Day 4: Part 2: On my way to the Taj Mahal: A B-day experience! Part II

With uncontrollable anger in my heart from an unknown truth, I waited for my friends. They came out 30min later sick and tired of saying “no thanks.” We told the driver that we would now like to go to one of the many monuments around the city, while he with a determined stare and a frenzy head gobbling insisted that we “must” go next to a nice jewelry shop “with very much fine cheap jewels, best in India,” that was own by his wife’s, sister’s, husband’s, cousin’s, friend. You see, I would soon learn that everyone in India is somehow related, and they all own some kind of shop to sale tourist -natives as much as foreigners- something that you don’t really need nor want. We tried politely to explain that we didn’t have any need for jewels, but he insisted. I was ready to explode and I did. I told him that we have gotten him to drives us where we wanted to go and not where he wanted to take us. Oh! He just didn’t like the sound of a woman giving him orders, much less in that tone, and I could see those amber eyes swiftly shifting one shade lighter shining like the blazing sun in the sky. My friend’s husband trying to cease the approaching storm grabbed his Lonely Planet and quickly asked the driver, as firmly as he could manage, to take us to Agra’s Fort, until he reluctantly agreed.

 Our walk around the fort took maybe an hour and a half. It was a large and lovely fort with a great view of the Taj Mahal. After many camera clicks we got back on the dreaded taxi, and the match started all over again. The plan was to leave the Taj Mahal last so we could enjoy the famous sunset on the mausoleum, but when the driver started once more with the silk, the jewels, the carpets, and raising his voice by the minute, I looked at my traveling companions and they immediately read my screaming silence. I thought “they better say something fast before I do it again in my own way…” God, sometimes it is just hard to control the “cuaima” in me. He asked the driver to take us to this sight or the other, and the driver’s answer was always the same “too far sir.” We knew it was not true of course, all the monuments where close by, but the face of this man transformed into a strange kind of rage that we could not control or comprehend, inclined us to immediately leave his side. We finally told him to drives us to the Taj and just leave us there. When Mister Furious finally dropped us off, he didn’t only make us pay for the full day service that we were not going to receive, but had the insanity to asked for his tip. If I had been on my own I thought, I would have stay and fight for the next hour with him, but the Brits again, too soft for the job just got more money out of their pockets. He left happy with his half a day of work paid as full day, and his undeserved tip.

 I was fuming at the taxi driver as much as to my companion. We just had been robed, and we just let it happened. In India you wont find the violent robbery you face in Latin America, they do it in your face, but they don’t take it from you, they make you willingly give it to them. It is a talent I would love to poses. It most be in their milk, because even kids are really good at it. And until you grasp it, until you truly and fully understand how it works and why they do it, it infuriates even the most peaceful man. You are giving them what they want while you intellectually know you shouldn’t, but you cannot stop, it is a force stronger than your intellect. It is like going to bed with your best friend, knowing that is a big mistake, but you can’t stop yourself, and you’ll just have to deal with the consequences next morning. So, there we were at midday, with the inclement sun burning our heads, at the exact time every book advises not to visit the Taj. This was certainly not going according to plan. When one wants a plan more or less to work smoothly while traveling, one most stay on its own, other wise one just has to be open to change. But it was hard for me to accept the changes then. It was my B-day after all, and I had written a movie in my head of how the day was meant to go. In my Bollywood romance mean taxi drivers, magic carpets, and fucking polite Brits were not previously written characters. The open scene was me in the gardens of the building, feeling like a princes in her castle, and taking pictures of magical views while I awaited for the beautiful, charming angle that was going to suddenly appear from no where in that enchanted place, and who was going to swift me of the ground and travel with me the rest of the time in this celluloid like love affair. How quickly I had to wake up from dreamland.

But, hey, I was in the Taj Mahal after all. I was about to enter into one of the Seven Wonders of the World. I had to let go off my anger and enjoy it. And while doing my line to get in, in the women side (yes, even lines are separated) I decided to let go, until they got me again. Now they were not letting me in because of a drawing a 5 year old kid had given me. The day before I left Delhi, my girlfriend’s son draw something for me and I had put it inside my dairy. Without any explanation the guards would not let me in just because of this “scary” drawing. Maybe they though it was a masterpiece plan to destroy the Taj, elaborated by a genius kid. The other thing they could not allow inside was my cell phone’s ear piece (but cell phone was ok, God figure). Whatever they thought the drawing was, it was bad enough for them to kicked me out of the line without one more word. I could not believe that I traveled so far away to see this bunch of white marble put together, and find Prince Charm in the mist of the golden hour, and I would have to go back home saying, “I didn’t see it because of a kids drawing and my ear piece, and please don’t ask.” Can someone F… explain!!!??? This was just the first of many moments in my five months in India that I would find myself saying “what the hell!?” With the remarkable difference that all the incongruence that drove me mad during my firsts weeks, would soon make me giggle like a teenager in love every time they happened. I moved out of the line and told my friends to go ahead without me, that I was not allowed in. But they didn’t go, and we started to look for a solution. After asking few people, we finally realized that they actually had a locker room where to leave personal belongings not allowed in, except that they forgot to tell me so. I left my stuff in a little room filled with cardboard boxes simulating looker rooms. I walked out with a washed out number badly written in pen on a piece of paper, doubting if I would ever see my belongings again.

By the time I walked inside the Taj, half of my burning desired to see this place had been extinguished. I enjoyed it, and loved it, and saw all the corners and took pictures, and sat in the white marble to contemplate the view and the people, but my so awaited movie had disappeared from my memory. Looking back, it was maybe there when I started to understand what change, plans, and openness was really all about, even if I didn’t quite get it yet… as I still not sometimes. At the end of the afternoon, too hot, hungry and tired to wait for the sunset, we walked our way back to the hotel. I lost all my pens in the hands of every kid that ran after us. Kids love pens in India, are almost better than lollypops. I promised myself to bring enough pens for every kid I encounter the next time I’m India. Thinking of it that would mean massive amounts of pens. When we got to our hotel I decided to take a shower and go to the 5 star hotel next door, to have a real drink for my B-day. Walking into its perfectly manicured grass entrance, guarded by more security than the Taj itself, I realized the other side of the Indian coin. In India, as disturbing poverty can be, astonishing can be it’s wealth. This place had nothing to envy any European Ritz, and prices where just head to head as well. My celebrative glass of champagne cost me the moderated sum of $26 dollars in a country where a month salary for a family of four can be even less than that. But it was my B-day, and I was planning to enjoy every penny and bubble of the cold elixer!

To be continued….