A Fading India :: Journalistic Essays

On the dawn of a June morning, I wait outside the Vasant Kunj residential buildings in New Delhi for a turn bus to the Taj Mahal. It is non yet six but India is never quiet. or so a billion people live in this country and exigency each twenty-four hours to live their hopes, fears, and dreams. The cows from the neighboring dairy bring about are moaning wildly in anticipation of being violated to stupefy milk. Men sit on verandas and read newspapers while women calm go tea kettles and fussy babies. On the street a traffic officeholder waits to direct the morning commute, fiddling to center his beret and smoking a keister from the corner of his wrinkled mouth. I am waiting for the Regal Taj when some other bus, advertising itself as the premier deluxe process Taj Express, arrives, its seats evidently filled completely with people. I climb up the creaking stairs as the driver stretches his hand for a 10 rupee bill for the pleasure of this upgraded ride. Ther e is a reason why the bus is air-conditioned two of the windows are broken. A makeshift cellophane sheet stuck with duct read over the open space keeps coming undone and rattles angrily against the ledge. This is not a bus for the country club crowd. Men show inscrutable creases of labor and worry on their foreheads and women balance four or quintet children, on their laps and pressed against their bosoms. But they are Indian, and they have a patrimony and an obligation to respect their history. This is the country where spontaneous monuments sprout up in honor of Shivaji, the Hindu warrior who lost his friends, family, and then his life in resisting the seduction Moguls. This is the country where people invoke the name of Gandhi at political rallies, bulky Live Mahatma, as if his placid face lingers as a jot on the stage. The Mahabharat, mostly mythical but historically based, was adapted for telecasting a few years ago and remains the highest rated series of all ti me. So, as overworked and overburdened as the masses may be, the Taj Mahal beckons to reveal the credit of Indias past to them. The back of the bus has an empty seat, next to a foreign tourist, which I claim as my own.