Taj Mahal, India

On Monday before sunset we arrived in Agra. Because we had shown such an affinity for Agra sweets back in Pushkar, without asking Sanju stopped at an Agra sweets store run by a friend of his. Feeling we had let him down by not buying any jewelry in Jaipur, we didn’t even bother to bargain when the shop owner stuck it to us - $40 for four boxes of dried pumpkin.

We were booked in another upscale hotel in Agra, and we repeated the same drill there that had taken place at each of the hotels on our stay. The checkin person always asked for both of our passports, made copies of the information page and the Indian Visa page, then pulled out a huge, multi-part ledger book and entered hand-written answers to the same series of questions: 1) What city did you just come from? 2) What city will you visit next? 3) How long have you been in India? 4) When will you leave India?

I have no idea if anyone is collating this information or trying to make any sense of it, but it’s a form of Homeland Security snooping meant to make sure that non-Indians are properly credentialed and not overstaying their visas. When we first checked into our hotel in Udaipur on day one of this trip, our hotelier thought he had scored big when he noticed that Peggy was visiting way beyond the expiration date on her visa. His eyes got big, he said something in Hindi to his associate that included the English words “expired visa”. I realized immediately what was going on so I gently informed him that Peggy had two visas in her passport – the old one from her trip last year and the new, unexpired one for this trip. He was disappointed I suppose, but I think he was relieved as well. The bureaucracy he would have had to endure had he really caught a visa-violator would have been intense.

They say the Taj Mahal is beautiful on a full moon night. Lucky us, we were in Agra, the home of the Taj, on a full moon night. Unlucky us, our Indian travel agent had apparently not deduced that this rare and beautiful event would be of interest to us, so he had failed to procure night-time tickets and our hotel concierge strongly assured us that all tickets for night time viewing were gone.

Tuesday morning came early. We were up at 5:15 am, out the front door at 5:45, but Sanju was no where to be seen. The gates around our hotel were locked, but the doorman let us out onto the street, then ominously relocked the gates behind us. It was still quite dark, but there already were a few touts milling about. Being so early, none of the rickshaw or taxi drivers was that aggressive and when it became obvious that we had a driver on the way to pick us up, one of the touts directed us to a tiny tea stand under a dim street light. There were a few souls gathered round, so we each had a cup of the hot, spicy, milky, sweet tea they call Masala Chai. At 10 rupees each, the tiny cups seemed like a bargain. The fellow who had encouraged us to have a cup spoke pretty good English and he seemed interested that we were from the USA. Agra is used to lots of tourists, but Americans are still a real minority here.

Sanju arrived and our guide, a Muslim Indian named Iqbal, was there by 6:00 am. Our goal was to see the Taj Mahal at sunrise. Which we did. What a ho hum place! I can’t believe that anybody raves about the Taj, becaus….

You’re probably not buying this and you shouldn’t. Like practically every one of the millions of tourists who have visited the Taj over the years, we were floored by its colors, grace and architectural perfection.

The story of the Taj Mahal is probably well known, but just for quick reference, it was built over a period of 21 years by a work force of 20,000 men. Started in 1632 by Shah Jahan, the Muslim ruler of much of India at that time, it is a mausoleum and a mosque, but mostly a testament to love. It was built to honor the final resting place of the Shah’s favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died shortly after giving birth to her fourteenth child. The complex is made of marble, with lots of inlaid semi-precious gems, copious use of gold and many artistic, but geometric and symmetric, carvings. The Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore, described it as “a teardrop on the face of eternity”. Beyond that words are pretty inadequate. Like most tourists today, I shot dozens of photos from many different angles, and to look back at them and see the subtle color differences as the sun rose higher in the sky, is a testament to the unearthly quality the white marble edifice exhibits.

Shah Jahan lived to see the Taj Mahal completed, but shortly thereafter he was deposed by his son, Aurangazeb, and held under house arrest at the Agra Fort, supposedly gazing wistfully at the Taj until his death in 1666. His body was interred alongside his beloved wife in the Mausoleum that is the major structure in the complex.

After the Taj, Iqbal suggested we go see the Fort but we had already seen more forts on this trip than even Davy Crockett would have tolerated, so we begged off. Which gave Iqbal just the opportunity he needed to take us to a “demonstration” of how they make inlaid marble tables in Agra. This demonstration took place in a large showroom that was, miraculously, empty of any customers save us. The 36 second demonstration was very educational, and I assumed that we would continue with our “wow that’s interesting, thanks for showing us but we have to be leaving now” routine that we had more or less perfected since our first stop at the miniature painting factory in Udaipur. I was definitely on this track, but Peggy almost immediately fell in love with the marble tables on display. The panic level in my body zoomed upward when she started asking for pricing. And when it became obvious that she was pretty serious about buying a table and having it shipped to our home in Colorado, I feigned a heart attack. I didn’t really do that, but I was trying to think of some way to get us out of there without having to call Fannie Mae to ask for a mortgage on the house.

Luckily, they didn’t have exactly the table Peggy was envisioning – she wanted an octagonal, off-white marble, with very delicate inlay all around the perimeter but nothing in the center. The sales team (which had grown larger and more expectant as our intentions seemed to be ratcheting upward) was now pushing for us to have a table custom made. There were all sorts of assurances about how we would only have to put 25% down and we would get detailed pictures of the finished product before we had to pay the balance and the shipment would be insured and we wouldn’t have to pay any import duty and blah, blah, blah.

