000 Words Per Day Writing Challenge
03-18-2015, 06:11 PM
I wrote this when I visited the Taj Mahal back in high school. Never got around to finishing it. Let's post whatever work we're comfortable with sharing.
*
How do you describe that first drive into Agra? This is what I saw:
You roll down the highway. It’s cold, cold in the way of northern Uttar Pradesh in the winter; it isn’t a slicing, windy cold, nor is it the bone-deep cold that I felt in Yosemite. This isn’t the kind of cold that leaves your toes numb, that enrages you beyond reason. It’s a humid cold, if that makes sense. It’s a sticky, clinging cold, a thick cold, a dense, foggy cold, that wraps around you like a shawl. It’s a bizarre cold, because it still is cold, very much so, but it’s unlike any cold you’ve ever felt before. It’s an unclean kind of cold, an alien cold. It’s very, very cold.
You roll down the highway. The world is a pandemonium of mist. You roll past signs directing you to Noida and Gurgaon. Dessicated buildings rise up around you like carcasses. You see the spires of faraway colleges and corporate campuses. They come and they go, fade into green fogbound pastures dotted with granaries, villages, little puttering tractors driven by littler halfnaked people. Did I mention the fog? It covers the universe. The sky is slate grey. There are a number of checkpoints, one of which serves snacks and coffee. All the travelers to the Taj stop by there. You see old white people, chattering Korean tourists, an African. The coffee is the best you’ve ever had in your life. It’s sad that I barely remember the taste.
Then more driving and more fog. And then, finally, Agra.
Oh, Agra. How do I describe you?
Picture hell for a moment, if you will. What comes to mind? Fire? Blood? Demons with horns and cloven hooves, a giant red Satan, bubbling cauldrons, screaming, whips, chains, rape?
You’re dead wrong. You’ve been conditioned by a pampered, decadent media, manipulated by evangelists, stifled by a culture of sedentariness and insularity. The Christian version of hell is a weak uninspired façade, a children’s horror story, an abuse of the color red.
Agra is hell. There are soccer fields full of garbage. Canyons of trash. Trees buried up to their necks in candy wrappers and discarded cigarette packets. Dogs with flaring ribs and sagging teats, emaciated ponies with bells in their manes, grizzled camels with disgusting mouths, grey bullocks with guillotine horns. Rivers of traffic, indescribable streets, people living in huts of mud leather and newspaper. Deadeyed men shivering in the cold, warming their hands over open fires, smoking beedis in dim threatening houses. A slumped, herpetic city. At its center a golden statue of King Agarsena gleams like a particularly shocking joke.
Then you get out of the car, and the stink of the place assaults your nostrils. The stench overcomes the cold air and befouls the whole world. The streets are a riot of shops that pawn trinkets at the stupider tourists. Buddha heads line one shop rack; leaflets from the Bhagavad Gita line another. The streets are slick and moist, the breeze as chilly as ever.
Enter the Taj.
You see the yawning entrance of the Darwaza-i-Rauza, the gateway to the Taj. Huge, cubelike, crowned with twenty-two bulbs of marble, its walls a riot of bold snakelike calligraphy. You’re struck by the apish majesty of the structure, the way it grips the earth. You’re struck by its geometry, by the rust that taints its white facades, by the garishness of its brick flanks. The walls are cool to the touch. It’s dark inside, very dark, but then the fog beams in through the gateway, and through the fog, a shape, an outline in the choking mist.
It blasts away the Hobbesian filth of Agra. Scrubs away the bestiality of India. You whistle when you first see the Taj. It doesn’t seem real, partly because it’s so damn big. It doesn’t fit into the posterior opening of the Darwaza-i-Rauza; you can’t see all of the Taj until you fully leave the gateway.
The Taj Mahal fills the world. You see it. You see the glories of Sufism, the writings of Nizamuddin Auliya, the decadence of Shah Jahan, the order of the Chishti sages, Alauddin, Fariduddin, Qutubuddin, Moinuddin, the holy rung, the genius of Akbar, the humanity of Babur, the ironclad march of Islam into India. You think about that one despised sheepherder from Mongolia, how he prayed on the red mountain for an empire; you think about that weeping teenager from Farghana, how the Uzbeks hunted him like a deer, how he somehow broke the sultans of Delhi. The Taj isn’t a product of this India. It wasn’t born beside a river clotted with chemicals. It was raised when Europe stank of superstition and slavery, when America was a howling wilderness. It was raised when the Mughals owned the gold of the world. It was raised when India was the greatest country on earth.
It’s depressing, now that I think about it. To go from Taj to trash. That’s an awful transition, don’t you think? Agra must have been gorgeous, once upon a time. And now it’s a landfill. Its gold has been ripped away, its streets ravaged, its river stuffed with buffalo shit. Who do you blame for something like that? The British? Most definitely, but doesn’t the common Indian deserve some of the blame too? Aren’t they the ones who bury their monuments in garbage?
