A Passage Through India - NJCU :: Faculty :: Robert Hamburger

In 1987-88, I taught at Jamia Millia University in New Delhi as a Fulbright Senior Lecturer in American Studies. Almost all of my students at Jamia Millia were Muslim; they welcomed me with curiosity, respect, and great affection. A Passage Through India is my memoir of that extraordinary year, the one book I’ve written that has not been driven by larger social concerns.

After the demanding work of researching and writing a lengthy biography (the original manuscript manuscript for Two Rooms was just under 1,000 pages), it was immensely freeing to be writing from my own life—dealing not so much with facts as with impressions and feelings. For the first time, I put my voice and my life experience at the narrative center of my creative work.

A Passage Through India is out of print, so I've included a small sample here: an account of my visit to Agra, the site of the Taj Mahal-- one of my last days in India.

Agra

In Agra, I slipped into white kurta pajamas and hailed a pedal rickshaw. It was midday, broiling; I felt empty‑headed, content simply to pass down unfamiliar streets. At the Agra Fort I ran a gauntlet of hawkers selling pretty inlaid boxes. Young boys flapped packets of postcards in my face.

I turned away a dozen would‑be guides. I knew that Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan all had a hand in the making of the fort, but I didn't feel like learning about it, or anything else, that day.

I passed through a large enclosed garden and made my way to a walkway running along the battlements. Down below, I saw the River Yamuna, broad and brown with silt. The Taj Mahal rose to my right, above a bend in the river.

I peered down at the water. A colony of simple huts sat on a spit of caked mud. They were no more than tepees constructed from bundles of bound sticks and branches. When the monsoon floods came, they would be swept away.

A man walked his bicycle down from the river road and out over the hardened mud. At the water's edge he paused to adjust his lunghi, folding and tucking it high up on his thighs. Then he continued on, wheeling his bike into the river.

Halfway across the Yamuna, he stopped beside a boy who tended a few buffalo. The two of them stood thigh‑deep in the silty water, chatting as though they'd met on some deserted thoroughfare. After awhile, the man pushed his bicycle ahead. On the opposite bank he lugged his bike ashore. He mounted it and rode along the dusty shore till he disappeared.

The Taj Mahal was not nearly as large as I'd imagined. Its interior is filled with extraordinary designs of inlaid marble, but the building itself seemed remarkably simple. Maybe I was anaesthetized by the hundreds of posters, calendars, and post‑card photographs I'd seen. I wasn't awed. The Taj Mahal didn't stir any particular emotions. Perhaps, this was an aspect of the building's legendary "perfection." The Taj is carefully proportioned, as quietly tyrannical as death itself. It is, after all, a tomb.

I walked out to the broad marble terrace and sat with my back against the low balustrade, with the sluggish river behind me. I saw passing school groups, families, packs of teenaged boys, occasional knots of westerners. I saw old women with crooked backs like Daumier crones. I saw stocky sardarjis with their turbans and sheathed beards. I saw beautiful girls in punjabi outfits. I saw religious pilgrims in orange robes. I saw saris and lunghis and dhotis wrapped in ever imaginable way.

How long I sat there, I don't know. It was late afternoon when a young man approached me. At first, I did not even realize he was addressing me. Then I understood: he wanted to stand with his family, he wanted to photograph us together. I was to be part of his holiday memory, an American souvenir of his visit to the Taj. I pulled myself together for the mandatory smile; I felt like a kite hauled back to earth.

On the far side of the river, a few miles upstream, is the tomb of Itmad‑ud‑ Daula, father of princess Noor Jahan whose death inspired the Taj Mahal. Like the Taj it is constructed of white marble. It is a fine building and it is all but deserted. People flock to Agra from around the world, but after they've made their pilgrimmage to the Taj Mahal they see no point in crossing the river to see this lovely tomb.

