Akbar’s Tomb

At breakfast, I sat with Liz, Yvette, Erika, and Jennifer, and we got into a health-related conversation that ranged from Chinese herbal medicine to why underwire bras are not a healthy choice. After we’d been talking for some time, Shantum showed up and headed toward our tables greeting everyone with a Big Smile, and Erika said loud and clear, “Hey, Shantum, we’re talking about breast health. Do you want to join us?”
Still smiling, Shantum said, “I’ll be sitting as far away from you as possible.”

I later checked my watch and noticed that it was close to nine thirty, the time that we were supposed to meet up to get on the bus, so I left the breakfast table. I hopped up, set off, and exited through the glass restaurant doors. On the patio shaded by a wooden arbor covered with vines, I observed that despite the time, even Shantum was still sitting at an outdoor table and chatting away. He really did sit as far away from us as possible. I sat down at that table, with Shantum, Gail, and Sherry.

After a few minutes of conversation, Sherry asked Shantum, “What time is it?”
“I have no idea,” Shantum said, reaching for a watch. He had been tired a few days ago, and now that we’d finished with the Taj Mahal, he was very carefree and sitting back in his chair. Sherry pointed out that it must be almost nine thirty, and Shantum fumbled in his kurta pocket casually saying, “Oh, is it already?” He pulled out his watch and said it was nine twenty-eight.
Sherry jokingly, with a smile, said, “You don’t even know what time it is? You’re a terrible tour guide!”

Shantum smiled, giggled, and cheerfully said, “You’re right; I shouldn’t be a tour guide.” He was like an absent-minded and eccentric college professor at this moment. As always, he was free of worry. “Worrying is useless,” I’ve heard Shantum say a few times. When he climbed aboard the bus, Shantum smiled and announced, “The time is now officially nine thirty exactly.”

Little booths even in the touristy metropolis of Agra are made of sticks with a tarpaulin for a roof. When we stopped at a row of shops that included an ATM machine, I looked out the window and noticed a couple of skinny, petite guys hanging out in front of a typical booth with the shiny strings of tobacco or peppermint packets, and one of the two guys had his arm around the shoulders of the other, whose head rested on his companion’s chest. If I saw that in the States, I’d know they were gay. Here in India, it is socially unacceptable for opposite sexes to show affection in public but perfectly acceptable for a man to hold a man’s hand, or a woman to hold a woman’s hand. In Bodh Gaya, I sometimes saw Tibetan monks holding hands, and while I’ve read that homosexuality is a phenomenon in Buddhist monasteries, it’s not something the monks would want people to know about, so I figured that’s not why they were holding hands; it was more likely because they didn’t want to get separated in the crowd.

Erika returned to the bus from the ATM, and before sitting back down in front of me, she said, “What do you think of the two guys at the booth?”
I said, “Gay or straight?” I suggested that they might be a gay couple, but both Erika and Ann reminded me how unaccepted that was, so they thought they weren’t a gay couple. Ann said she thought showing so much affection to the same sex in public and to be absolutely against showing affection to the opposite sex in public is “pretty skewed.” I didn’t put it into words, but I was thinking about how our society emphasizes romantic and sexual relationships over friendship, even trivializes friendship, which I find extremely unfortunate.

I said, referring to the Indian way, “It’s less macho, which is a good thing.” Erika nodded at this.
“It’s a different kind of macho,” Ann said with a smile.
“Oh, I didn’t think of that,” I said, and proceeded to think of it.

Certainly Shantum hugging his friend at the Taj last night was genuine, not “a different kind of macho.” But I can see how other behavior, such as the two guys at the booth, are examples of misogynist creeps flaunting their attitude of: I don’t want to hold hands with a mere woman in public, but with my male friends, I have a genuine bond. Such an attitude is reminiscent of platonic Hellenistic Greece, a society in which men considered friendship between men better than opposite-sex relationships, and in which misogynist males considered it impossible for men and women to be friends. True, in that Greek culture male homosexuality was very acceptable, but creeps of any sexual orientation can practice this macho attitude.

You know that Agra is a big city because it has traffic lights. The only times I see traffic lights in India is in the big cities, and even they do not have crosswalks or lights for pedestrians. Many traffic lights, or some, anyway, don’t work. I just saw, in front of a colorful Hindu temple, a broken traffic light hanging loosely with black wires; it was in pieces and obviously hasn’t been used in a long time, and I wished someone would just take the ugly thing down. It did not improve the temple’s ambiance or aesthetics. I recall that when we entered Varanasi, we came to a very busy intersection with traffic lights that didn’t work, and a cop stood in the center, near the statue, and directed traffic.

