The great red sandstone forts at Delhi and Agra both lie on the banks of the River Yamuna. At Agra, the riverside battlements offer a splendid vista across the huge waters winding among the blank sandy banks to the distant Taj Mahal. In the Red Fort at Delhi, you are hardly aware the river is there. From place to place India's attitude to water varies so.
Its availability seems to be taken for granted. Which is strange in a nation which receives little rain outside the monsoon. Perhaps the government has been particularly efficient in digging wells. In the countryside, irrigated fields are ablaze with a rich, dark verdancy. In the towns, public gardens are watered endlessly. Especially in Delhi, where the extensive lawns around India Gate and Parliament building are maintained as lushly as any Home Counties gardener could wish. And in the old part of the town, people who live on the streets take turns to bathe at their local standpipe, holding a cloth around themselves like coy holidaymakers changing on a Cornish beach. As they wash themselves in the running water, they make no effort to be frugal. Perhaps such profligacy with free water is the one luxury they can afford.
Rivers have helped shape much of the sub-continent: the Indus gave the land its name, and the Ganges remains a holy symbol. But it is the lakes that are special in India, partly because of their rarity. One of the main attractions of other-worldly Kashmir is its dreaming lakes, typified by Srinagar's Dal Lake. The contrast between the flat dull land of the Indian plains, and this mobile film of water mirroring the encircling mountains and the soft blue of the sky could hardly be greater.
The tranquillity that water engenders has even moved some to create new lakes. The Pichola Lake at Udaipur is a masterpiece of this kind. In its present form, the lake now reaches out to the surrounding soft-contoured hills, like Lake Dal on a more intimate scale. It provides the perfect setting for the palace which occupies Jagniwas island. And its example spurred others to create Lake Fateh Sagar behind it, whose waters answer the complex of lake and reflected land with a further reflection of the whole design like some huge artifice of mirrors.
But the grand ensemble of Udaipur is an exception; Indian architects have mostly been content to use water as a just another decorative element, like an occasional semi-precious stone set as an inlay among the main expanse of marble. For example, the deserted palace at Fatehpur Sikri has a number of small pools with decorative bridges. But water here is no more central to the overall design than the courtyard-sized chessboard nearby, or the small palace built for games of hide-and-seek. For real architectural sensitivity to the magic of water, you must travel to Agra.
The Itmad-ud-Daulah is a modest tomb for the grandfather of the Lady of the Taj. A narrow pool leads the eye naturally to the exquisite pietra dura of the mausoleum, as delicate as lace. The Taj Mahal takes the same idea but realises it on the grandest scale. The long watercourse points like a gleaming arrow to the distant tomb. A marble wraith, it stands silhouetted against the sky, brooding over the slow, silent Yamuna below.
A Partial India A to Z
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
Maps are designed to deceive, not to describe. They must allow you to grasp whatever they represent. Because the paper on which they are printed has a certain physical size, you scale your perception to the map, not to its matter. Hence, whether you are looking at a plan of Cambridge or California, Surrey or Siberia, you reduce them all to the same level; the absolute sense of size is lost, and the constant mismatch of scale between expectation and experience is always shocking.
It is the same with India. For the westerner, it is an exotic triangle nestling against the underbelly of a vast and vague Asia. Most people would be unable to place it in a hierarchy of size. To travel in India is to stretch the mind.
Several factors conspire to magnify this effect. Much of India is flat and featureless; without landmarks, you immediately lose scale. Flying over north-west India is like passing over endless graph paper with no co-ordinates. The fields are ruthlessly square; the occasional town is the same identical fungal growth at the intersection of two straight roads. The parched earth is light brown, the ultimate average colour.
The towns themselves possess this same invariance. Wander along any street in any city, and the landscape will not change for half an hour on end. Every part of a street could stand for the whole; and that whole for the city. This is largely a matter of arithmetic; a population of 750 million, together with a labour-intensive economy, means that every function is endlessly duplicated, every variant of activity and design universally replicated. And it all has to be put somewhere.
Distance is also a function of time. Since Concorde, the Atlantic is only a Mozart opera wide. In India, trains and buses use clocks which run at half-speed. Distances are measured in fractions of a month. It is the same in the towns. Everything has been scaled to match the culture; travel pegs itself to the level of rickshaws, bikes and cows. The chaos of Indian rush-hours clogs the roads yet further. Traffic congeals as if in a slow-motion film; the roads lengthen in proportion. Crossing Delhi, you spend half a day watching a pageant of its history and people.
It should be even worse for Indians. Most of them lack that magic ointment, money, which makes ragged distances heal up neatly. Instead, they must verify the continent's dimensions by personally walking them. The fact that they have not revolted, or demanded a smaller India, is probably a matter of expectations. They have never known the joy of little countries like Britain, or how helicopters can take you anywhere,
In fact, they seem to revel in the largeness of India; so much so, that they exaggerate it by growing up a good head shorter than most westerners. For Indians, the soaring dome of the Taj Mahal, the mighty walls of the Moghul forts - everything - becomes all the more impressive with this assumption of physical humility. As uncomprehending tourists confronted by the vastness of India, perhaps westerners too should try to become small, that the land and its spirit might grow for them yet larger.