The pricing we were working from was so high that I didn’t feel like any amount of bargaining would get us into a price range that felt like anything other than grand larceny. As had been true of other visits to “factory stores” on this trip, the sales guys worked pretty hard to keep the two marks (Peggy and me) from talking to each other. I’m sure if we had asked for a moment to discuss things they would have given it to us, but that is such a buying signal that I didn’t want to give them more incentive to work us to death. But I did manage to whisper to Peggy that a round trip flight to Agra would cost us only $120 each, so we should do some research first and come back when we had a better idea of the real value of these things. I have to admit that the dozens, if not hundreds, of tables they had on display were stunning and would look awesome in our breakfast nook, but I was not convinced that we could get to a price that would feel good to us.

So we namasted our way out of there, which is very difficult to do, because in these situations the shopkeeper expects you to name a price so they have something to work with. They know what the street vendors know – unmitigated persistence can wear down all but the heartiest of resistors.

We did manage to extricate ourselves, but the hook was set. When Iqbal suggested he could take us to yet another marble factory store, but this one smaller and cheaper, we both agreed. We had a short conversation outside the car confirming that we were just looking, because we were going to do some research at our leisure and come back to Agra when we knew better what we should pay for one of these stunning works.

But when they showed us a deep green marble table with beautiful inlay around the perimeter as well as in the center, surprisingly, I was the one who crumbled. Peggy already had decided that she wanted one of these tables, so when my resolve turned to blatant desire, the game was on.

We bargained hard, even getting into the car to leave before the final offer, conveyed to us through the open car window, was sufficiently reasonable (in our view) to be acceptable. And so it came to pass that we now own a table that costs more than it originally cost Shah Jahan to build the Taj Mahal. I have no idea if that claim is true, but it’s based on the rule of 72, which helps you determine how long it takes for something to double in value at a consistent compound interest rate. If we assume that the cost of living has risen by 5% per year since 1632 (the year the Taj was started), $1000 spent back then would be worth $134 billion today. I could be wrong, but I’m guessing the Taj could be built today for under $134 billion.

At any rate, as I was signing the many oh-boy-we-bought-a-table forms, all in carbon-paper triplicate, Peggy spied a beautiful green marble tray filled with intricate inlay. She grabbed it, compared it to our table and said “I want this too!”. Oh oh! She had forgotten rules one and two of bargaining in India. Rule one is don’t show any obvious interest in the item you want to buy. Rule two is don’t offer to buy an item before you know how much they want for it. When I looked at the price tag on the back, I blanched – it was over $1000. The owner saw my reaction and said, “Don’t worry, you don’t have to pay that much.” We were out of bargaining energy so we just meekly agreed to his reduced price.

Iqbal was a happy guide when we dropped him near his two-wheeler. Our visit to Agra was over, and we were on the downward slide from our blast through Rajasthan. Sanju found the road to Delhi, drove for two hours and stopped at one of the many Indian-food-for-tourists restaurants that are so prominent in the heavily visited parts of the country.

We had Paneer something or other (big curds of cottage cheese in tomato sauce), and Aloo Mutter (potatoes and peas in a spicy gravy) along with Naan bread. Peggy needed a restroom break before we climbed back into the car for our final push to Delhi. I handed her a 10 Rupee note to take with her. Milton Friedman did not coin the phrase “There’s no such thing as a free lunch”, but he did write a book with that title. As far as I know, I can claim ownership of this one: “In India, there’s no such thing as a free pee.” Even rest rooms that don’t have official attendants on duty usually have a sharp entrepreneur or two hanging around the sink offering you napkins to dry your hands with the very clear understanding that you will reward said guy or gal with a 10 rupee note.

Shocking news from Delhi – there must be a helmet law there, because 90% of the operators of two wheelers were sporting them. Traffic was abysmal but Sanju tooted and nerfed his way to the airport so we could fly back to Pune.

Once in the airport we checked in and sat down for a cup of Chai Masala tea. A young man sat down next to us with what looked like a huge, crispy burrito on his plate. Peggy asked what it was and he explained it was a south Indian specialty called a Dosa. We embarked on a very pleasant conversation with this young fellow whose name we eventually learned is Rajan. He’s a newly minted lawyer with a master’s degree from Norwich (in England). He is planning to start his own Intellectual Property business, but is currently working as law consul for his father’s tobacco business in Nagpur, a town in far northeastern Maharashtra state.

We picked his brain on as many Indian mysteries as we could think of, including where to see tigers. Amazingly, he was scheduled to visit Nanha National Park the very next day with a friend for the express purpose of seeing tigers. His subsequent email reports to us confirmed sightings of tigers in the wild at Nanha, so that location is going on our list of places to see before our stay here concludes.

Our flight landed at close to 11:00 pm in Pune, and there was faithful Ashraf to pick us up and take us back “home”. I had already started to come down with a cold and had managed to pick up some sort of skin rash as well. Our homecoming would perhaps not be as blissful as we hoped.

Pix:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26545681@N07/collections/72157622689174945/