June 2010:
Let me first tell about my first visit to Agra. It was thoroughly unplanned. I do not remember the date when I went. My friend Debanjan, an employee of an NGO called PRADAN (concerned about the development of rural India) had been sent for a village survey, and he was staying at a place called Dhaulpur in Rajasthan, an hour’s distance from Agra by bus. I had to go to office, and I bunked office that day – it was usual for me to bunk classes in college, so I thought, why not give a try at office? I told my boss that my stomach was upset, and I would not be coming – news which was absolutely unprecedented, and which he probably rightly suspected was a lie, because there were 3 other people from my team who had also given the same excuse! “Did you four have party together yesterday night?” was what he asked me. I said, “No Sir. Actually I ate too much at dinner yesterday”, which was not true either! I kept the phone telling him that I was feeling very ill and was going off to sleep, and that not only he, but my other team members also should not disturb me by waking me up.
The journey was to begin, but I did not know how I would go to Agra. Someone told me that there were buses that plied between Sarai Kale Khan (beside Nizamuddin Railway Station) and Idgah bus stand (the main bus stand in Agra) all day. I happily went to Sarai Kale Khan and boarded a bus, paid the fare of Rs. 120 and took a window seat. I had absolutely got no premonition before the journey that it would be one of the worst journeys in my life, and that I would never again think of going to Agra by bus. It was a five and a half hour’s journey through heat and dust, something which gave me a terrible headache on reaching Idgah. Then I travelled 1 hour more, again by a bus, to Dhaulpur, the place where Debanjan was staying. At Dhaulpur, things were better – Debanjan was staying in an AC room, it was a 3 star hotel, the food was good and the bed was fantastic. I had a bath, then dinner, then I played my mouth organ for some time, then I went to bed and had a little chat with Debanjan, then I went off into deep sleep.
The next day, I woke up late. We set for Agra from Dhaulpur at 11:00 am, again by bus. This time it was not so devastating, considering the fact that it took us only an hour to reach Idgah. I was excited. I had heard so much about the Taj Mahal, and now I would see it for the first time in my life. There was a big queue for entry. It was a Friday, and the Muslims had some occasion on that day, so everyone was allowed free entry inside the Taj premises, but only after a very strict check by the security. Debanjan was forced to crush and throw away 3 cigarettes that he had along with the match box – taking those inside was a Potential Risk. He was crestfallen, as every smoker is when he parts with his cigarettes. It was too crowded that day. On entering, I saw the Taj, but I still could not believe that I was standing in front of it. I am an Indian, the Taj Mahal is also in India, but I do not know why I feel that standing in front of the Taj Mahal is like a dream coming true. Well, let dreams be dreams, but the fact is I was there physically and mentally. We did not go inside the Taj because there was no proper arrangement for keeping our shoes, and we feared that we might have to return to Delhi bare foot if we kept our shoes outside and went inside the Mahal. We roamed around for some time, took some photographs on my mobile phone since none of us had a camera (I still do not possess one), saw the Yamuna from the Taj, touched the white marble walls of the Taj and, to our astonishment discovered that the marble was so cool in spite of the extreme heat, took some rest because the sweat had drained a lot of energy out of our bodies, and then set foot for the Agra Red Fort.
It was 3:00 pm, and the sun’s blaze was scorching us. The first thing we did was to buy and drink water and cold drinks after coming out of the Taj premises. You may call it the whim of a madman, but I decided that I would walk to the Agra Red Fort, and successfully imposed the decision on Debanjan also, arguing that walking is good for the health, and that I was bored of sitting for hours on end in an AC office in Delhi. I explained to him that I was enjoying the sun and its blaze, and that I missed all these things too much in Delhi. In spite of his unwillingness (he frequently had to go and still has to go for village surveys and work for long hours under the sun), there was nothing Debanjan could do about it because I simply would not get up on an auto-rickshaw or a Taangaa. So we walked. We had finished the water that we had bought, and after almost 20 minutes of walking we found a small stall selling tea in that hot afternoon. To quench our thirst, we had hot tea, and we bought four small packets of water which we would require on the way. To Debanjan’s dismay, which made me all the more happy, the owner of the tea stall told us that the Red Fort was still a little bit more than 1 kilometer away, and going there on foot (in that heat) was ‘no big deal’. Debanjan looked at me like he would kill me were I not one of his very good friends. I was straightaway blackmailing him and exploiting him with the excuse of our friendship.