A Partial India A to Z
It is hard to conjure up a typical Indian landscape in the way that you can for Switzerland, say. And beyond the Taj Mahal, most people would find it difficult to define representative examples of Indian architecture. But everyone knows what Indian music sounds like. For most westerners, an image of India always comes with a soundtrack.
In particular, things Indian immediately evoke the distinctive combination of a sitar's twang and the thwup of a tabla. This is justified to a certain extent. Even if other strummed and drummed instruments exist with similar sounds in neighbouring countries, it is still true to say that the use and interplay of the Indian versions are unique.
Partly this is a function of the way Indian music has evolved. It is fundamentally monophonic, with the tabla's role that of a complex rhythmic commentator. Unlike Western music, which develops vertically through harmony, a raga-based composition can progress only linearly, both in terms of length and ornamentation. Tension is achieved between the two main players, and between each player and the limits of their medium.
The sitar may be replaced by other melody instruments, but the approach remains the same. The composition is an improvisation on the scale which defines the particular raga. The codification of ragas, and their allotment to specific hours and moods is another example of the Indian penchant for systematisation, be it in Sanskrit grammar or the Kamasutra.
This lack of western-type development, the timeless dwelling on a few notes, seems appropriate for a civilisation which has always rooted its philosophy in what lies behind, what remains. Playing a raga is not so much a performance as a joint meditation, active on the musicians' part, passive on the audience's.
Given this apparent centrality - to western minds at least - of music to the Indian spirit, it comes of something of a shock to find practically no trace of classical Indian music in India. There are no concerts advertised in the papers, nothing on television, and few records or tapes in the shops. It is as if it were all a huge hoax played on the gullible outside world.
But it is not just classical music which is conspicuous by its absence. Wandering through the bazaars and down streets in Delhi and other cities, there is very little music of any kind to be heard. No trannies blaring away, not even a cat-whiskered Bakelite wireless, some venerable relic of the Raj. True, the popular Indian cinema draws heavily on songs for its appeal; but even these seem to have little currency outside the cinema and a few clips shown on television.
They may care little for music, but the Indians are besotted by noise. Everywhere you go, there are people hawking their wares, children shrieking, and cars, buses and rickshaws blowing their horns. The most characteristic sound in India is not the sitar, however apt that would be; it is the huge, raucous, many-voiced cacophony of motor horns.
A Partial India A to Z
To think of India is to think of the Taj Mahal. But like all masterpieces it is unique and atypical. It says nothing of the general. To begin to appreciate it, and to understand the culture which produced it, a context is needed. Singularities can only be seen for what they are against a background of the commonplace.
Agra is at least typical of India in two respects. The scale is vast. From the Cantonment station to the town centre is miles; along the way there are the endless small shops with their cheap and gaudy wares. And like many other towns, Agra possesses three cardinal elements that symbolise the great forces which have shaped North India: a massive Moghul fort, a reminder of past secular glories; a major religious building, testimony to the endless piety and architectural ambitions of the Muslim emperors; and a railway station, one of the most enduring legacies of the Raj, and possibly the most important for India's future.
Agra fort would be impressive by any standards; but its true statue emerges only in comparison with other red sandstone fortresses. The great Red Fort in Delhi looks shoddy beside it. Partly it is a question of setting: Delhi's fort sits next to a huge sprawling bazaar: the frenetic churning masses overwhelm the silent masonry. At Agra, the fort stands in splendid isolation, with only a few hawkers' stalls by the gate.
Inside, passing through the deathly stillness of Jahangir's palace, you arrive at the great Diwan-i-Aam, or public audience hall. Its marble forest of pillars and intricate carved roof seem to hark back to an earlier design, where ornate canopies hung from simple poles. In front lies a spacious court, lushly green and dotted with great spreading trees, a curious hybrid of mosque and college court. Flights of green parrots wheel screeching overhead; incurious monkeys sit picking at flies.
From all the river terraces of the palace, a great white ghost further down the banks of the Yamuna constantly haunts the vision. Everywhere in Agra, the presence of the Taj Mahal makes itself felt. You cannot escape it: here as elsewhere, sooner or later you must confront your cherished images of India with dirty reality. And yet few icons emerge more pristine than the Taj. From the very first glimpse of its white shimmering marble through the great gateway to the gardens, it stands self-contained and untouched by all our preconceptions. It floats serenely above itself in the long watercourse, framed by four sleek minarets set a little apart, as if in humility, and the two flanking sandstone mosques. Behind, there is the incomparable backdrop of the river Yamuna, its banks glistening wanly in the sun.
Apart from the sense of consummate perfection, the abiding quality of the building is sensual yearning: the Taj Mahal is an erotic monument to a beloved wife. The secret lies perhaps in the dome which rises up as perfectly-formed and as tactile a a young woman's breast. It is this clash of austere stone with passionate intent which lends it such power. That, and the shock of cool white stone set in a baked plain of redness. Context is everything.
A Partial India: A to Z
