The Many Faces of India

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Many friends warned me about traveling to India; yet, there was the occasional acquaintance that raved about how amazing the Indian sub-continent was. My mom and I have had India on our “to visit” list for years, and we finally decided it was time to see what all the warning and rave was all about. Nothing, I mean nothing can prepare one for India. I consider myself a seasoned world traveler, and a global citizen (having lived on six continents in the last ten years), yet I was truly unprepared for my first contact with India. On the surface, India is colorful, vibrant, full of life, and incredibly diverse. Dig slightly deeper and one finds extreme poverty, high rates of morbidity and under/mal-nutrition, exploitation, dilapidated infrastructure, and extreme over-population. India’s government has not instituted a strict family planning policy limiting child births, as its neighbor China imposed decades ago when concerns about over-population arose. In several states, like Uttar Pradesh, the government has launched efforts to reduce fertility rates with impressive results; however, nation-wide India’s fertility rate remains dangerously high. Considering I only spent two weeks in India, my assessment of this vast and diverse country is only cursory and anecdotal at best. I’m not sure if I’ll visit India again, given that I saw more “death” and “dying” than in any other place I have visited or lived (keep in mind that I lived in Nigeria for over two years and only saw a total of two corpses on the roadside). There are certainly amazing historic places to visit in India, which are worthwhile and impressive, but it takes quite a bit of heartache to arrive at these sites. For instance, to visit the Brahma Temple in Pushkar (the only one of its kind in the world), we had to step over dying bodies, cattle dung, streams of raw sewage, and escape the hounding hawkers that do not take no for an answer. This is merely one example of many during our trip through Rajasthan, Goa, and New Delhi.

In spite of the heavy traffic, the incessant harassment of street vendors and hawkers, the crooked guides and drivers who cheat tourists by taking them to carpet factories with inflated prices, the cattle dung littered practically everywhere, the spewing raw sewage, the piles of decaying garbage, the sick, morbid, and dying people on the streets and in villages, and the plethora of stray dogs with mangled limbs, India is home to an amazing history. During my two weeks on the sub-continent, I had an unforgettable “wow” moment. Although this may sound cliché, I must say that when I finally found myself standing directly in front of the Taj Mahal my heart skipped a beat and I actually held my breath for a moment. My mom and I were both rendered speechless by the sheer magnificence of this pearl-white structure. Never have I been so impressed by a physical building. I’ve been fortunate enough to have visited many of the world’s wonders, but never has one left me speechless. Perhaps this was because I had just finished reading a 400+ page historical novel relating the Moghuls’ territorial gains in India, and Emperor Shah Jahan’s undying love for his second wife, who died bearing his 14th child, and his promise to erect a  tomb that would resemble “paradise on Earth” for his beloved Mumtaz Mahal. Fully understanding Emperor Shah Jahan’s loss and his dedication to building the most unique and beautiful tomb in the world for his beloved late wife, I was taken aback by the aura of this structure…words do not give justice to the beauty that is the Taj Mahal.