Now we’ve been sitting on the bus and waiting for a train to pass by. One train passed, we moved slowly forward, and the crossing gates lowered again for another train, one that hasn’t arrived, with the result that a plethora of people are walking or riding their bikes across the tracks anyway, slipping around the crossing gates. Some of the pedestrians hold big bundles on top of their heads while they walk across the tracks. We’ve been waiting for a while, and still no train.

2
Still in Agra, we stopped at a sweet shop. The sign over the shop says Panchhi Petha, and I think that is what the sweets are called; Shantum told us that Agra is famous for this kind of sweet. It consists of thin and slightly sticky beige wafers with bits of pistachios in the center. At first I wasn’t going to get any, but then I thought it would be appropriate to share at work. I told Shantum, including the part about sharing the sweets at work, and I asked for a small box of the sesame-flavored sweets, and he served as translator for the shopkeeper. I bought the box of treats, big enough to hold many wafers, for sixty-five rupees, less than two dollars.

The next stop after the sweet shop was Akbar’s Tomb. Akbar was the son of Emperor Humayun and became an emperor after him; he also had his tomb built just outside Agra, in a town called Sikandra. The tomb is made of red sandstone and looks much like the buildings at the Taj other than the white marble tomb itself. Akbar’s son had this tomb built for his dad in 1613; I suspect that perhaps he was impatient to become the ruler.

Judging by Akbar’s Tomb and the Taj, the Mughals were really into building elaborate tombs, in sharp contrast with Hindus and Buddhists, including myself, who would rather have their corpses cremated and the ashes scattered. I think that’s a much more humble choice, one that unlike a grave doesn’t take up lots of space. Cremation and scattering the ashes is also a choice compatible with interconnectedness; we are all one, all part of planet Earth, and if your ashes are scattered, then your body returns to the earth. Even more ecological than cremation are the sky burials in Tibet; the body is taken to a cliff and cut up and mixed with barley, and vultures gobble up their din-din. OK, I said it was more ecological, not less gross.

We entered through the frontal building, a two-story red gatehouse that alone is breathtaking with its archways and mosaics. Centered is a section with a really tall archway that forms a niche that in turn contains an archway on each floor. To each side of this are two archways, one on each storey, and the upper archway contains a balcony. Above are white minarets. Mosaic tiles cover the building and form floral and abstract patterns in white, blue, yellow and red. It is reminiscent of the gatehouse at the Taj Mahal.

Leaving the gatehouse of Akbar’s Tomb, we stepped out to a sort of patio: a space paved with large stone tiles on which monkeys sat, walked, and played. The monkeys mesmerized me and instead of mindfully listening to Shantum, I had my camera out almost the entire time he told the group about the tomb. Many monkeys were babies, and I delightedly watched them sitting in their mother’s laps, or playing with each other. Unfortunately, a man wearing a uniform and carrying a long stick came along and scared off the monkeys by hitting the pavement with the stick. Bully. Some of the adult monkeys quickly scooped up their babies, and the babies hung from the adults’ bellies as the parents ran off to the edges of the patio and onto the lawn.

Beyond the illicit monkey hangout was a sunken rectangle, an empty tank that might only be filled with water during and shortly after the monsoon. The paved courtyard stretched all the way to the tomb itself, and I headed for the centered mausoleum after Shantum finished talking. I walked straight ahead, noticing that on either side of the long patio is a garden occupied by countless blackbucks, and I gawked at the animals for some time. Too bad Peter wasn’t around with his binoculars. These animals had antlers sticking straight out but in wavy lines, “like creatures out of a fantasy novel,” as Gail put it. The males with the antlers were mostly medium brown and the females pale, sort of a blonde color. Small, young trees also dotted the lawn, and beyond them a red stone fence surrounded the tomb’s complex.

Ahead of us loomed the actual tomb itself, another awesome and beautiful building with a dome, many cupolas, and symmetrical mosaic tile patterns covering the façade. It was also made of red sandstone, and the mosaics used the same color scheme as the gatehouse. Like the gatehouse, this building had a high central arch, but it was flanked on each side by a long red one-story wing with a row of archways. Above the first floor were rows and rows, on three levels, of small exterior archways in sandstone, topped with whipped cream-like white domes. Centered above the huge archway was a white structure with a row of white arched windows, and above this were white cupolas.

