AGRA - Shimmering visions & opium dreams

On arrival at Agra Cantonment Railway Station we lugged our bags out into the sunshine and clambered aboard the trishaw of a world-weary looking guy who unenthusiastically offered to take us to a cheap hotel.  After the usual death-defying excursion through the backstreets, narrowly avoiding oblivious humans and assorted wandering animals, we were deposited at the Jai Hind Guesthouse in the Sardar Bazaar.  For ten rupees we had a clean room with a door that opened out on to the courtyard behind the kitchen and a small window with wrought iron bars with a view of a busy alleyway (if you stood on tiptoes).  It was a few degrees warmer here than in Delhi and it was Christmas Eve.

...we spent the whole day nodding out, lost in our own personal, vivid dream-worlds.

No sooner had we paid off our trishaw-wallah then another one appeared and tried his utmost to persuade us to accompany him on a tour of Agra’s handicraft factories.  He must have been desperate because two less affluent looking people he would have been hard put to stumble upon.  But he stalked us for over two hours, following as we went into the bazaar to buy Romilar cough syrup, sweets, (and as a special Xmas treat, Cadburys of India milk chocolate) and then skulking around outside the restaurant as we ate a meal.  I finally managed to get rid of him by telling him that Janette was ill, which was actually true.  Back in the room Janette crashed out on one of the charpoys and I went out to buy two cigarettes to mix with the last of the hash I had bought in Old Delhi.  Whilst standing at an agarbatti-cum-cigarette stand in the bazaar I happened to glance into the adjacent stall and saw that it was a Government Licensed Ganja and Opium shop.  Nice!  Some things are just meant to be.  The prices of bhang, ganga and opium were chalked up on a blackboard, with opium the cheapest at only one rupee for a gram and with ganja at three rupees a tola.  I handed over my three rupees and, with my recycled newspaper wrap of Christmas smoke tucked in my pocket, made my way back to the Jai Hind.

On Christmas day morning life went on as usual for the residents of the Sardar Bazaar.  Janette was still unwell so I ate alone in the empty restaurant before taking her breakfast in bed.  It felt quite liberating to not be bombarded with the jingly janglyness of the traditional western, pseudo-religious celebration but, although we didn’t speak about it at length, we both felt quite homesick.  Perhaps, if we hadn’t had the worry about the money, things would have been different, but we were becoming increasingly worn down by the constant hassles.  We decided then and there that as soon as the cash came through (as surely it must eventually) we would head for home.

After a shower, clean clothes and a strong chillum we staggered out into the sunshine where we hired a trishaw and driver for the day for five Rupees.  We cruised down long tree-lined avenues, bumped our way through a small bazaar and arrived at the main gate of the Taj Mahal.  Passing through the outer courtyard, the Chawk–I Jilau Khana, we approached the gatehouse and there, framed in the arched Mughal gateway before us… Boom!  The shimmering vision exploded into my ganga riddled consciousness.  I wasn’t expecting to be so moved.  We are all familiar with images of Shah Jahan’s mausoleum to his beloved wife Mumtaz but nothing could have prepared me for that first sight.  I was wrenched out of my stoned, world-weariness as Janette and I stood silent and mesmerised.  (I could reel off an Indian trainload of adjectives to describe that magnificence in marble but no words would ever do justice to actually being there).  But what a Christmas present!  There were no irritating guides offering to show us around and very few other visitors.  We almost had the whole forty-two acre complex to ourselves.  Of course this being India there had to be something incongruous and that turned out to be the ancient, white-haired gentleman, who was presumably employed to stand next to the tomb, in the centre of the domed mausoleum.  Here he could be found intoning over and over in a thin creaky voice, ‘Actual tomb, actual tomb of Mumtaz Mahal’.  His words bounced and echoed endlessly off the white marble creating a psychedelic, audio montage. 

From the Taj we travelled the 2.5 kilometres to the Lal Qila or Red Fort which was much bigger and more beautiful than the one in Old Delhi.  Once again there were very few visitors and we were certainly the only ones with white faces.  Happily guide-free we explored the Mughal pavilions, apartments and exquisitely ornamented halls until Janette once again began to feel faint and nauseous.  There being no nearby chai shop to retire to we returned to our trishaw.  Once there our young driver begged us to let him transport us to a nearby bazaar where he would earn 50Paise commission for every souvenir shop and handicraft emporium that he took us to, even if we didn’t buy.  It would have been pretty heartless to refuse him so we found ourselves half-heartedly perusing trays of precious gems, rolls of silk, and carved wooden objects with absolutely no intention of parting with a single Rupee.  The one place that I actually enjoyed visiting was shop selling traditional musical instruments.  I loved the tablas but, being a guitar player, what really excited me was the opportunity to play a sitar.  At only £20.00 for the cheapest model I was very tempted.  But, of course, we really didn’t have the money.  After having allowed our trishaw-wallah to earn himself a little more cash we had him return us to the Jai Hind where we cold-showered the day’s dust and sweat-grime from our bodies.

Refreshed after the day’s activities, we smoked a chillum and stumbled into the hotel restaurant for a celebratory Christmas dinner.  We were the only diners and stuffed ourselves with tomato soup and toast, followed by vegetable roll, chips and fried eggs.  We toasted each other and all our distant friends and family with ice-cold chocolate milk shakes.  It had been a strange and wonderful Christmas Day.

Boxing Day found Janette still feeling ill.  She wrote in her diary, ‘Nothing happened today.  I didn’t feel well so I stayed in bed most of the time - stoned.’  The nothing that happened was caused by us both partaking of opium.  (Or as Microsoft Word would prefer – ‘We partaking of opium caused the nothing that happened’).  I had revisited the Government Ganga shop and came away with two tolas of ganga plus two grams of opium.  The sticky lump of opium, which we rolled into small balls and swallowed, was rich dark reddish-brown with a wonderful earthy odour.  We did manage to float to the restaurant for breakfast at lunchtime and for a meal at around six-thirty but apart from that we spent the whole day nodding out, lost in our own personal, vivid dream-worlds.

On the 27^th Janette felt a little better so, after breakfast, we ventured out into Agra.  Following directions from the hotel manager we easily found the Post Office and the Government Tourist Office.  There we bought a couple of postcards and obtained information on how to get to the abandoned city of Fatehpur Sikri by local bus.  At the Canara Bank we changed $30 of traveller’s cheques for Rupees in less than five minutes.  It must have been some kind of record.  We were prepared to have our patience tested and had steeled ourselves for a long and infuriating session with a selection of rubber-stamping counter staff but it was not to be.  Lucky really, as Janette began to feel ill again and it was necessary to hurry back to the Jai Hind where she took to her bed.

I ate a ball of opium, smoked some ganga and drifted in and out of consciousness.  At sometime in the afternoon I drifted out into the Sardar Bazaar to buy cigarettes, apples and boiled sweets.  Everyone was busy, buying, selling, gossiping, arguing.  Smell of incense, wood-smoke, spices, garbage, urine, food cooking.  No one took any notice of me.  Ghost in the bazaar. 

In the evening we sat for what seemed like, hours waiting for our dinner.  It probably wasn’t.  I didn’t care anyway.  Time was an irrelevance.  When it came the food was good – a taste explosion.  We ate and returned to our room where I faded back into the other world.

Awoke refreshed and after a good breakfast we took a trishaw to the bus station where we climbed aboard the local bus to Fatehpur Sikri. 

More to come...