M is for Mosques

The divided modern states of India and Pakistan were born out of the age-old tensions between Hindu and Muslim. The latter did not relish being a minority in a country ruled by the former. But whatever the political realities, the balance of spiritual power surely lay the other way.

Hinduism does not proselytise: since caste cannot be altered during this life, only by it, nothing can be done for those whose previous lives condemned them to be re-born outside Hinduism, and hence outside all castes. It is a religion of temporal stasis. For the Muslim, on the other hand, there is the siren call of the jihad, the holy war to defend the faith and convert the infidels - against their will if need be. It is the epitome of spiritual dynamism.

The same extroversion is manifest in their religious architecture, faith made stone. Everywhere the Muslims went, they built mosques. Not just one, but several, preferably greater than ever before. Paradise was to be won by action. Hindus often veered the other way, towards the abnegation manifest in Buddhism; you must desire nothing, strive for nothing, do nothing. Which is hardly conducive to piling up ever-higher stones.

And so it is that Hinduism remains a dominant yet invisible religion, while the departed Moghuls have left their indelible stamp on northern India in a string of massive forts and soaring mosques, Together these represent the twin aspects of their warlike faith. Delhi itself has fine examples of both. The Red Fort stands rock-like at the corner of the old city, its huge red walls an unarguable statement of imperial and religious intent. A little across from it is the Jami Masjid, the main mosque of the town. Open to the skies and to Allah, it can hold 25,000 souls and is the largest in India.

Unlike Delhi, which now lies in the Hindu heartlands, Kashmir has remained staunchly Muslim. Geography apart, perhaps this is not surprising. Nowhere else in India does the muezzin's call to prayer carry as distinctly as through that thin mountain air. In Srinagar, the frail reedy cry can be heard for miles as it floats across the still Dal Lake.

Like all the greatest artists, the Moghul architects of the mosques took the circumscribing restrictions of their faith regarding ornamentation and form and made it the springboard for inspiration. Particularly in their intimate monuments to the dead. The tombs are austere in their geometric patternings, stern and formal in their inlaid quotations from the Koran. Yet their perfect proportions and simplicity are moving for any faith.

Of no building is this more true than of the Taj Mahal. Too often it is regarded simply as beautiful architecture, or as a postcard symbol of India. But as well as a personal testament to the unassuageable grief of the Emperor Shah Jahan at the death of his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal, it needs to be understood as a religious monument. To enter, you must remove your shoes as well as your cultural prejudices. It forms a fitting memorial to the Moghuls' enduring passion for architecture, and the apotheosis of their legacy to India.

A Partial India A to Z

I is for Incense

The most notable thing about smells in India is that there are so few of them. Westerners pre-conceptions about third-world countries might lead them to expect a rich melange of noisome smells constantly assaulting the nose, just as the hectic collage of sights and sounds will hit the eyes and ears. But there is no equivalent cacophony of odours.

It is certainly possible to find smells, hunting them out like exotic truffles. But the best smells are those which ambush you in unlikely places, striking your consciousness like the sound of a tiny distant bell.

For instance, there is the incense. Not from the temples, of which there are few in northern India, nor from the mosques which are open to the sky and smell only of the what the wind carries. This incense is from the slow-burning sticks found on stalls in the markets everywhere. Its purpose is purely functional: to ward off the flies from the food. But far more than any smell of cooking it remains as the defining smell of the bazaars. Its cloying richness seems particularly appropriate for the huge, sprawling congregation of shouting people, garish colours and endless, fecund confusion.

More elusive is the smell of the old forts and palaces. A rare conjunction of conditions is needed to catch it, just as if it were some marvellous nocturnal bird, seen only by autumn moonlight in leap years. The rooms where it can be found must be dark and secluded from the sun; they must be high yet draughtless; and their peace must be broken by intrusive visitors only rarely. If these three requirements are met, as at the deserted palaces of Fatehpur Sikri, you can catch a whiff of the rarefied exhalation of old stone. It is cold and dank and a very ancient smell, the smell of history.

