The Grand Trunk Road to Agra

by VICE ADMIRAL LESLIE C. STEVENS, USN (Ret.)

1

IN ONE of the many deserted cities of India, the courtyard of an empty red sandstone palace is thick with tombs. “A likely place for ghosts,”I said to my wizened, betel-chewing guide. “Are they here at night?”

He considered for a moment, looking at me with narrowed eyes. “Yes,”he replied quietly, “but only if one believes in them.”

I was brought up on Kipling and the “Indian Nights’ Entertainments” in the old yellow Pearson’s Magazine, and had long since reached the regretful conclusion that the magic of India had completely evaporated in the dry heat of modern economics. Today, I know that this is not so. India is full of believers who keep its magic alive. Nor does one need to be a believer to feel its charm.

The Grand Trunk Road, Kim’s Road, still runs from Lahore to Calcutta, “bearing without crowding India’s traffic for fifteen hundred miles — such a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world.” It was with a distinct feeling of pleasure that I spotted it on a large-scale map of Delhi which I had bought in order to find my way about. Although it seemed highly probable that it had declined into general mediocrity with the coming of the automobile, I decided then and there to travel along it enough to find out. This decision took definite form when I learned that Agra and the Taj Mahal are some hundred and twenty-five miles from Delhi on that very road. It was near the time of the full moon, and it is common knowledge that then is when one should look on the Taj Mahal.

For a space in Delhi, the Grand Trunk Road becomes the Chandni Chowk, the Street of Silver, and it was in that bazaar that 1 had my first intimation that India is something more than a vast economic problem. The Chandni Chow k is crowded with shops, all with their floor level about waist high and extending in a shelf along the road. Grave Indians can sit comfortably there and watch the traffic, smoke a big copper water pipe, or eat mangoes, tangerines, huge gooseberries, rich dates, or those unbelievable potatoes that are filled with air. Shops that sell carved ivory and sandalwood are all mixed in with those that sell salvaged bolts and nuts, padlocks, washers, armatures, valves, and tools of every description.

Three or four elephants, loaded with hay, swaggered down the crowded street past the big red sandstone mosque where they cherish a hair of the Prophet’s beard. A doe-eyed, high-humped dun cow with spreading horns painted bright blue and hung with garlands of orange and yellow marigolds went past, followed by a white goat, half of which was dyed pink.

I was suddenly aware that I had just passed a shop where big bundles of porcupine quills were mixed in with the trays of screws and bolts. I turned back and found that behind the porcupine quills was a cobra skin, with its spectacled hood spread artistically. As my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, I saw more snakeskins, some lizards hanging by their necks, and an uncertain medley of the skins of birds, with beaks, wings, and claws hanging limp beside the feathers. A dried bat lay on top of a jar that contained God knows what.

It was with more anticipation for the road than for the Taj that I set forth for Agra in the diamond dawn of a golden winter day. I went with a bearded Sikh driver in a little English automobile. It is tautological to call a Sikh bearded, for his religion forbids him ever to shave or cut his hair. His black heard curls beautifully and his hair is done up in a little bun or topknot, which, however, is seldom seen because of his big turban. As everyone knows, the Sikhs were some of the finest fighting men of the Indian armies. Most of them are big and, like so many Indians, soft-spoken. There is something peculiarly comforting and reassuring in being in the care of a Sikh, doubtless because of some paternal connotation in dignified bushy beards, broad shoulders, and an erect bearing. My Sikh’s name was Matrah Singh. He had a plaid rug across his shoulders against the early morning chill, and behind his fierce swept-back beard, his face was surprisingly young and gentle.

The air that nurtures poinsettias and bougainvillea, papayas, mangoes, and bananas can be wonderfully light and fresh as it warms to the golden sun. All about, the Punjab plain lay brown and bare, dotted with trees that stood singly or in small groups, as far as the eye could see. Except for those generous trees and an occasional strip of bright green, it seemed almost desert, but Matrah Singh said that the whole land became green with the rains.

This was the southern end of the Punjab, and I knew that, both the Punjab and the United Provinces, where Agra lay, were among the richest and most populous lands of the earth. Wells were frequent, sometimes being worked for irrigation by cattle or water buffaloes, sometimes by the united efforts of a family. Huge buckets of water were drawn up by a rope running over a pulley, and every well was so arranged that those who pulled up the water went downhill, even if that meant that they themselves descended into pits.

