Rahul loves Simran. Prem loves Pooja and Anil loves Sree. Monuments in India have seen much more love, painted, or rather etched, on their walls than any Hallmark card or romantic cafes across the country have. After all, a protected monument in India tempts the writer in people, the poet who simply has to leave an immortal line or two on walls for the rest of the world to read.
I saw the Taj Mahal after nearly 25 years, if not more. I remember how my mother, with her obsession with history, took us around and showed us the great monument in detail. This holiday season, going back was a seriously difficult experience. The building is pretty much how I remember it but the environment had the energy of a cricket match at Eden Gardens. I saw more tourists than I did the Taj. They were screaming and talking loudly inside the mausoleum, and taking pictures with their phones when a board outside clearly specified that photography was not allowed inside.
You get shoe covers to wear inside the tomb area, in case you don’t want to take your shoes off.
These shoe covers have to be disposed off in designated areas once you leave the mausoleum.
However, on the way back to the main gate, I saw people just ditching those disposable covers on the walkway.
Yes, this is India and we love to desecrate what the world considers precious. The Agra Fort is another one that could do with a serious rescue mission. Most of the rooms have been closed to prevent the monument of becoming a victim of abuse.
The young guides don’t even know what some of these rooms hold, never having stepped inside one of them. The basement rooms at Agra Fort, which were used during hot summers, are sealed off, and yet, that used to be one of the most important features of the fort. Walls that used to have very interesting frescoes have been painted on, in white, apparently as a move to ‘restore’.
Nothing saddens a soul more. When you have hundreds of people from all over the world making their way into this country to just have a glimpse of some of the country’s most formidable monuments, we as Indians take it so much for granted that we don’t even care for their safe keeping.
Travel responsibly — how about a tourism campaign that promotes India among Indians, and teaches us how to look after what we have with all our hearts?
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