Taj Mahal Oasis

We made it to the Taj Mahal - - after about a four hour bus ride through the chaos of Delhi and through Agra around northern India. Once close to the Taj, everyone is required to walk quite a distance or take an electric cart to the entrance as a result of noticeable wear and tear of the marble from pollution. The Shah - who had this built at the request of his wife, while she was dying in child labor delivering their fourteen baby - would not be happy!

Meanwhile, it is ironic that, right up to the very entrance gate, the streets teem with people, rubble, carts, cows, noise, litter, more litter, dirt, more rubble, more people, more carts, more litter. On the road to Agra and on the road to Vrindavan, there is more garbage, more rubble, more cows. There are monkeys. There is an occasional camel and more dirt, litter and rubble.

It occurs to me that we might take for granted just how far we have come in the last fifty years in the USA. The litter all over the streets of India are images of what could have become of America if we had not had the behavioral shift and cultural change towards our environment, earth and global warming. I am reminded of a Mad Men episode depicting the family picnic and leaving by shaking out the blanket with all the trash onto the grassy knoll. And there was no recycling then either. Kudos America for making such a movement. I asked one of the women with whom we've met if it is possible to undertake such a change in India to clean it up. For a population of this magnitude, with so many living in poverty, I'm afraid we concluded that it would take a broad-scale effort of private sector and public sector coming together and making substantial investment in the necessary infrastructure.