The Red Fort is a marvelous piece of work, so accurately and strongly built. We kept on seeing. Every little bit of the architecture amazed us. The Taj Mahal could be seen from the Fort, we saw the Diwan-i-Khaas, Diwan-i-Aam, the Queen’s rest room an so many other things inside the Fort. The one that I remember best is a room where two people standing at two corners of a room can keep their mouths just touching the walls and can speak to each other in whispers. No other person can hear what they say, probably because the sound waves are not allowed to spread and the complete energy in the waves is conserved during the transmission – that is a marvel. I cannot figure out how science could be so developed, and why we cannot build such marvelous things today. Why have we forgotten that those were the pioneers of science? Are we really progressing forwards in this age where a child is given a computer and a calculator right from birth, and is taught to type instead of write? Today with so much technology at our disposal we are constructing buildings that will crush like a house of cards against a gust of wind. What about those buildings which have tolerated so many earthquakes, bombshells and so much more, and still stand like prolific monsters not to be shaken by any calamity on this earth? What have we learnt from those architects? We speak of strong men nowadays. What will we call those men who carried all those monstrous stones from distant Persia to India and then lifted them so high? No doubt they were very strong, but their science was more advanced than ours – they did not have all the machinery at their disposal that we have today and still those stones stick to each other like they have got some adhesive in between them. Today’s man has still not been able to find out most of the escape routes that they used, because everything was a maze and everywhere there was a death trap. In quest for the routes, many have lost their lives – no one knows why. It may be because they could not find their way back, or might have been caught in the death trap, or might have been choked by poisonous gases. In most of the cases, people have never returned from a search. What would you call those people who had to keep every route in memory because one wrong step in an attempt to escape, and the escape would convert into a death? Today a normal student of the 10th standard cannot remember the short stories, let alone mathematics, he read in the 9th standard. He has to revise things 3 months before the board examinations. And we are living in a world where we are growing every day, we are becoming more civilized.
Enough of that criticism; let me now write about my trip. With the Red Fort, the trip was finished, and we were now in a haste to return to Delhi. It was 7:00 pm and we were in Idgah having our dinner at a roadside Dhaba. Yet again, I had to return by a bus, a bus worse than the one by which I had gone. There was a small shower and water started leaking from the roof of the bus. Without any warning, there was a sudden shower on Debanjan’s pants from the roof of the bus that wetted his front – anyone would say that he had wetted them. But this time it was better for me because I had company, it was night and it had rained, so I would not get that headache from the dust and the heat.
We reached Delhi at 1:30 am…
November 2011:
This year it was the second time that I visited Agra. This time I had gone with my parents and had decided that I would go comfortably. The journey should not tire me. So, on the day before going to Agra I enquired whether Volvo buses plied between Agra and Delhi, and was lucky to find that they plied.
The next day at 7:10 am in the morning, we were in a bus and were going to Agra. The journey was a good one – there was no dust, no air, no crowd and no commotion. We reached Agra at about 12:00 pm and lodged at an average hotel beside Idgah bus stand, because we would need the room only to keep our belongings and to sleep at night. During the daytime, we would be staying outside. With my parents, I went around the city of Agra in an auto-rickshaw. It was almost the same like the last time – Mughal Gardens, Red Fort, Taj Mahal, then a temple, then a market and then back to the hotel. At the Taj Mahal, my parents went inside but this time also I stayed outside, again because of the crowd. During that time, I got acquainted with a German blonde, and spoke with her for some time. She had also not gone inside the Taj because of the crowd.