As I came closer to the building, I took a good look at some of the mosaics, which formed stylized flowers and more abstract designs. Red and white zigzag patterns like rickrack marched up narrow pilasters. I arrived at the central archway, where the entrance was the size of a standard door, though the archway around it was filled in with a white metal grid; even this metal was flamboyantly patterned, in little flowery hexagons.

We took our shoes off before going in, and it was much darker inside than out. I stopped in my tracks. The front room was domed and groined and covered with a blissful abundance of colorful floral and geometric patterns. Some of the patterns, painted directly onto the walls and framed with other narrow little patterns, were shaped like vases or trees, while others were shaped like flowers. Amid all these busy designs, a lapis-colored strip wrapped all the way around the room, with a metallic gold carving of Arabic words, probably a quote from the Koran. Some parts of the walls were painted with a metallic gold background and a colorful floral foreground. Abstract patterned grillwork filled in arched windows overhead.

The interior of Akbar’s tomb was so much more colorful and busily decorated than the Taj Mahal, I couldn’t help thinking, and I am very partial to color and mixed patterns. The most prominent shades were red, deep blue and metallic gold. I could perhaps find fabrics in vaguely similar patterns and colors and create a patchwork wall hanging or garment. There’s an idea: an Akbar’s Tomb costume for Halloween. Over our heads hung a large old filigree-like lamp suspended from chains. Feroza said, “As ignorant as I may sound, I prefer this to the Taj. I’m sure the experts would disapprove.” I consider it a valid reaction; this tomb is the same style of architecture, but with more color.

Beyond the fabulous front room was a plain, narrow tunnel with grey walls and a ceiling that formed a curved arch. I walked along this corridor feeling anxious to get to a more spacious room, and it led to a semi-dark chamber containing the casket. Although this was the focal point of this piece of architecture, the casket room was so plain and simple compared to the colorful front room, that I didn’t spend as much time in it.

Shantum meant for us to stop at Akbar’s Tomb for a sitting, but gorgeous Mughal architecture distracted us, as did the monkeys, and the blackbucks on the lawn, so the sitting didn’t happen. We all eventually ended up to the right of the front entrance, in a space reminiscent of a cloister because its archways are open to the outdoors. The walls were simply white and light brown and were not covered with patterns or mosaics. Archways met at corners and formed groined vaults overhead, and that is the most elaborate detail in this part of the tomb.

In the cloister, Shantum told us that if you stood in a certain corner and spoke to the wall, someone in another certain corner would be able to hear you. This reminded me of a section of marble tile in a government building in Washington, DC, where you can stand and hear clearly what people are whispering on the other side of the room; that was probably due to echoes. We gave Shantum’s experiment some trial and error and finally I heard Dean’s voice come through. It was like a sort of Renaissance precursor to the telephone.

“Hallo! Money!” Some beggar children go straight to the point. They stood on the other side of a chain link fence separating what looked like a public park or garden from the parking lot that occupied our bus in front of the beautiful tomb. I was glad they had friendly smiles.

3
We stopped in the state of Rajasthan for lunch. Rajasthan has a plethora of camels, it seems, primarily pulling carts piled high with stuff bundled in a white cloth. This was on the highway, no less. In front of the restaurant, a camel was available to ride; Gail and Sherry did it. A musician and child dancers wore traditional flashy colorful Rajasthani costumes. The tunics were quite distinctive: I noticed that they had a horizontal seam at the waist and a skirt gathered into it, and the garment fastened on the side. Otherwise the costume included trousers, a turban, and jewelry, and it vaguely reminded me of nineteenth century illustrations from the days of the British Raj.

We filed into a simple little roadside restaurant, passed many tables occupied by Indian families, and went into a back room all to ourselves. Except for drinks, Shantum ordered for us, as usual, and this time I asked if they had banana laasis, the yogurt beverage that tastes somewhat like a milkshake, but the closest is a banana shake, so I asked for a regular laasi. I swore off ice cream a couple years ago, when I heard that it contains saturated fats, which clot arteries and thereby cause heart attacks.

