Taj Mahal – Dying in Grace

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After two exhausting days in Delhi, we headed to the countryside. Agra is located about two hundred kilometers south and is about the size of Berlin. So almost rural, by Indian standards. We had allowed ourselves a relaxing train ride for this part of our journey to the Taj Mahal. At least we thought so.

Riding the Train in India

The British didn’t do too much good in their colonial period, but at least they left behind quite a decent rail network in India. The technical state of the trains is quite heterogeneous – there are modern express trains, but also trains that clearly show their age.

The Indian Railways advertise with Safety, Security and Punctuality. Not with speed or comfort, which would be ridiculous.

When buying tickets online, there’s a tricky feature that’s unheard of in Germany: you can use a train that only runs on Thursday and Friday on Saturday as well. Why is that? Quite simple: India is quite big and the trains usually run very slowly. As a result, some trains take three days to reach their destination. The Friday train might then only pass the station where you want to board on Saturday.

Since you can get almost anywhere by train for little money, many trains are fully booked weeks in advance. You can then put yourself on the waiting list or try your luck in another class. And there are more than enough classes in Indian trains. For sitting, lying, standing or if everything is fully booked, also hanging on the outside.

We only got seats in the third class „AC 3 Tier“, which reminds not at all to animal transports. At least we had numbered seats and air conditioning. It’s a good idea to find out in good time where the carriage stops in which the booked seat is located. Indian trains can be really long, and in the hustle and bustle on the platform, progress is slow.

As our train pulled in just half an hour late, we made ourselves comfortable in our seats. The journey time to Agra was given as just over two hours and we waited in joyful anticipation for the things to come. It came: nothing. After two hours, the train was still in Delhi, where the baggage handlers tirelessly went about their work.

There was no official information, but at some point a rumor became a certainty. A body had been found in one of the sleeping cars and the police had opened an investigation. Since the prognosis for an onward journey was somewhere between „completely unclear“ and „probably not today“, we teamed up with an Italian woman and took a taxi to Agra. We became eyewitnesses to an impressive „Italy vs. India“ price negotiation battle that came close to fisticuffs several times, but ultimately resulted in an acceptable outcome for both sides. Thus, surprisingly, we found ourselves on the Indian highway.

Taj Mahal

The Taj Mahal is one of the seven new wonders of the world. The tragic-romantic story of its creation is quickly told: The favorite wife of the Great Mogul Shah Jahan died in 1631 during the birth of her fourteenth child. He promised her on her deathbed that he would build the most beautiful tomb of all time for her. Such a promise is quickly made, but on reflection he realized that the bar was quite high. After all, there were already some pretty impressive mausoleums at the time, for example by his colleague Humayun in Delhi. But a promise must not be broken and the Mogul could not cheat his way out of this one. He quickly finished his campaign and then hired a Persian star architect.

He first confiscated a building plot as large as 22 soccer fields on the Yamuna River and created a marble slab of 100 x 100 meters there. There he had built an absolutely symmetrical building of white marble and decorated it with 28 different gems. The four Minarets, by the way, are tilted very slightly outward so that they do not fall on the precious tomb during an earthquake.

If you look behind the pink curtain of romance, you discover the dark side of this monumental structure. About 20,000 workers and 1,000 elephants had to slave away until the tomb was finally finished after 22 years of construction. I can’t even imagine how unpleasantly the corpse smelled during the burial.

The entire construction project swallowed up the unimaginable sum of the equivalent of 1 billion Dollars, which the treasurer squeezed out of the already impoverished population. When the Great Mogul then announced that he would have an exact copy built for himself in black (same, same, but different) on the opposite bank of the river, enough was enough. His son deprived him of his power and locked him up in the Red Fort until his death. Then he buried him next to his favorite wife. By then, however, she had long since been reborn in another body.

Reincarnation in Hinduism

Most Hindus believe in rebirth. There are no binding step-by-step instructions on how this actually works; rather a collection of different traditions. But after intensive research I have a rough idea of it, which I am happy to share with you:

All humans and animals are in a constant cycle of death and rebirth. Whether one finds oneself in the next life in a higher form of life, decides the state of the karma account at the time of death. For every good deed, the personal account balance increases. For example, a woodlouse can rise to the level of a cockroach through charitable gifts and noble living.

With bad behavior, you can also slip into the minus, and that becomes really expensive, as with the current account. With a negative karma level, one descends again in the hierarchy and has to do an extra round. That explains why the neighbor’s cat is always pooping in our raised bed. It is probably the reincarnation of Mr. Hämmerle, who is now taking revenge for the nasty tricks I played on him as a youth. Old Hämmerle was a thoroughly bad person, a racist and a child hater.

All living beings begin their careers as single-celled organisms and must slowly work their way up. I find it difficult to imagine how a bacterium can do good deeds. Maybe infect a cruel despot with a deadly disease?

The highest form of life among animals is the cow, so they are revered as sacred in India. If such a cow dies, it is reborn as a human being. With some fellow citizens you also notice this in their behavior, sometimes something sticks, pay attention to it! The next time you order a beef sirloin steak in a steakhouse, you should consider that there might be your unborn grandchild on the plate. Now you understand why most Hindus are vegetarians.

Only when a human soul, after many, many rebirths, finds enlightenment through sufficient good deeds, can it get off the hamster wheel and settle into nirvana. Hindus consider reincarnation as a punishment, I would rather see it as a second chance. However, I have discovered a systematic flaw in the concept: how are you supposed to learn from your mistakes in the previous life, if you have forgotten everything again at birth? Passwords, foreign languages, driver’s license, trigonometry – all gone! If ever a Hinduism 2.0 is brought on the way, I have the following suggestion for improvement: Rebirth directly as 17-year-old teenager in full possession of the collected previous knowledge from all previous lives. It somehow makes little sense to learn to walk and talk for the umpteenth time and to constantly repeat all the school material. And please, while we’re at it, you should be able to choose for yourself in which country and in which body you want to start your next life.

I don’t believe in reincarnation, but maybe there is something to it, who knows? To be on the safe side, I’m going to visit my mother again. Collect karma points.

Super Mario from Agra

We took a tuk tuk in Agra whose driver looked like Super Mario. He curved through the heavy traffic with hot tires, as if he wanted to win the Mariokart race. Hindus, after all, have multiple lives, just like in the game, so that’s a definite advantage in Indian traffic.

In the end, Super Mario got us safely to the Red Fort with the only life we had.

The Red Fort

The red fort in Agra is, well, pretty red. From the outside, it looks like a beefy fortress, quite classic with thick walls, loopholes and moats. Inside, however, it looks more like a royal palace, with richly decorated porticoes and secluded gardens that somewhat reminded me of the Moorish gardens in Andalusia.

This is where the megalomaniac Great Mogul spent his last years in captivity. He didn’t do that badly. After all, he could gaze at the tomb of his great love from his balcony every morning. And afterwards go to breakfast with his other wives.

I think I’ll bring my mother some cake and use it to boost my karma account a bit more. Maybe then I will be reborn as a great Mogul.