When I was a child, occasionally I would lose the icing from my slice of cake -because I would save the crust of white sugar until I'd demolished every buttery cake crumb, but then some other hand would swoop with a rapid mutter about don't you like that bit, can't you manage that and -gulp- my lovingly anticipated sugar hit would be gone.
It wasn't like that with the Taj. We saved the icing sugar on the dusty, gritty, cardamon-flavoured cupcake of NorthEast India for last and nobody snatched it from our plate, nobody else got to savour the most exquisite thing instead of us.
No, the Taj was the most deliciously sweet thing of all the sugared, rose-petal-scented treats India has had to offer. No desparate-eyed hawkers, no bumptiously knowledgeable official Government- approved guides can obscure the loveliness of this World Heritage site, surely one of the Seven Wonders. (What were they anyway? Hanging gardens? A library somewhere?) The World Heritage status adds 500 rupees to the entry ticket, but does not pay for overly antiseptic cleanliness. It wouldn't be the wonderful human-ness of India without many grubby finger-smudges on edges, dusty corners and the guides slipping a few rupees to the guard in return for the loan of a pen-light to illustrate the translucence of the marble and the ruby glow of the jasper in the multiple semi-precious-stone inlay.
The sublime Arabic inscriptions around the gateways speak of the perfection of God. This place is certainly perfect beyond most human imagining and there were few enough other tourists at the 6 a.m. opening time to allow the beauty to be unobscured.
Well, who can describe a visit to the Taj and avoid repetition, cliche and the echoes of a million other visits- visits in every language and through long eras where different powers held sway. But it's still an amazing place and you gotta see it. Even a couple of days after Kate and Willy got spliced and of course said , yes, they'd love to visit India and the Taj just like poor old ma-in-law did. (Rereata queued up to sit on the Pensive Princess bench.We got the photo.)
After the Taj, on the way to the obligatory marble-inlay-whatsits shop, I got a text from my honey: Osama Bin Laden got rubbed out. So, there we are: a few hundred K away on the other side of the border, another blood bath. It seems strangely pointless next to the timeless peace under the great green trees of the Moghal gardens before the Taj.
Insha'allah, let not too many other harmless people die for no good reason in the wake of something few of us can truly understand or control.
The taxi is here to take us to the airport. Goodbye, India- incredible,intricate and infinite. The name of the Indian tousrim webssite says it all.
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