Although Gail and Sherry intended to ride the camel before lunch, servers brought our food out promptly. Shantum said, “Look, Indian fast food!” We listened to Shantum say a prayer, or “say grace,” as he put it, before we ate. I suppose it wasn’t a big faux pas that I had drunk some water and laasi beforehand. We ate yummy south Indian food, in capacious metal plates with little metal dishes around the edges, and the food helped clear my sinuses.

Next door to the restaurant was a charming little shop, but after our Gratuitous Shopping Spree at the huge store in Agra last night, I genuinely had no desire to spend money anymore. That did not, however, stop me from wandering around the shop. I saw Feroza near the front counter; she felt obligated to buy something, because the shopkeeper had been so kind as to give her his watch. I looked at books and at more blank journals like the ones I purchased in Varanasi, and I walked further into the store to admire embroidered patchwork banners made from old clothing. To my left was a flight of stairs, and I realized that the shop wasn’t as tiny as I had at first thought. I climbed the stairs and saw colorful puppets and, as if we hadn’t seen enough of them, shawls of many colors. Yvette was trying to decide between two shawls, and I was not much help with her decision. My taste generally leans toward the boldest colors and patterns, and the more beads and sequins the better. Shantum came along and said we would be leaving in a minute.

“OK, I’m trying to decide which shawl,” Yvette said. “Do you think this one is the right choice?”

Shantum was clearly in a hurry but nonetheless smiling, and he said, “Yes, it’s perfect, get it!” I laughed, because I could tell he was only saying that because he wanted us to hurry up.

Back on the bus, we passed dried cow patties arranged in a sort of box, except the base was wider than the top, and it was perfectly symmetrical and on the sides was scratched with abstract patterns reminiscent of the mosaic patterns at the Taj Mahal and Akbar’s Tomb. Design, decoration, and ornament can be applied everywhere, even on cow patties saved up for fuel.

The Taj Mahal

I’ve woken up on the train and daylight has arrived. I drew back the window curtains, and some of the cows look sleepy. They haven’t had their morning chai. I saw a couple of huge sarus cranes standing in a ditch only a few feet away, just off the tracks. After I drew aside the curtains facing the aisle, a guy who sat diagonally from me gawked at me, so I pulled the curtains closed again. I should be accustomed to that by now, but it’s first thing in the morning. I am not an exhibit.

The train is running late according to an older guy with a beard, a blue turban, and a high-pitched voice. This isn’t surprising; when we arrived at the platform in Lucknow, a different train still sat where our train should have been waiting. We originally were supposed to arrive in Agra at seven thirty, but we’re traveling on what Dean called “India time.” I hope we go straight to the hotel; I’d love to take a shower, preferably a steaming hot one, and change into different clothing.

Looking out the window reminds me that things which are more or less stupa-shaped include neatly arranged piles of cow patties (also reminiscent of bee hives), Shiva linga, rice haystacks (also reminiscent of Monet’s haystacks), bells, champagne glasses turned upside down (oh, I haven’t seen those in India), and neatly arranged piles of tires.

This train has an unfortunate stench of urine, thanks to the toilets. I’m struck by the sharp contrast between the posh hotel and the sleeper train. Despite the urine, I’m amused by this contrast, rather than disturbed as I had been at the Radisson. I’m glad that we’ve encountered ups and downs in India, both poverty and wealth and almost everything in between. It’s important to see different aspects of the same country. India is full of contrasts and contradictions.

3
We reached our train station in Agra, and it was a great a relief to climb off the train at last! The porters wore red or bright pink (in other words, faded red) shirts and pants. They balanced the suitcases on their heads and carried them off. A group of Muslim guys in white fez stood on the platform not far from us.

I followed our group, and we climbed on a new bus, one that does not have the ornate wooden carving along the edge of the luggage rack that our home-away-from-home had. Sigh. Remember: detachment. On the bus, leaving the train station, we passed, among other shops, the Buddha Tea Centre.

At last, we have arrived at the Trident Hilton Hotel in Agra. Nice: this place has lots of flowers. Flanking the front doors outside are foot tall square containers of water with rose petals floating on top, and I could see frogs plopping below. Inside the lobby are small square vases full of fragrant yellow roses and tabletop bowls containing floating little yellow flowers. On the wooden arbor that, like a cloister, runs along the hotel’s entire inner courtyard are bright pink flowers, similar to fuchsia, growing in clusters on vines overhead.

