‘Ode’ one out

It was a wonder in red. As I went past the dry, dusty terrain and entered a mammoth gate into the complex, a lump formed in my throat. I could see the huge complex comprising myriad structures from the locally quarried red sandstone. Fatehpur Sikri, Akbar’s dream city replete with a dargah of Salim Chisti, is a poetry written with honesty and sincerity. It was an encounter with the great Mughal emperor. I could feel the vibrations when my hands felt the pristine red walls and my feet explored the spacious terraces defining the edifices. As my eyes browsed the façade and the sober interiors, I could feel the emperor’s presence, led by him through his creation and being at the receiving end of his hospitality. It was like interacting with the statesman on the ideals of secularism. Fatehpur Sikri is imbued with Akbar’s persona, pulling me into the past. My pulse went racing as I stroked the pillars of his values and ideals which slowly but surely got absorbed into every pore of my being, sending a delightful chill down my spine.
Exactly 45 km away, the other Mughal poem, this time written for love and beauty, stood the Taj. Its sheer opulence is overbearing, sometimes even intimidating. The Taj Mahal, a love story engraved in cold marble and precious stones (now in glass cases in the British museum) is awe-inspiring. This romantic verse was Shah Jahan’s epic tribute to his young wife, Mumtaz, who died in child birth. The king’s begum before death had extracted a promise of getting a magnificent mausoleum built in her memory. But isn’t love a spontaneous and unconditional emotion? The fact that the Taj was a love-on-demand made me distance myself from it. The cold, overwhelming marble structure made the unfriendliness of the Taj complete for me.
The grandeur in marble is opulent, dressy, beautiful, but it remains just that. It did not pull me into its past, like Fatehpur Sikri did. It left me admiring it for its workmanship and beauty; for its sheer size and planning; for its exquisite and delicate beauty. But Shah Jahan’s sentimental ode lacked the heart and soul of Akbar’s vision, his dream of a unified religion; of a cohesive nation. Taj lacked the warmth of Fatehpur Sikri’s simplicity and pragmatism. It only reflected the selfishness of Shah Jahan giving in to his dying wife’s irrational demand, and not the sensibility and benevolence of Akbar.
The gorgeousness and perfectness of the Taj is no patch on the honesty and friendliness of Fatehpur Sikri.
Indeed, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

A scummy India

Her hair was shabby, unkempt. She wore an ill-fitting dress that almost reached her ankle. The string of colourful beads in different shapes that she wore around her neck revealed more of the red discoloured string. I could hear a faint jingle of coins in her tightly closed fist as she was loitering around the biscuit counter in a supermarket, her tiny frame barely reaching till the beginning of the second lower shelf.
I was contemplating whether to stock more of those low-calorie oats crackers, of which I already had two packets in my grocery shelf when I saw this little girl looking blankly at the variety of biscuits. Do I help her out? I asked myself, but somehow restrained myself as I did not want to scare her away. She might want to check out for herself, rather than be treated patronisingly. I hesitated again. I wanted to help her, lost as she was craning her neck to see the stack of biscuits kept on top.
“Ei, kya chahiye (what do you want)?” the somewhat suspicious employee of the supermarket hollered down the narrow corridor amid the shelves stacked with biscuits on one side and high-calorie snacks on the opposite side. The little girl, who might not have crossed eight years, dropped the two two-rupee coins in fright. She scampered under the shelves for her two coins and fished them out. She then dusted the two coins on her dirty frock and held them into her tight fist. I later saw her near the counter nervously waiting in the side for her small packet of the four-rupee biscuit to be billed.
So she finally managed to find the biscuit, I thought.
She was not in the queue; she did not know she had to be in queue. Just then a woman walked in from the other side and tried elbowing me out to get her two-litre Bisleri water bottle to be billed. I politely asked her to follow the queue and went closer to the counter. The little girl still patiently waited near the counter, clasping her biscuit in one hand and her coins in her right fist. It seemed the man behind the counter, too, pretended he had not seen the little girl. When my turn came, I requested him to get the little girl’s bill done. She looked at me, her blank eyes not conveying anything, but just happy that she would finally get her biscuit billed. She could now settle for what could be her evening snack, or even dinner. I realised she might have been checking out the biscuit that would suit her budget.
“Here take,” the man behind the counter almost flung the bill at her. Her eyes sparkled as she held on to the tiny glucose biscuit packet and ran down the steps, as if celebrating her victory.
The man then billed all that I had placed in my shopping basket and handed me the bill in my hand with a polite “Thank you”.
I walked down the same flight of steps that the girl had just danced down a few minutes back, but there was a difference: there was no spring in my strides. I walked down, deep in thought, about this India, about this little girl’s India, about the people who are part of this India, and about the people who treat this India. The same man behind the counter had shown two distinctly different ways of handing over the bills; his conditioned politeness obviously tilting towards the credit card holders, and a natural disdain for shabbily dressed people with loose change.
I looked into my grocery bag filled with so-called “healthy” cookies, slim milk tetra packs, the rather expensive red and yellow bell peppers, Haldiram’s oil-soaked chota samosas, Amul butter and what I believed was whole wheat bread. The little girl’s eyes disturbed me; it haunted me throughout my walk back home. I kept peeping into my grocery bag. Do I really need all this? Or was it just a passing fancy of buying the sundries attractively stocked in supermarket shelves? A want fuelled by the fact that I could afford it, that I had a credit card that could take care in case I fell short of liquid cash.
I have still not found an answer to that.