The road was lined with spreading trees, so that it ran in continuous shade from the hot Indian sun. Most of the trees were neem trees, which look like giant versions of California’s pepper trees. The neem is good for the teeth, and is used throughout India to clean them. The leaves are sharply bitter to the taste, but there remains a cool aftereffect, like that of mint. Interspersed with the neems were mangoes, with their star-shaped clusterings of leaves; and often there would be a long avenue of bo trees, whose heavier foliage made the road into a dim tunnel. It was the bo tree under which the Lord Buddha first began to teach, and it is the bo or peepul that is the common shade tree of China and of India.

Every now and then we passed a towering road marker or milestone, ten or twelve feet high. Matrah said that when a great king or maharajah came down the road, his servants would precede him by many miles to mount these milestones, where they beat on drums to warn the people.

2

THE Grand Trunk Road is paved, and paved far better than are the roads in some countries, such as Russia, that claim to be more advanced than India. True, some fifteen or twenty miles from Delhi the double-width paving narrows down until it is wide enough for only a single vehicle. Through the golden dust, one meets head on a great herd of sleek, wide-horned cattle or slug-like buffaloes, or passes a string of shaggy supercilious camels with rope muzzles, or a group of monkeys sitting solemnly by the road, perhaps with a baby monkey carried in long, hairy, reddishgray arms. Green and yellow parrots scream and rocket through the shade to perch woodpeckerlike on the trunks of the trees. Our passage along the never-empty road carried with it a wash of excitement, shouting, and noise. Here normality means no motorcars to disturb the steady-paced flow of beasts and men, so it was necessary for Matrah to use the horn continuously.

We were happy to turn out for a bullock-drawn wedding cart, for weddings mean good luck the world over. The big archaic wheels of the wagons have not changed for millennia, and this one was crowned with a double-domed canopy, like the humps of the Bactrian camel. The bullocks, gay with flowers, moved with a stately gait beneath their embroidered plum-colored blankets, and a profusion of rugs partly covered the elaborately carved body of the rig.

Bright-clothed women walked proudly in the dust, balancing great shining vessels of copper and brass on their heads. They were clad in limecolored saris, lemon-colored ones, others of burnt orange, still others of tan or cream with red border, and they wore either little trousers with embroidered cuffs, all of peach, chartreuse, apricot, or raspberry, or blue-pink pajamas. Matrah tried to explain how to tell a Jainee from a Sikh woman by their clothing, and how to distinguish castes by the folds of the garments, but I only became bewildered.

One of the charms of Asia is the sense of being an intimate part of the everyday life of the people, for they live in the streets. A thin, hawk-nosed man sits by the road while a barber shaves his head, except for a scalp lock, with a wickedly thin razor. Kettles and caldrons boil and bubble appetizingly, and the air is spicy and fragrant with the promise of food. Whole industries are carried on in the street: glazing, pottery-making on the age-old potter’s wheel, rope-making — spread out by the road for a hundred yards or more — the manufacture of four-poster beds laced with rope. And beside the road, people lie peacefully asleep on just such rope beds.

Once we passed a tall elephant that carried a bed on its back. Leisurely propped up thereon and smoking a hookah was a grizzled, arrogantlooking old man. The elephant’s brow and temples were elaborately decorated with blue, orange, and yellow designs, and the bed was hung with bells swinging from heavy chains. In response to my question, Matrah said that the tough old rider was doubtless an overseer, for if he were the owner of the elephant, he would be dressed more elaborately and would be accompanied by an adequate retinue on foot. Only the rich have elephants, for they are very expensive to keep.

The dry, tree-studded landscape stayed essentially the same, although from time to time low hills loomed in the distance, or stony outcroppings rose from the plain nearby. Such places were the abode of tigers. Matrah said that a tiger had been killed recently only twelve or fifteen miles from Delhi, and another had been shot on the road near Agra in the evening. A man with a gun had seen the eyes gleaming in a ditch and had shot at them. Travel at night has its hazards, for it is only then that tigers are about. Deer are so numerous, he said, that collisions with cars at night are frequent.