Centered in the hotel’s inner courtyard is a swimming pool that appears to be popular with old white people, or at least the lawn chairs are. Beyond that is a long water fountain surrounded by careful landscaping and small trees. I’ve gone to my room, looked around, and taken a lukewarm shower rather than the steaming hot one I foolishly anticipated. My favorite things about this hotel is that my room has a bright yellow loveseat with bright purple silk cushions, and matching purple silk cushions lie on the bed. We’ve had lunch in the hotel restaurant: an enormous buffet lunch that caters to both Western and Indian tastes. I primarily ate Indian food, but I tried a kind of short, squat, off-white rice we haven’t seen previously on this trip, rather than the usual white basmati.

4

On the bus ride to the Taj, I was startled to see a shop called The Indiana Gallery. It is startling because I was born in the state of Indiana and grew up there. And now I’ve seen a booth with the sign “Indiana Café.” I’ve gone from Indiana to India.

The moment a tour bus halts, wallahs eagerly approach it. We’ve stopped at an ATM, and sure enough we have wallahs. And now those of us who are still here truly are tourists without a doubt and can make no claims to being pilgrims: the Taj Mahal has nothing to do with the Buddha, beyond sharing the same country. And the Mughal invaders helped chase Buddhism out of India. Um, never mind. The Buddhists’ own arrogant and corruption, I must remember, had a lot to do with the demise of Buddhism in India.

5
We couldn’t take the tour bus all the way to the Taj, so we climbed aboard a cute little electric bus and walked across a small bridge over a stinky sewer I mean river and then stood outside the gates to the Taj Mahal. The tall outer walls were red sandstone with domed gazebo-like structures at the corners and a huge looming wooden gate that looked quite dramatic and medieval, probably because it is.

Starting at the big gates, we had two lanes to go through; one was so a man could search men, and the other was so a woman could search women. She used one of those security wands like at an airport, and we had to place our bags on a little wooden table so she could check inside. As we waited in line, someone explained that places like this are attractive to terrorists.

Done with security, we entered a red sandstone courtyard, where I gawked, with my mouth slightly open, at red stone structures that are elaborately carved and arched and domed. To our right was a large reddish building in the Mughal style, and this was clearly the direction in which we should be walking. Shantum led the way and said, “We are in the Taj Mahal complex.” I had always thought the Taj Mahal was one building, but obviously it is several. The gate and exterior walls were part of a big structure that wraps all the way around the complex, like the walls encasing a medieval castle. Otherwise, the red gatehouse stood before us, and beyond that were two more dark stone buildings to the left and right, with paths branching off the main central path; a few yards further down stands the famous white marble building in the center, with two red stone buildings to either side.

Excited in the midst of such stunning architecture, I almost felt like skipping, as we all headed toward the red gatehouse and walked through its gigantic central archway. Inside it was shadowy, but not too shadowy to see the elaborate and colorful mosaics covering the walls. An archway opposite from the one we had entered framed the familiar-looking white mausoleum in the far distance. We stepped through that archway, and I thought the Taj looked artificial, like a flat stage backdrop painted onto the sky. I was anxious to get closer to it, expecting it would look considerably more realistic up close. Shantum talked to us about the Taj while we stood in a great courtyard in front of it. He said that the official tour guides would tell you that it took twenty years to build the Taj, because that sounds so impressive. But Shantum smilingly said, “That is B.S.!” which got a good laugh out of us.

Dean said, “That’s very American!” referring to the expression that I would so not have expected to hear out of Shantum’s mouth, especially given the high-class British accent with which he speaks English.

Inside the Taj is the mausoleum of Mumtaz Mahal, a wife who died having her fourteenth child, and the Taj was made “in memory of the beauty of our love.” Jahan experienced a major depression after her death, and what better thing is there to do when you’re depressed than build elaborate architecture. Another mausoleum resides in the Taj: namely, Shah Jahan’s tomb. “He meant to build a black marble Taj inside the white one,” Shantum said, “and the foundation for it has been found. However, his son imprisoned him and the only asymmetrical part of the whole Taj is his tomb. Mumtaz’s is in the center, and Shah Jahan’s coffin is at the end, on the north side.”

We looked at the rectangular pool stretching out between the gatehouse and the mausoleum while Shantum talked. It is centered in front of the white tomb, between it and the gatehouse where we stood. “The most important structure is at the center. There’s a saying that the throne of Allah is at the end of a garden, as is the Taj. During the time of the Mughals, this garden contained many trees, such as cyprus, and many flowers and birds. There were also drum houses where musicians entertained people.” I guess the depressed emperor liked to party in order to forget his grief.

