In Agra we were subjected to another bout of economic tourism. It’s to be expected and is perfectly understandable – milk the foreigners like Old Macdonald’s cow. Incidentally the various monuments are in on this as well. Entry signs say 50 rupees for Indians, 750 rupees for foreigners. You can’t get more obvious than that. Agra is all about the Taj Mahal so local artisans make various tables and othe items requiring flat surfaces and inlay them with semi-precious stones fashioned into shapes like flowers and….other flowers. If nothing catches your fancy here, the swarm of salesmen, one of whom is always at your elbow, will usher you into the next room which has similar stuff only smaller, like drink coasters. The next room, but wait there’s more, has wooden carvings and metal things and wall hangings. The next room is souvenirs where the CB bought a fridge magnet – our contribution to the local economy. After negotiating what seemed like the local version of Ikea we felt we had to buy something just to escape.
Moving on to Varanasi then Khajuraho, we see a life and death comparison or more accurately death and life respectively. Varanasi is dominated by death with two cremation areas on the Ganges in a 7 kilometre stretch of 84 ghats or step areas down to the river from the higher up town streets. Each crematorium can handle 40-50 bodies at a time without mingling grandad with the widow on the adjacent pyre. There is an element of “life” in the process I guess, because most of the ghat area is for people to cleanse and rejuvenate themselves in the river. Judging by what we saw in the river, this would be a short cut to crematorium 1 or 2 for people like us without the immune system of a mechanical bull.
Khajuraho on the other hand, is an overflowing font of life which has manifested in every newly wed’s (okay, in the 1950’s) favourite book – the Karma Sutra. They were randy buggers back in the 12th century, getting up to all sorts of shenanigans, all carved into temple walls in more loving detail than your average Pornhub video. We won’t go into what soldiers and their horses got up to when in the field with no (human) female company to speak of. Suffice to say, carving a surprised look on a horse’s face must have taken a lot of skill.
To emphasise the extent to which pleasures of the flesh dominated procedings in Dark Ages India, there were originally 84 temples in this area of which 25 remain. That’s a lot of dirty pictures and an absolute boon for the illiterates (and everyone else) although it would.d be rather difficult to hide a hindu temple under your mattress. However wild your imagination the good burghers of Khajuraho had it covered, bearing in mind they had no electricity for more elaborate kinks. There were either a small number of energiser bunny artisans, carving day and night for years or a very large number of equally talented sculptors dedicated to their art (and various proclivities). It must have been on for young and old on Saturday nights in Khajuraho.
You’ve heard of the caste system right? It’s a bit like a family hierarchy with Dad at the top (where’s that laughter coming from) and the pet budgerigar at the bottom. Indian society is similarly structured with Brahmins (spell check tried to change that to Bradman which I guess makes sense for cricket fans of which there are a few in India) at the top and Untouchables at the bottom. These Untouchables aren’t FBI agents although Melania Trump may have felt they were bottom feeders when American FBI agents were rummaging through her knicker drawer during a Mar a Largo raid a couple of years ago. No, they are societies forgotten people. But they apparently have their own king and you can see his big yellow house on the west bank of the Ganges in Varanasi – who knew? I don’t think his name’s Fagin, but I get a very Oliver Twist taste from this.