3

ALMOST without being aware of it, we were suddenly in Muttra, one of the holiest cities of India. Muttra is the home of Krishna, one of the incarnations of Vishnu. It was here that Krishna killed the great snake in the Jumna River, because of which he is often shown dancing to his flute on the head of a serpent. It was also near here that he sported with the Gopis, the women of the cowherds, and out of this amorous dalliance came some of the most strangely erotic of Hindu sects.

Indian cities of the northwest sprawl leisurely through the countryside, with little knots of congestion at the bazaars like a succession of villages, separated from each other by many fields and gardens. Temples were all about us, but we seemed still in the country, for the road was still bordered with dusty oleanders.

“Do you see that low platform in the hills?” asked Matrah Singh. “There lives a very famous sadhu. He was once a professor of English and of science in the University, but when the call came to become a holy man, he gave up everything. Now he wears only a loincloth, and will speak to no one. There is a cave under the platform where he goes underground for fifteen or twenty days at a time. No one knows where he gets his food and water, but you should see how many people come to look on him in his holiness.

“Some sadhus are very rich,”Matrah continued. “There is one near my village in the northern Punjab who drinks four or five bottles of whiskey every day. He can tell you everything you are thinking, and he likes to talk to people.”

“I have heard that some sadhus can leave their bodies,” I said. “Can this holy man do that?”

“Oh yes. One day people came to him greatly disturbed, because they thought that he had been murdered. His head and arms had been seen by the road in different places. That night many people congregated about his house, and he threw his head and arms out to them separately, to show that he could do so without hurt.”

The Indians still live in the atmosphere of the thousand and one nights. What with their belief in so many marvels, their acceptance of transformations and shape-shifting as a way of life, their firm faith in reincarnation, and the endless intricacies of their complex religions, anything can happen, and probably does.

And then I saw two huge bears in the road ahead of us, held on nose leashes by a pair of ruffians. I told Matrah Singh to stop, and as we pulled up beside the road, one of the men began to chant something about Baloo and to rattle his doubleended mendicant’s drum, while the other man rolled over and over on the ground in a friendly wrestling match with his bear. The first animal, responding to the drum, reared up and danced, a head taller than a tall man. He was black and very shaggy, with a well-marked white crescent on his chest and a long, flexible snout for rooting honey out of hollow trees. The bells on his ankles jingled merrily as he stamped to the beating of the drum. He stepped sidewise in perfect time with the drum and the Baloo chant, rotating both his huge paws, and then he moved his head horizontally from side to side in the classic Indian movement that makes one doubt one’s own eyesight.

There are many things in Agra to see besides the Taj Mahal, the impressive tomb of the great Akbar, and a Red Fort that is crusted with history and studded with perfumed fountains long since gone dry. But perhaps my most vivid memory of the city, next to the Taj itself, is that of the bier of a woman, carried high through the streets, passing under a wall whose top was outlined with monkeys. A red covering is used for women, and beneath such a cloth lay a still figure. There was something eerie about the scarlet color, the absolute inertness of the dead woman, the small, swaying crowd of bearers, and the chattering, curious monkeys watching from their vantage point.

Everyone knows that the Taj Mahal was built by Shah Jehan as a tomb for his favorite wife. It takes its name from one of the titles of the queen, “Crown of the Palace.” It stands on the edge of the broad, sandy Jumna, and across the holy river is the foundation of a companion tomb which Shah Jehan had wanted to build for himself, only this one was to be of black marble. His dreams of beauty were ended by his own son, Aurangzeb, who put his father in prison and kept him there until he died. Aurangzeb also brought about the death of his three brothers — “a very jolly fellow,” as Matrah Singh remarked.

I had expected the Taj to be exquisite, but small and jewel-like. Actually, it is imposing and exciting in its very size. The sunlight burns white on its sleek gigantic surfaces, which imperceptibly become a rich antique yellow in the shadows. It seemed like a vast, fabulous ivory carving, set in a wonderful garden of clipped grass, roses, bougainvillea, trumpet flowers, and blossoming trees. The still pools in which it is mirrored are filled with darting fish, and from those pools dark men fill big animal skins for watering the grass and the fuchsias.

