Kindness of Strangers

Thursday, September 25, 2008

I was standing bleary-eyes on Platform 4 of the Jaipur train station, waiting for our train to Agra at 1:30 in the morning. Suddenly, I felt something whoosh past my shoulder. Assuming it was a gigantic cockroach, I gasped and began brushing my shoulder manically. I noticed a sinewy trail of white creep down my arm, and looked skywards toward the overhang. “What happened?” asked Maikael. “I think a bird just shit on me,” I said.

For the record, this has never happened to me in my life. But I remember hearing once that a bird pooping on you is a sign of good luck. We’d need it for the day we had planned.

We squeezed into our sleeper car, packing more humans per square inch than I would have ever thought possible. A gentleman was already snoring in one of the four beds in our berth when we boarded the train, the starched white sheet pulled taut over his head. We tiptoed to our beds, securing our luggage to the mesh rope beneath our beds; petty theft is notorious on Indian trains. The train swayed along, but I had a hard time sleeping: there are no calls when you reach stations, so you better know where you’re at and when to get off or you’re liable to find yourself in the middle of nowhere.

We crawled into the Agra Fort train station at 6:15 am, 30 minutes ahead of schedule, and scrambled to gather our belongings before the train departed once again. Next, we negotiated an autorickshaw ride into town so that we could store our backpacks for the day. This left my heart in a lurch: we never leave our backpacks in an unsecure place, and the thought of losing all of my worldly possessions made me nervous. As we puttered down the early morning streets, the Taj loomed in the distance, alongside a twinkling river, a perfect silhouette looking like something out of a fairy tale. When we reached town, the cafe we had selected to store our things was closed but, miraculously, our driver was friends with the owner and rousted him out of bed.

The power of the bird poop was already working.

We raced a few blocks down the street to catch the Taj before the sun and crowds arrived, dodging elephants, golf carts, camels, and electric-powered buses. The Taj’s brilliant white color is slowly fading to a dingy grey, caused by concerns over pollution: no gas-powered vehicles are allowed within a certain radius of the iconic monument. The Taj Mahal is part of a larger property of red sandstone buildings boasting perfectly shaped domes, and as we rounded the corner of one building the Taj suddenly appeared, white and perfect, filling an an entire crimson archway. For the first time on this trip, a chill shivered up my arms as I gazed upon this monument. The Taj Mahal is larger than I ever imagined, but despite its mammoth size it is impossibly intricate: I’ve never seen something so large look so delicate.

We spent a solid two hours admiring the building from its many angles, marveling at the glimmering white marble in the soft morning light. Most people think the Taj Mahal is a palace - I know I always did - but it is actually a mausoleum, built as a monument to one man’s love of his wife, who died while giving birth. While the Taj Mahal is a huge building, it houses only one small room, which contains the marble caskets of the man and his wife.

After visiting the Taj, the day was already growing warm and humid, so we decided to spend some time on the Taj Mahal Nature Walk. I imagined lush green lawns, manicured gardens, and perfect foliage. Instead, we ambled our way over chipped stones, pushed through scraggly bushes, gazed upon rusted and fading artwork, and took in some of the most bizarre sculptures I’ve ever seen. My favorite was the crocodile who had eroded over time, revealing a mass of tangled rebar where his snout should have been. There was a pervasive sense of charming ramshackle that characterized the place - that indeed characterizes India — a stark contrast to the perfect Taj looming in the distance.

Tired, hot, and cranky, we decided to while away the afternoon in the hotel bar of a world-class resort. It was hard to believe that a mere two blocks from the rundown nature reserve sat the world’s sixth best hotel - at least according to Travel + Leisure magazine. As we strode in the front gates the hotel staff, clad in turbans and delightful gossamer gowns, clasped his hands together and bowed slightly to us. We were whisked from person to person as we made our way through the glorious lobby. Marble splashed across every surface. A domed ceiling, painted in a brilliant blue and gold design, housed a gigantic crystal chandelier. It was such a stark contrast to the budget accommodations we have been frequenting that my senses felt completely arrested. I visited the restroom three times just to smell a clean bathroom, use real cloth towels, and admire the real rose in a vase near the basin.

Sometimes you have to do without to truly appreciate something so fine.

We settled into the opulent bar, which offered stunning, unobstructed views of the Taj. After ordered grossly expensive drinks - my Plantar’s Punch cost $10 USD, when the average beer in India costs around $1 - but to drink it in those surroundings was worth every rupee. For the first time in weeks, we had the time and energy to sit and talk for hours, something we really should be doing more of on this trip. We have felt so harassed for so many weeks that we have had little time to contemplate life and our place in the world, which was the whole point of taking this trip in the first place. To spend a quiet afternoon being blasted by air conditioning and escaping the din of the outside world was a gift. Especially before getting on another train that evening back to Delhi.