A pedal rickshaw driver brought me there. He pedalled down shaded streets flanked by green parks. Then he cut towards the center of town, down a side street lined by gutters clogged with sewage. A team of men stood knee deep in the sludge, shovelling it onto the street while crows and skeletal dogs poked at the drying mess.

Our rickshaw turned onto Yamuna Bridge, into a stream of tilting buses, ox‑drawn wagons, cars, bicycles, barechested men dragging carts, motor rickshaws, and Tata trucks loaded with bulging burlap sacks. In my little vehicle I felt like a dinghy swept into open sea.

At the tomb, women hunkered on the broad front lawn to manicure the grass. They waddled about, never rising from their squat, hacking the grass with scythes no bigger than household scissors. I came to the entranceway and stepped over two security guards who dozed on straw mats.

A strip of glaring white sand stretched from the tomb site to the river 200 meters away. Forty buffalo wallowed in the shallow water to cool themselves. Downstream, a group of women washed clothes, raising a frothy scum as they flailed bright fabrics against the smooth rocks. Red and yellow saris lay out on the white sand to dry, a vast checkered quilt.

Some distance upstream, a man in a violet turban stood near the water. The day's stillness radiated from him. Under a blanket of shimmering heat, Agra lay spellbound: buffalo, women, the turbid river itself, entranced by golden haze, by thick silence that smothered all thought.

Across the river, swarms of gridlocked vehicles stretched along the shore road in arrested frenzy‑‑ too distant for traffic noise to reach me. Nothing stirred. the world had come to a stop.

That is what I wished as I stared at the River Yamuna. Truth is, I did not want time to stop‑‑ I wanted it to go backwards. I wanted to see my students and friends‑‑ to be with Carrie, Zeba, Madni Ahmed, Ayisha, Amit, and Venkat. I wanted my flat in Gulmohar Park, and I wanted to repeat the simple, satisfying rituals of my life in Delhi. I wanted to talk again with Mr. Mankekar out in his driveway beside the closed wrought iron gate. I wanted to see Mr. Nair cock his head and smile.

When finally I rose to leave that quiet spot, I felt the pulsing of travel in me once again. Soon I'd be in my pedal rickshaw plunging into the hive of bridge traffic. There would be a taxi ride to the airport, a plane to Delhi; then, two days later, I'd be leaving India.

My rickshaw driver struggled up a hill. I offered to hop out and walk alongside, but he waved me back.

"Strong man!" I said in Pidgin English. "Good rickshaw‑ wallah!"

"Yes, sa'ab! Very good rickshaw‑man. You are going where, sa'ab?"

I named the hotel.

"After hotel, you are going?"

"Delhi," I told him. "I am living in Delhi."

"I take you, sa'ab!"

"The airport is too far. I will take taxi."

"No airport, sa'ab. I am taking you Delhi!"

"I have a ticket. I fly to Delhi."

"Me strong man, sa'ab. Very good driver. Two days I take you home. Pay what you like."

Delhi was 120 miles away. I saw us rolling along the national highway, slow and steady, lost in a stream of carts and animals, as video bus coaches roared past, crammed with tightly scheduled tourists. I saw us on the outskirts of Delhi, creeping past the embassies and five‑star hotels, wheeling along familiar streets till at last we came to Gulmohar Park and pulled up beside the dhobi, ironing shirts outside our gate. One last adventure. It could be done. My driver was willing. It was crazy, but it could be done.

"I have to fly," I told him. "I must hurry home."

There was more to come: Burma, Thailand, Indonesia, Hong Kong‑‑ all on my way home. I often thought about these places to keep our spirits up; but leaving was hard and I knew it was tricky to seek consolation in an attractive future. Good things would happen, I knew they would‑‑ but few things were likely to happen the way we'd expected.

The rickshaw turned onto Yamuna Bridge. My driver hitched up his lunghi and pedalled into the flow of vehicles, animals, and people‑‑ a great open ballroom, all of us dancing to the same insistent tune.