The third smell is perhaps the hardest to recognise, because it is at once so subtle and so trivial. It is ubiquitous, but easiest to detect towards twilight. A high vantage point helps to spot it. There you can watch it form over the whole city, and colour the air itself.

It is the smoke from domestic fires. Sitting atop a minaret of the Jami Masjid in Delhi, you can see the city wreathed in its mists and vapours. As dusk falls, the smell seems to concentrate itself as the more workaday odours pack up and go home. It is less a smell than a small sensation at the back of the throat, a slight acidity.

The Kashmir valley offers the experience in its purest form. From the high vantage point of the Shankaracharya Hill behind Srinagar, you can watch the rich woodsmoke curl out of the chimneys on the houseboats and houses. As the lower air thickens, the view turns into some crazy industrial landscape, with tall wiry silver birches for smokestacks. Walking back down into the city you lose sight of the thin pall of smoke in the darkening air, but gain, step by step, its gently choking smell. It smells of the fire which awaits you on your houseboat. It smells of home, as it does for everyone in India.  Which is why it is so hard for the westerner to detect, and so worth detecting.

A Partial India A to Z

F is for Fatehpur Sikri

As you would expect from an institution largely created for the military, the Agra Cantonment station is neatly laid out on broad lines.  It is carefully structured with separate offices for stationmasters and under-stationmasters, and has numerous bilingual charts and diagrams detailing trains, times and platforms. The town's ldgah bus station, on the other hand, is a pokey hole in a row of undistinguished shops, The battered buses are parked anyhow, and with its drab crumbling walls and stout window-grilles, the ticket office looks more like the entrance to a prison. Yet buses are cheap, uncomplicated and popular, a vital link between cities and the outlying villages. They are a good way to see India the way most Indians do.

From Agra to the village of Fatehpur Sikri by bus costs just Rs 4.60; it takes about an hour to cover the 40 km distance. For all the bus's bone-shaking lurches and leaps, and despite the continual protestations of the grinding gearbox, this turns out to be considerably faster than most trains. Along the way you pass through fields and villages which seem remarkably similar. The fields have the same toiling bullocks, looked after by the same small boy watching you watching him; the villages display the same wares in the same shops, with the same women carrying small snivelling children on their hips as well as miraculously-balanced bundles on their heads. Occasionally a small hill in the distance emerges then disappears in the dusty heat haze.

Fatehpur Sikri is like and totally unlike all these villages. Like in that it has the same shops and the same women; unlike in the massive red sandstone wall which girdles it some kilometres distant. Amidst this inexplicable grandeur, the thin strip of the town's single fly-blown street lies like the shrivelled innards of a giant tortoise, dwarfed now by the massive shell which rests baking but intact in the sun. When the wall was built, Fatehpur Sikri was worthy of it, a mighty city, capital of the Moghul Empire of North India. Today it only draws attention to the vanity of human achievements, a monument to an Indian Ozymandias.

Not only the wall remains. Beside the village is one of the region's rare hills; on it was built the great Jami Masjid mosque, reached by a giant's causeway of red stone, and an extensive complex of palace buildings. These buildings remain to this day, as perfectly preserved as when they were abandoned some four hundred years ago, shortly after being completed. Lack of sufficient water supplies is thought to be the reason.

Whatever the cause, be grateful. Fatehpur Sikri is everyone's coffee  table image of India. The silent brooding sandstone buildings, their dull redness glowing in the midday sun; the deep shadows of the rooms and corridors, starkly contrasted with the glare of the empty courtyards. The architecture, intricate with luxuriant stone swags and minutely-carved columns, the piling up of storeys and towers. The stillness of the pools, and the silence of the open spaces. And around it all, the unending flatness of the Indian plain. Watching from the topmost tower of the palace, you can see a bus's tiny dust cloud bowling towards you along the ribbon of empty road. It is late.

A Partial India A to Z