Beyond the Taj

The Taj Mahal stands tall. The day is slowly turning into night but the camera beckons for one last photo.

Wandering the grounds one last time, I placed my naked feet, one after the other on the mat of dust. With each step, the collection of dirt slightly quivers between my toes. The sparse trembling is done away with a gust. At my touch, the dust wakes and dances around me, seizing its chance to cling to me. My nose feels the tickle of dust and scrunches, until finally succumbing to a sneeze. I smile knowing anything is better than smelling that constant thick odour of pee, smoke and chaat that consumes the air on the surrounding streets of the Taj. As my sneeze turns to a smile I hear a chuckle and then another. My ear traces the giggles, but with the hooves of cows thumping rhythmically on the terrain and the shouts across crowds around me, it is impossible.

My eyes wander to the vendor waving cobs of corn in one hand and a money tin in another to unsuspecting tourists. The giggling persists. My head whips to the old men cross legged, leaning harmlessly around the sign post reading “do not walk on grass”. The giggling has swiftly transformed to roaring laughter. Frustrated, I let out a forceful sigh. Enough for the laughter to be replaced with hushed mutterings. It is then that I see two young girls. Their rough hands are wrapped around their legs, crouched under the red clay bench by the Indian ash tree. Their eyes are wide like two stray kittens. I inch forward. The smaller one tugs on the other’s tattered skirt whilst the taller girl, her bronze rusted bangles clinking, reaches out to place one finger over the other’s cracked lips. I can’t avert my gaze.

Their wide kitten eyes burrowing into me, erupt in a fit of laughter. I smile and they begin to dance around me, clinging like the dust had to my arms. My eyes briefly leave their grimy, gleaming faces to see if anyone else was witnessing this. The vendor continued to harass tourists, flies continued to follow the cows’ path and old men continued to chew on paan and babble. I turn back to the girls and the two coy kittens lap up my affection. As they join arms and fling each other from left to right, I pull out my camera.

In my drawer the photo of the two girls is kept and I am always reminded of them. With the glory of the building and the bustle of the crowds, these girls living on the street were lost in a world of mayhem. Forgotten. Despite this, they laughed and played. The real Taj.