A Fading India :: Journalistic Essays

On the dawn of a June morning, I wait distant the Vasant Kunj residential buildings in New Delhi for a tour mint to the Taj Mahal. It is not yet six but India is never quiet. Nearly a billion great deal live in this country and need all twenty-four hours to live their hopes, fears, and dreams. The cows from the neighboring dairy farm are moaning wildly in arithmetic mean of being violated to produce milk. Men sit on verandas and read newspapers while women calm whistling tea kettles and fussy babies. On the street a traffic policeman waits to direct the morning commute, fiddling to center his beret and smoking a cigarette from the corner of his wrinkled mouth. I am waiting for the lofty Taj when another bus, advertising itself as the premier deluxe air-conditioned Taj Express, arrives, its seats apparently filled completely with people. I climb up the creaking move as the driver stretches his hand for a 10 rupee note for the pleasure of this upgraded ride. There is a reason why the bus is air-conditioned both of the windows are broken. A makeshift cellophane sheet stuck with duct tape over the open space keeps coming undone and rattles angrily against the ledge. This is not a bus for the country club crowd. Men show deep creases of labor and worry on their foreheads and women balance four or five children, on their laps and pressed against their bosoms. unless they are Indian, and they have a birthright and an obligation to respect their history. This is the country where spontaneous monuments sprout up in honor of Shivaji, the Hindu warrior who lost his friends, family, and and so his life in resisting the conquering Moguls. This is the country where people invoke the name of Gandhi at political rallies, Long Live Mahatma, as if his placid face lingers as a ghost on the stage. The Mahabharat, mostly mythical but historically based, was adapted for television a few years ago and remains the highest rated serial of all time. So , as overworked and overburdened as the masses may be, the Taj Mahal beckons to reveal the glory of Indias past to them. The back of the bus has an empty seat, next to a foreign tourist, which I claim as my own.