A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimension. Oliver Wendell Holmes.

As you drive into Delhi from the airport there are two things that immediately strike you – the disparity between the rich and the very poor and the high level of energy. Everybody is working, hustling. They are hungry. They want in and are putting in the effort to make sure they are not denied.

In his recent book, A Place Within, recounting and comparing his impressions of the new India with the India he knew in the fifties, M.G. Vassanji, an Indo-Canadian writer had this to say:

“This is India’s turn finally, and its people – the priviledged classes at least – know that. The world needs it, the world is theirs. Dignitaries arrive to sing its praises, sometimes in undignified silly ways. Everywhere restoration and construction proceeds apace; new highways connect the cities, connect neighborhoods get renewed… the new vision of India is that of an emerging economic, military and cultural super power. The enthusiasm is boundless, the euphoria is catchy and undoubtedly built on substance. Nothing seems impossible – there are few other countries in the world that could feel this way.”

He doesn’t paper it over, though. As do many other overcrowded countries, India has its share of crime, corruption, inertia, rapes and murders. In sharp contrast to all the wealth and progress in the modern India there is an underclass which is not sharing in the Indian dream. These are the people from whom Gandhi could not advert his eyes and Mother Theresa, when asked how she managed to help so many, replied, “I pick them up one at a time.” There is no easy way to look at this part of India. There are no simplistic answers.

When you drive to Agra the old and the new, the emerging India to which Vassanji referred is vividly on display. Out the car window, the sights come at you fast and furious – the scooters, the man driving, a tiny child squeezed so tightly between him and his wife that she or he is hardly visible. Only the driver is wearing a helmet. Sometimes there are two children on a scooter, one squeezed between, the other sitting in front of his father. Auto-rickshaws built to hold perhaps three or four are packed with eight or ten people. Bicycles, flat carts pulled by horses, donkeys, even camels carrying all number of loads, wood, fruit, rubbish. Buses, trucks, pedestrians… all flowing in and out with seeming ease… like everything else in India it appears chaotic but it works.

There are sparkling new, shiny auto showrooms for Jaguars, Mercedes, Nissans and Fords, some two or three stories high – built next to hovels just steps away. Multi storied technical educational institutions and schools are under construction. There are new hospitals. Midway between Delhi and Agra stands a huge Pepsi bottling plant.

Every few miles there are larger centres. Lining both sides of the highway are tiny dilapidated shops, most just four or five feet wide and not much deeper selling all and every manner of goods and services. There are grocery stalls, travel agencies, clinics, pharmacies, flowers shops, tire stores, appliance stores, car repair shops, gas stations, huge new factories, brick works and clinics.

See, too, the entertainment gardens – oases of green grass and white painted garden fences, brightly coloured fresh flowers, benches and tables, dancing spaces where the villagers can escape the dust, the dirt and the noise and for a brief time celebrate a birthday, a family gathering or a special event in a serene setting.

At the end of the road to Agra is the Taj Mahal.

There isn’t anything to say that hasn’t been already been said: suffice to say, it is a humbling experience to see it in “real life.” The sight of the gleaming white edifice takes your breath away. Read more details on the Taj Mahal.

You can’t go to India without seeing it. You never forget your first sight of it and always recall your experiences on the road to Agra.