We agreed to meet at a certain place and time after our meanderings. “We are not there, but we are here,” Shantum said.

We walked down the white path toward the basin that lies in front of the Taj. I think I’ve spent enough time with the Taj to call it by its first name. When I look at the white structure from a distance, it looks so surreal, even after we’ve passed through the gatehouse, as though the mausoleum is a picture rather than an actual, large building looming in front of us. I had to stand and gawk enthusiastically, of course, and Feroza said, “Look!” pointing downward. I thought she was pointing at the white marble paving stones, which were large and square, and right there in the center of the group I began to hop on them as though they were for hopscotch, and she said, “No, at the water.”

“She’s doing fine,” Shantum said. I’m not the only one with a playful and childlike side.

“The Taj Mahal is reflected in the water,” Feroza said.

I finally looked at the water, and said, “Oh!” Sure enough: it was like a mirror for the white building that faced us straight on.

We first got together at a red stone building to the left of the complex, a little bit before the mausoleum. It was originally a music building but is now the museum, where at first the electricity wasn’t working and a tour guide beamed a big flashlight in front of the display cases as he explained the displayed items. We looked at brightly colored miniature paintings and mosaic tiles. Next we went back outside, continued heading for the white mausoleum, and put blue paper slippers on over our shoes before going up a few steps to the white platform on which the white mausoleum was built. We then followed Shantum toward the building itself.

Up close, seeing the mausoleum at different angles, it indeed no longer looked artificial. It resembled a huge carved mass of white marble, but something the viewer doesn’t notice from a distance is that the façade has bits of bright color, thanks to flowery mosaics made from precious stones. In the sunlight, some of the stones sparkled.

We entered the dimly lit interior, where a few pigeons sat up on a ledge and cooed. Yes, that’s right; there are pigeons inside the Taj Mahal. In the dim light, I could see that the white marble walls were decorated with more stone mosaics and rose to a dome high overhead. We looked through a carved white screen at the symbolic caskets. Shantum said that the bodies (of Mumtaz and Jahan, not pigeons) really are located in an underground crypt, beneath the Taj. The marble caskets at which we gazed are for show.

We split up when we were done inside, and I wandered all the way around the building, taking pictures while the sun set dramatically, streaking the sky with vivid orange and pink that looked especially breathtaking behind white marble minarets. Behind the Taj was a river, and at some distance I saw a gazebo-like structure. I headed for a mosque that was just to the left of the mausoleum, kicked off my shoes, went up the few steps, and entered on the right side, which someone had said was the women’s side. The mosque is red sandstone rather than white marble, and it is liberally embellished with archways and mosaics and floral patterns and minarets galore.

After wandering around the Taj complex, we sat on a ledge in front of the mausoleum, Shantum rang the bell, and we silently watched the setting sun behind the Taj. The trees around us were noisy with the chatter of parakeets. I watched one bright green parakeet, and twice I zoomed in to take a picture, but by the time the camera was ready, the bird flew off. I put the camera down and mindfully observed our surroundings. In particular, I watched the Taj while the pink and purple sky darkened, although periodically my eyes strayed to the trees and parakeets.

Shantum rang the bell and pulled out his book, when he caught sight of someone on the path behind us and his face lit up with a Big Smile. I looked behind us, and amid the people walking by in both directions spotted a young Indian guy who caught sight of Shantum and smiled back. Shantum got up and went over to the other guy and greeted him with a hug. Without any idea who Shantum’s friend was, and only as observers, the sangha smiled happily, getting good vibes. Perhaps positive energy like that, spread further and further, is all it would take to achieve world peace.

I thought it a pity that you just don’t see guys hug each other like that in the States, and I know it’s thanks to machismo. Machismo is a product of a derelict patriarchal social structure and is a great inhibition to love and compassion, the most significant values that will transform this from a dominator society to what the scholar Riane Eisler calls a partnership society. American males who buy into machismo are so not inclined to hug other guys, and their attitude disgusts me.

Shantum returned to the lawn in front of the Taj, sat cross-legged again, picked up his black-covered Plum Village book, and asked us who wanted to read. Yvette volunteered, and she read to us a discourse on love. Although the discourse wasn’t about romantic or conjugal love, but love in general, the subject struck me as appropriate, since here we were at the Taj Mahal, and love was its inspiration.

