By: Petra March
Down here the skyline is an endless industrial haze, and the grey-baked concrete tangles between the overgrown Delhi jungle. There’s a flower for every brick and there’s a person for every corner. Neither the people nor the animals wait for traffic, and the traffic has a mind of it’s own.
It’s alive, it’s dusty, and it’s overwhelming.
I love it.
So far my first week in India has been delightful. Everyone is so kind, and the work is fascinating! Though the jet-lag is rough (it has been a series of getting my feet under my head and tripping my head under my feet), the work keeps me awake. At the end of week one I’m itching to leap over the weekend and into week two. When I read cases and research, I feel my soul fill with joys and sorrows, then it settles into something I haven’t learned the name of. I hope to become more acquainted with this feeling, but it’s shy.
At work the office laughs about Delhi driving, shares stories about their hometowns, and eats lunch together. But between words everyone is very busy. I aspire to keep up with the work pace and I wish to help as much as possible. Everyone at the office is much more courageous than I.
Outside of the office, I’ve used my first weekend to see the great architecture of Agra.
Kipling’s words have captured the marble tomb with the greatest poetry:
“The Englishman first saw an opal-tinted cloud on the horizon, and later certain towers. The masts lay on the ground, so that the splendour seemed to be floating free of the earth; and the mists rose in the background, so that at no time could everything be seen clearly. Then as the train sped forward, and the mists shifted and the sun shone upon the mists, the Taj took a hundred new shapes, each perfect and each beyond description. It was the Ivory Gate through which all good dreams come; it was the realization of the “glimmering halls of dawn” that Tennyson sings of; it was veritably the “aspiration fixed,” the “sigh made stone” of a lesser poet; and over and above concrete comparisons, it seemed the embodiment of all things pure, all things holy and all things unhappy. That was the mystery of the building. It may be that the mists wrought the witchery, and that the Taj seen in the dry sunlight is only as guide books say a noble structure. The Englishman could not tell, and has made a vow that he will never go nearer the spot for fear of breaking the charm of the unearthly pavilions.”
The Mughal court historian Muhammad Amin Qazwini said of the Taj that it would “be a masterpiece for ages to come, increasing the amazement of all humanity.”
I believe him correct, but I would add that the greatest gem of Agra is the relatively undiscovered Tomb of I’timād-ud-Daulah.
This post was written by a student at Regent University School of Law. The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect those of Regent University, Regent Law School, or the Center for Global Justice.