*
How do you describe that first drive into Agra? This is what I saw:
You roll down the highway. It’s cold, cold in the way of northern Uttar Pradesh in the winter; it isn’t a slicing, windy cold, nor is it the bone-deep cold that I felt in Yosemite. This isn’t the kind of cold that leaves your toes numb, that enrages you beyond reason. It’s a humid cold, if that makes sense. It’s a sticky, clinging cold, a thick cold, a dense, foggy cold, that wraps around you like a shawl. It’s a bizarre cold, because it still is cold, very much so, but it’s unlike any cold you’ve ever felt before. It’s an unclean kind of cold, an alien cold. It’s very, very cold.
You roll down the highway. The world is a pandemonium of mist. You roll past signs directing you to Noida and Gurgaon. Dessicated buildings rise up around you like carcasses. You see the spires of faraway colleges and corporate campuses. They come and they go, fade into green fogbound pastures dotted with granaries, villages, little puttering tractors driven by littler halfnaked people. Did I mention the fog? It covers the universe. The sky is slate grey. There are a number of checkpoints, one of which serves snacks and coffee. All the travelers to the Taj stop by there. You see old white people, chattering Korean tourists, an African. The coffee is the best you’ve ever had in your life. It’s sad that I barely remember the taste.
Then more driving and more fog. And then, finally, Agra.
Oh, Agra. How do I describe you?
Picture hell for a moment, if you will. What comes to mind? Fire? Blood? Demons with horns and cloven hooves, a giant red Satan, bubbling cauldrons, screaming, whips, chains, rape?
You’re dead wrong. You’ve been conditioned by a pampered, decadent media, manipulated by evangelists, stifled by a culture of sedentariness and insularity. The Christian version of hell is a weak uninspired façade, a children’s horror story, an abuse of the color red.
Agra is hell. There are soccer fields full of garbage. Canyons of trash. Trees buried up to their necks in candy wrappers and discarded cigarette packets. Dogs with flaring ribs and sagging teats, emaciated ponies with bells in their manes, grizzled camels with disgusting mouths, grey bullocks with guillotine horns. Rivers of traffic, indescribable streets, people living in huts of mud leather and newspaper. Deadeyed men shivering in the cold, warming their hands over open fires, smoking beedis in dim threatening houses. A slumped, herpetic city. At its center a golden statue of King Agarsena gleams like a particularly shocking joke.
Then you get out of the car, and the stink of the place assaults your nostrils. The stench overcomes the cold air and befouls the whole world. The streets are a riot of shops that pawn trinkets at the stupider tourists. Buddha heads line one shop rack; leaflets from the Bhagavad Gita line another. The streets are slick and moist, the breeze as chilly as ever.
Enter the Taj.
You see the yawning entrance of the Darwaza-i-Rauza, the gateway to the Taj. Huge, cubelike, crowned with twenty-two bulbs of marble, its walls a riot of bold snakelike calligraphy. You’re struck by the apish majesty of the structure, the way it grips the earth. You’re struck by its geometry, by the rust that taints its white facades, by the garishness of its brick flanks. The walls are cool to the touch. It’s dark inside, very dark, but then the fog beams in through the gateway, and through the fog, a shape, an outline in the choking mist.
It blasts away the Hobbesian filth of Agra. Scrubs away the bestiality of India. You whistle when you first see the Taj. It doesn’t seem real, partly because it’s so damn big. It doesn’t fit into the posterior opening of the Darwaza-i-Rauza; you can’t see all of the Taj until you fully leave the gateway.
The Taj Mahal fills the world. You see it. You see the glories of Sufism, the writings of Nizamuddin Auliya, the decadence of Shah Jahan, the order of the Chishti sages, Alauddin, Fariduddin, Qutubuddin, Moinuddin, the holy rung, the genius of Akbar, the humanity of Babur, the ironclad march of Islam into India. You think about that one despised sheepherder from Mongolia, how he prayed on the red mountain for an empire; you think about that weeping teenager from Farghana, how the Uzbeks hunted him like a deer, how he somehow broke the sultans of Delhi. The Taj isn’t a product of this India. It wasn’t born beside a river clotted with chemicals. It was raised when Europe stank of superstition and slavery, when America was a howling wilderness. It was raised when the Mughals owned the gold of the world. It was raised when India was the greatest country on earth.
It’s depressing, now that I think about it. To go from Taj to trash. That’s an awful transition, don’t you think? Agra must have been gorgeous, once upon a time. And now it’s a landfill. Its gold has been ripped away, its streets ravaged, its river stuffed with buffalo shit. Who do you blame for something like that? The British? Most definitely, but doesn’t the common Indian deserve some of the blame too? Aren’t they the ones who bury their monuments in garbage?