For the first two months I spent my time in India in Tamil Nadu, and for the most part, Madurai. I came to have a deep fondness for the city and for the state, having traveled extensively from tip to tip and side to side. I loved the food, the hospitality, the friends I made, and the unmistakeable fact that I was "in India." Several people, as I have mentioned before, said upon visiting Madurai, "Now I feel like I am in India."
For my last week, I have sojourned up to the North, making albeit guerilla stopovers in some highly touristy places, most notably the Taj Mahal in Agra, Uttar Pradesh.
In short, I felt somewhat violated, at my own expense and at my own willingness to engage again in the world of the tourist, having been a traveler for the bulk of my stay here. Tourism inevitably means extra costs, extra hassles, and when you are white in India, extra attention, and not the good type. I am constantly barraged by offers to go here, do this, do that, don't do this, don't do that all for a fee. Unfortunately, to dam this dyke, you have to become even more aggressive in your insistence than they are in their hounding, ultimately looking like the irritated tourist, which in essence, I am. Again, my own fault.
I should be impressed. That is the rub. Architecturally speaking, the Taj Mahal is a marvel, a wonder, a beauty. Silent as the tomb that it is, it mushrooms out over the pollution-cloaked urbanscape of Agra, casting a solemnly elegant form above the smog-choked treeline, with the echoing of horns and urban noise pollution below.
I should definitely be impressed, but I wasn't. A pity. It was quite hard to get past a couple of things, which are a direct result of my prolonged stay in Madurai.
In the first place, though the Taj Mahal is consecrated as a mausoleum for the great Moghul Shah Jahan for his third wife, taking sixteen years to complete, there is not an ounce of reverence to be found in the place. All around the walls, there are kitsch services to be bargained for and shifty figures asking for your time and money for sundry items. This is not new to tourist spots, not at all. All around the Vatican City, you have the same thing. St. Francis Cathedral in Assizi, no different. However, here, it felt rather slimy. This was directly due to the difference that I felt in Madurai. There, everyone is going for the purpose of the darshana, the veiwing of the godhead. It literally excretes a sense of presence and wonder. The Taj Mahal oozes profit, not prophet.
Secondly, having spent the lion's share of my time in the heavily hindu-influenced South, seeing such a grandeur of Muslim architecture just felt odd for me. Foreign, by degrees that didn't jibe with my mindset. Had this been my first stop in India, perhaps the feeling would be different, but it wasn't and it isn't. It didn't move me one bit.
Don't get me wrong, I was in awe of the feat, but not the aura of majesty that the Taj seems to project to so many as the "symbol of India," or at least her ability to produce great things. It just didn't feel like India to me at all.
I had a nice hotel, with a great view of the Taj Mahal, and it left me unmoved. The food was by far the worst that I have had the entire time that I have been in India, and the most expensive, and constant banter around me by American tourists about "upset tummies" (these were grown-ups, no children) and paying a twenty rupees too much for something (that is less than fifty cents) just added a further fly to the sullied ointment.
All of this is my own fault, I know. I don't feel that it is because I am jaded from seeing too many places, but I do feel that I am a very poor tourist. I just don't do well with such destinations. And, it was not just us white folks spoiling the show. I have never seen more rudeness in a public place in my life than I have with the Indian tourists cutting en masse across all of the lines to view the Taj Mahal. Men, women, and children pushing, shoving, running and cheating to get a ten-minute sooner view of the interior, which is itself stripped of all its former beauty of inlay from looters and vandals of past Times.
The pictures of serenity here bely the actual event and atmosphere, but, as I say, like the tomb that it is, the Taj Mahal does rise above the melee in silent discretion, and will do so tomorrow and the next day, despite the madding crowds below.
For me, this was the least Indian thing that I have done, yet perhaps also the most, as India herself continues to rise amdist the chaos below.
For my last week, I have sojourned up to the North, making albeit guerilla stopovers in some highly touristy places, most notably the Taj Mahal in Agra, Uttar Pradesh.
In short, I felt somewhat violated, at my own expense and at my own willingness to engage again in the world of the tourist, having been a traveler for the bulk of my stay here. Tourism inevitably means extra costs, extra hassles, and when you are white in India, extra attention, and not the good type. I am constantly barraged by offers to go here, do this, do that, don't do this, don't do that all for a fee. Unfortunately, to dam this dyke, you have to become even more aggressive in your insistence than they are in their hounding, ultimately looking like the irritated tourist, which in essence, I am. Again, my own fault.
I should be impressed. That is the rub. Architecturally speaking, the Taj Mahal is a marvel, a wonder, a beauty. Silent as the tomb that it is, it mushrooms out over the pollution-cloaked urbanscape of Agra, casting a solemnly elegant form above the smog-choked treeline, with the echoing of horns and urban noise pollution below.
I should definitely be impressed, but I wasn't. A pity. It was quite hard to get past a couple of things, which are a direct result of my prolonged stay in Madurai.
In the first place, though the Taj Mahal is consecrated as a mausoleum for the great Moghul Shah Jahan for his third wife, taking sixteen years to complete, there is not an ounce of reverence to be found in the place. All around the walls, there are kitsch services to be bargained for and shifty figures asking for your time and money for sundry items. This is not new to tourist spots, not at all. All around the Vatican City, you have the same thing. St. Francis Cathedral in Assizi, no different. However, here, it felt rather slimy. This was directly due to the difference that I felt in Madurai. There, everyone is going for the purpose of the darshana, the veiwing of the godhead. It literally excretes a sense of presence and wonder. The Taj Mahal oozes profit, not prophet.
Secondly, having spent the lion's share of my time in the heavily hindu-influenced South, seeing such a grandeur of Muslim architecture just felt odd for me. Foreign, by degrees that didn't jibe with my mindset. Had this been my first stop in India, perhaps the feeling would be different, but it wasn't and it isn't. It didn't move me one bit.
Don't get me wrong, I was in awe of the feat, but not the aura of majesty that the Taj seems to project to so many as the "symbol of India," or at least her ability to produce great things. It just didn't feel like India to me at all.
I had a nice hotel, with a great view of the Taj Mahal, and it left me unmoved. The food was by far the worst that I have had the entire time that I have been in India, and the most expensive, and constant banter around me by American tourists about "upset tummies" (these were grown-ups, no children) and paying a twenty rupees too much for something (that is less than fifty cents) just added a further fly to the sullied ointment.
All of this is my own fault, I know. I don't feel that it is because I am jaded from seeing too many places, but I do feel that I am a very poor tourist. I just don't do well with such destinations. And, it was not just us white folks spoiling the show. I have never seen more rudeness in a public place in my life than I have with the Indian tourists cutting en masse across all of the lines to view the Taj Mahal. Men, women, and children pushing, shoving, running and cheating to get a ten-minute sooner view of the interior, which is itself stripped of all its former beauty of inlay from looters and vandals of past Times.
The pictures of serenity here bely the actual event and atmosphere, but, as I say, like the tomb that it is, the Taj Mahal does rise above the melee in silent discretion, and will do so tomorrow and the next day, despite the madding crowds below.
For me, this was the least Indian thing that I have done, yet perhaps also the most, as India herself continues to rise amdist the chaos below.
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