Conquerors and thieves have stolen the diamonds and other jewels with which the actual tombs were once crusted, and the looted golden doors have been replaced with carved wood; but nowhere else on earth remains such a vastness of pierced and fretted marble. And all over those gigantic sweeping surfaces, both inside and out, are inlaid patterns— lotus blossoms, poppies, lilies, and long quotations from the Koran in graceful Arabic script. Jade, lapis lazuli, agate, carnelian, onyx, and porphyry are laid into the marble with the most beautiful taste and skill to make up those flowing patterns.

“I pity the poor queen,” said Matrah softly, interrupting the silence, “who could not live to see such a wonder.”

The sun was setting when we returned to the Agra hotel to wait for moonrise. Outside the hotel squatted the usual little group of swarthy, turbaned men surrounded by disturbing bags, ready with their bulb-shaped oboe-toned pipes to charm their swaying cobras, or eager to put on a battle between a snake and one of the red-eyed, badgergray mongooses which clung about them and which they caressed like cats.

A shaven-headed man in a maroon and silver wrapping caught my eye as he sat on his haunches in the court. Three birds on little leashes, canarylike birds but somewhat bigger, with yellow ocher throats and topknots, fluffed and preened on perches by his side. The man tossed a ring in the air, and one of the birds left its perch and caught the ring in its beak before it struck the ground. Coins were similarly tossed, each to be caught in mid-air and returned to him. At his order, one of the birds broke off a bit of betel leaf and put it in the man’s mouth, and another held a needle and thread in its claw and strung tiny beads on it. He had a little bucket with its line reeved over a pulley as in the wells, and one of the birds pulled up the bucket with its beak, coiling the line meanwhile with its tiny feet into neat little loops, all of a size. I saw those birds pick out numbered cards as I called the numbers, and I saw them released from their little leashes in order to bring their owner leaves from the top of whatever tree I might choose. And after each little act, the bird bobbed and bridled coquettishly as the man petted it and fed it tiny grains of millet.

As soon as the sun disappears, it starts to grow cold, and by the time dinner was over, one could see one’s breath. There was a feeling of expectancy, almost of tension, as I waited for the moon and for Matrah Singh to return with the little car. A bluish haze of smoke and dust hung in the air, but the stars above were clear and bright. Street vendors warmed their hands over glowing charcoal braziers.

While I was waiting, a prosperous-looking man in a red fez, long brown Chinese-type jacket, and baggy white pants came up to me and told me in excellent English that he had come at my command. At first I did not know what he meant, but then I remembered that one of the guides at the Red Fort had said that he would send me a magician. So I welcomed my private magician into my room.

Matrah Singh, who arrived in time to watch the performance, told me later, as we drove through the starry darkness, that my magician was very much run-of-the-mine. “It is a pity,” he said, “that one of the really great and famous magicians is not here. There is one whom I have seen in Lahore who makes it rain rupees. I have seen him cut out the tongue of a man and put it back in place again. He can also appear in two places at the same time.”

It was in such a mood that we arrived at the great gate to the gardens of the Taj Mahal. The distant sight of the Taj in the blue night is vaguely resplendent. A big moon was by now riding in the Starry sky. The great dome of the marble wonder was itself a dim but perfect half-moon, and many times vaster than any moon of this earth. Flanked by its soaring minarets, it was mirrored in the long pool of still water as yet another vast and bellying moon. Everything that did not shine, including the clipped trees that edge the pool, made flat patterns of black silhouette. The tremendous ivory structure dreamed in the moonlight, silent and completely unreal, save for the mysterious glow of one or two lights from somewhere within.

That would have been enough to keep in one’s memory, but the real magic comes when one is close on the broad marble terraces. As one moves about, the moon is suddenly broken up and reflected by the polished jade and lapis and other precious stones of the inlaid patterns, so that the high arches and cornices are lit all at once with living moonfire. The lovely, strange fire shifts and changes, waxes and wanes. Sometimes it seems that there is a strong, soft light from somewhere behind the white ivory, as though there were feasting and gaiety within; again, the lights are strung and festooned in stars and constellations about the dome, ever changing, ever shifting, dying like the coals of a great fire, springing forth in pools of light. And for a background there is a mist on the broad river, and the distant barking of many dogs, with the more familiar stars of heaven dim and unreal in comparison with the bewitched moon fires of the Taj.

Indeed one does not need to be a believer in order to feel the charm of the Grand Trunk Road, but it would be well to be on guard, for sufficient exposure to that charm might well make one a believer.