As we walked from the Taj in semi-darkness and passed the long basin that reflects the Taj, Gail took out her flashlight, calling it a torch, no doubt influenced by Indians and British pilgrims. She held the flashlight under Shantum’s chin and said in a mock interrogative voice, “What were you doing at blaah-blaah-blaah on the night of blaah-blaah-blaah?”
“I was in the present moment,” Shantum said.

Heading back to the front gates, Rick reminded me of the security check when he said, “I don’t want to be assaulted again.” So much had happened since then, that it took me a moment to remember. We reached the end of the basin and stood at the verandah of the darker Mughal gatehouse that faces the Taj, while we waited for a few who had gone on a toilet break.

Standing and facing the Taj at dusk, I heard countless peacocks meowing to my right. I looked around at the trees and the long, ornate red stone cloister on my right side, but in vain: not a peacock was in sight. Many of them uttered their strange call at once, like an eerie chorus that isn’t in synch. I meowed back. Nobody seemed surprised, but they’ve also heard me imitate crows, turkeys, puppies, and goats. They probably thought I was another peacock.

6
We visited a huge folk art department store, where we watched a couple of guys demonstrate imbedding semi-precious jewels in a mosaic pattern on hexagonal marble table tops. They were reminiscent of the mosaics on the Taj Mahal’s façade. The store manager led us all to a back storage room full of handcrafted furniture and statues, and we all sat around some of the marble tables that were finished versions of what we had already seen in the making. In a glass display case was an amazing model of the Taj Mahal with a base several feet across. Valerie asked Dean how he was going to fit that model of the Taj into his suitcase. The mind boggles.

We drank masala chai while the manager told us about the craft of the marble tables. The stones that go into them are imported from various different countries and include stones like lapis, marble, and amethyst. They used to get lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, but, um, not so much now. The manager said the craft is an apprenticeship tradition, and I gritted my teeth when he said that it’s passed on from father to son. Like, why not father to daughter? And then, like, the daughter could pass it on to her daughter.

After the talk and chai, we were free to wander around, browse, and shop. Valerie and I stood looking at some marble boxes, and she hadn’t caught the part about this craft being a boy’s club, so when I mentioned it, she said with utter disgust, “Ugh, I hate that.” I nodded.

I noticed a roll of Tibetan-looking brocade displaying a fierce deity, and I said to Feroza, “That would be appropriate for making a Tibetan abbot’s robe.”

I wandered around after buying statues and red silk, and I noticed Erika holding up a bright, bold, pink and green sari that she appeared to be purchasing. Manikins wore regal clothing, such as a long brown and gold brocade jacket for a man, which Gail showed Jagdish, asking him, “Would you wear something like this?”
He answered in the negative, and I said, “Oh, but you’d be dressed like a Bollywood star.”

While we waited downstairs for everyone to finish shopping, Shantum straddled a big porcelain elephant sculpture that stood between the two elevator doors. There was much amusement. I’m not the only one on the pilgrimage who has childlike tendencies. But riding one elephant was enough for me.

We had dinner at a South Indian vegetarian restaurant run by a Brahmin family. It’s a very impressive restaurant, even though the décor is, as Erika pointed out, reminiscent of a pizza parlor, with colorful Tiffany lamps hanging over each wooden booth. Like at the other South Indian restaurant, our food came on metal plates with a deep ridge, and it included pastries in the center and little metal bowls containing sauces and yogurt and such around the periphery. This time, we all drank tall glasses of pink pomegranate juice, something I’d never tried before. Someone said it’s good for you, because it contains oxymorons, I mean antioxidants. It has the added plus of being exceedingly delicious.

At the end of our meal, the servers brought us metal finger bowls containing hot water with a tiny bit of lemon. We had just ordered hot ginger lemon water, and I looked down at the bowl thinking it was odd, but fortunately I observed Shantum dipping his fingers in the water and wiping them with a cloth napkin, so I did the same. Not that I was going to pick up the bowl and slurp like an ogre.

We went outside to discover it had been raining slightly and was indeed dripping out. This surprised me; it was the first rain I encountered in India, after nearly three weeks. The closest I can think of is the morning I was out stalking the peacock in my bare feet and the ground was cold and wet with morning dew. Now, in my hotel room at eleven ten in the night, I hear thunder. At first I thought it must be drums from another wedding.