Then a certain someone brushed away all the discomfort, “OH, HELLO Mr. Elephant, in the middle of a street”! Haha, yeah, I couldn’t believe it, he was just chilling. What seemed even more peculiar was that he was surrounded by a flock of about 10 men as if they all owned the poor thing or were at least trying to claim it. Tangent: that is a usual sight in India, seeing way too many people doing work or engaging in a pass time that would require at the most four hands. Apparently, it’s the “gainful employment brings prosperity” idea, which is obviously true in many ways, but kind of pointless if your idea is to employ 10 people in the place of 2 and pay them cents; that’s plain inefficiency. Anyways, back to the elephant, it was amazing! When I tilted my head all the way back to see how tall it was, I noticed a cushion on his back with a small metal frame around it, I thought: “Thank you Lord, I get to ride an elephant”! I didn’t do it right then because we would miss the beautifully sparkling marble of the Taj with a salmon colored tint from the rising sun.

We bought our ticket and proceeded to the security checkpoint, which as in Indian airports are divided between men and women. I stepped passed a little curtain where a woman checked to see if I had any guns or dangerous tools somewhere hidden in my bulkily wrapped sari. She was totally chuckling at the way I had wrapped it, so I asked her: “Does this look right?” She cracked up and said: “NO”! I laughed too as she nodded her head asking me to get closer, she basically un-wrapped the entire thing and re-wrapped it for me; it was really funny.

Then finally, we entered into the first area of the premises where there stands a red sand stone edifice built as the main entrance gate. On top of this gate are 22 small domes, which represent the years it took to build the Taj Majal. It is astonishing in itself but in no way does it prepare one for the unexplainable beauty that lies behind it. We walked towards the gate and there it was, perfectly framed by a Persian styled arch, the most remarkable creation of mankind. I was speechless, I was so astounded, I think my heart stopped for a millisecond and I’m not kidding.

Reliable information obtained through our very nice tour guide: the Taj Majal, aptly called “the dream in marble”, was built in 1631. The Royal Emperor Sahjahan built it in loving memory of the empress, Arjumand Bano Begum. When she gave birth to their fourteenth child, she fell seriously ill and it is said that at the time of her death, as a last wish, she asked of the Emperor that he build the most beautiful and incomparable monument over her grave as a token of their undying love. The Emperor announced a memorial would be built for his dear wife and asked that all the famous architects of the world would present to him their designs. The design of Ustad Isa Afandi of Turkey was chosen. So, although one could say that the architecture of this magnificent monument is Persian, its soul is Indian.

The entire building is inlayed with precious stones and black marble. It has Quranic inscriptions in black marble on all the walls and it has incredibly elaborate designs cut out from ruby, safire, emerald, and other precious stones, and inlayed piece by piece into the white marble. Inside lie the tombs of the Emperor and his wife, which are also decorated in the same style. In front of the Taj there is a beautiful, long garden with a low rectangular fountain running from the main gate all the way to the steps of the Taj. Behind it runs the river Jamuna and off to the left side, in the distance, you can see the Agra Fort.

There are no words to describe the remarkable beauty of this place. The Taj Majal is perfect.

It took us about two hours to visit the Taj and to be able to say goodbye to its magnificence once the tour was done. We eventually walked back to the hotel in the hopes of bumping into Mr. elephant again. Although we couldn’t find him at first because he had decided to go chill somewhere else, we finally saw him a few blocks past our hotel. Dream number two: for all of five dollars I took a sweet ride on Mr. Elephant. As I sat on top of it, feeling him breath under me, and seeing the Taj Majal in the distance (since I was at a significant distance from the ground, about 12 feet), I gave thanks to my friend Jesus for blessing me with these opportunities that gave me such strong feelings of fascination.

We then visited the Agra Fort on the other side of the river, which is also an amazing site. I won’t get into the history of it because you could google it if you care to know but anyways, after seeing the architecture in this amazing city, I trust that it is indeed the most beautiful architecture I have ever seen.

Before heading back to Delhi we had a late lunch at a restaurant called Shivaka to enjoy only the most amazing chicken dish I have ever tasted. Explanation: In Hosur every weekend we eat ‘panner masala’, which is this orange concoction with cubes of cheese in it and a very think sauce of tomato and spices. And we accompany that with the famous ‘chicken 65’ which is this clay-oven baked chicken, dipped in some sort of spice mix; they are both very good. Anyways, this dish that we had at Shivaka was as if the paneer masala and the chicken 65 had a baby…it was delicious. Off course my stomach ended up hurting again because the dish had an intense flavor but luckily it was nothing too bad and it was well worth it.

The ride back to Delhi was really long and unfortunately when we got there the sun had almost set. We did however get a chance to walk around Connought Place, which is a really nice area of Delhi, where there are tall glass buildings, many restaurants, hotels, stores and a really nice park in the middle of the circle. It is a roaring city, much cleaner than any other place I’ve seen in India, and HUGE, which seems obvious since there are 60 million or so people that live there.

We slept in Delhi Saturday night and early Sunday morning Francesca and I said our goodbyes. She took off to the train station to go to Rishikesh where she will stay at an Ashram for a few days and I went off to the airport to fly back to my dear Shanti-Bhavan. It was a very short weekend packed with exhilaration and one hopeful “until soon”; an unforgettable couple of days that I will always be grateful for.

Much love.