Early in the morning the next day, we went to Fatehpur Sikri by auto-rickshaw. It was very cold – the road went through paddy fields and the countryside. The gust of cold air made the three of us shiver because the cold air hit us constantly during the journey of about 45 minutes. The Buland Darwaza was fabulous, it was huge. Inside, there was the Salim Chisti, there was a graveyard, there was the Imam sitting inside, and there was a lot more. There is a huge courtyard in front of the Salim Chisti, and a beautiful cold breeze was blowing there. The sun was rising, it was red and I felt warm and comfortable. While I was seeing all this and taking photographs of the place, a little boy (who stays in a nearby slum) of about 5 years came with some picture books and CDs containing photographs and videos of the Fatehpur Sikri. He requested me to buy one book and one CD for Rs. 30. I promptly replied that I was not going to buy anything. He went away. I again became busy taking photographs on my mobile phone camera. Sometime after that the little boy again came and told me, ‘Le lo na bhaisaab, mera bauni ho jaayega aaj ka. Bis rupiye mein CD aur yeh book de dunga. Le lo na’. His voice was so faint! I looked at him. It was so cold there, and this little boy was selling picture books and CDs at a time when he should have gone to school and should have had a picture book on his desk in class. I felt something choking my throat. I brought out a 10 rupee note and gave it to him, but he simply would not take it for free! He wanted me to take a CD and a picture book at least by giving him another Rs. 10. I told him to buy some food for breakfast with the money and left him. I turned back and saw that he was somewhat not satisfied, and was undecidedly looking at me and the money in his hand, probably thinking whether he would keep it or return it to me. This almost brought tears to my eyes. I went to one corner of the huge courtyard where there was no one to ogle at me, and let the tears roll out. Then I calmed myself down, roamed around here and there for some more time so that the redness would vanish from my eyes, and then went to my parents again.
In the meantime, my parents had managed to grab some local and were gaining knowledge of history from him. My mother rebuked me lightly because of my absence for so long, and told me I had missed a lot of things that the guide had explained. However I feel I missed nothing, I had just done something good. Rather they had missed speaking with that sweet little child who had already been subject to the tests of life so early.
After that we went to the fort that is present in the Fatehpur Sikri. There were 25 mahals inside the fort. We had gone a bit too early and were the first visitors in the fort. A person who was sitting outside showed us his identity card and told us he was a guide. He said he would take Rs. 250 to take us around the entire fort, if we wanted. However, there were sort of red coloured cemented boards outside every mahal and we did not need a guide. We denied his assistance. Then something happened that again reflected the poverty of the people there. That very guide started pressing and then said that he would take just Rs. 50 to take us around the place because we were the first to visit the fort and he did not want to lose a customer. But somehow, I felt that this man was old enough and would manage to find other customers, and so I just told him to go. But I did not feel very good by driving him away.
After that it was all normal work. We went around the entire fort, and returned to Agra at about 12:30 pm by the auto-rickshaw. On the way we had lunch at a Dhaba. My parents were shocked to hear that one piece of Aloo Parathaa would cost us Rs. 30. Anyway, hungry that we were, we gobbled up the food and were also in a haste to return because we would return to Delhi that very day by a Volvo bus at 1:30 pm. We checked out from the hotel at 1:00 pm. The bus arrived late by 30 minutes because there was a road jam in Agra.
During the return journey, I noticed something funny. There were actually a lot of foreigners in the bus. Midway between Agra and Delhi, they had started sneezing and coughing. I understood that it was the dust that was doing this. As the bus crossed Faridabad the dust increased and the sneezing and coughing also increased. My mother and I had a hearty laugh about how little those people could tolerate.
The bus reached Delhi at about 7:00 pm and we reached home at about 8:00 pm.
