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A WOMAN IN A SARI July 24, 2006 In November 1978 I arrived in India for the first time at the Calcutta airport near the end of a long eight-country trip. I was a US Army Major, living and studying Chinese in Taiwan and traveling with two fellow officers studying with me. At a time before the United States officially recognized the Peoples Republic of China, we were unable to travel in the country that was the principal focus of our studies. Our only guidance from on high was to travel to countries on the periphery of China and “appreciate the situation.” In India, we got to appreciate much more than we expected. If first impressions tend to determine our lasting attitudes about people and places, we would have been well advised to make our entry point into India somewhere other than Calcutta. But coming from Rangoon, Burma, Calcutta was on our route to Delhi, and we set out to visit at least two cities in every country we traveled to. Calcutta, those who had gone before us insisted, was a must. In the interest of time, we had decided not to spend the night in the city, but press on to Delhi after an eight-hour lay over. Arriving at nine in the morning, we took a taxi into the city, and, as we had done in each city along the way, we set out on foot to explore as much of it as possible in the time available. The sights and sounds of Calcutta should not have come as a surprise to us. We had talked with the group that had made a similar trip the year before, and we had just come from exploring the side streets and alleyways of Manila, Singapore, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Rangoon, and Bangkok. Nevertheless, in Calcutta we saw things we had not seen in those other places. Beset by ever-present beggars, young mothers who looked twice their actual age with under-nourished infants and young children whose eyes you found it difficult to look into, we became progressively disheartened as the day went on. The occasional dead body, wrapped in a white shroud waiting whatever was to become of it only deepened our discomfort. The sheer numbers of people and the depth of the poverty were striking. We covered as much territory as we could in the few hours available to us. Around 2:00 PM we found ourselves along the banks of the Ganges River as the sun began disappearing behind the low-hanging smog from stoves that provided warmth and cooked food in the chilly November air. It had become a washed-out dirty-gray disc barely visible in the sky. In the waning light, people on the banks and on boats moving slowly up and down the river appeared as faceless figures. We departed the city by taxi for the airport late that afternoon. In subsequent years, whenever I would see Mother Teresa on the television or read about her in the newspaper or magazine, I would recall our visit to Calcutta and feel I had some small appreciation of what she dealt with every day of her life. In Delhi, while many of the same conditions existed in the older sections of the city that existed in Calcutta, our experience was much different. We visited mosques and temples, and we spent time at the U.S. Embassy in the diplomatic quarter receiving briefings on India. From Delhi we took a bus to Agra, where the Taj Mahal is located, stopping at magnificent Mughal palaces along the way. In Agra, amidst the poverty or rural India we came upon one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. The Taj Mahal, and the story that goes with it, certainly were the highlights of our visit to India, and a poignant counterbalance to our visit to Calcutta. The tomb of Mumtaz Mahal, the wife of Shah Jahan, who died giving birth to their fifteenth child, is a testament to one of the great love stories in history. So grieved was the Shah at the death of the wife he loved so much that he built the magnificent Taj Mahal in the rarest white marble as her tomb and an enduring symbol of his love for her. Soon after completion of the Taj Mahal in about 1654, Shah Jahan’s son Aurangzeh overthrew his father and imprisoned him in the Red Fort across the river from the Taj where the Shah spent the remaining 11 years of his life looking out the window of his cell at his wife’s tome. And when he died, his son interred the Shah’s body beside Mumtaz, the only disruption to the otherwise perfect symmetry of the building’s architecture. Whatever else you see in India, you can not visit the Taj Mahal and listen to the story of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz and not be affected by them. As we were leaving the Taj Mahal that afternoon, I took a picture of a beautiful young Indian woman dressed in a traditional red and gold sari sitting on the raised stone platform at the other end of the reflecting pool with the magnificent edifice behind her. After taking her picture with the late afternoon sun radiating a golden glow off the Taj, I moved back toward it to get one or two more pictures with nothing obstructing the frame. When I turned around again, hoping to get one more picture of the young woman, she no longer was there. I looked around for her but couldn’t see where she had gone. I thought for a moment. It didn’t take much imagination to see her as a reincarnation of Mumtaz. Returning to Delhi, the following day we departed India en route Karachi, Pakistan, and the last country on our trip. In the seat next to me on the airplane a middle-aged Indian gentleman engaged me in conversation. Following a brief exchange of introductions and my explanation of why I was visiting India and Pakistan, we began a long one-sided conversation with him saying, “Of course you know the problem is Kashmir.” In the 23 years that followed that first visit to India, I traveled to countries around the world, visiting many several times. I had no occasion to return to India. My principal interest had always been China and Taiwan, and travel there and to other countries as my responsibilities expanded kept me busy enough. In December 2001, however, I once again traveled to New Delhi as part of an official US Department of Defense delegation. Since 2001 I have returned to India on four other occasions, most recently this past week. Despite its vast population and the burden that places on the country, India has emerged as a strong a vibrant player in the world economy and increasingly a good friend of the United States. Chances are when you call your credit card or national retail outlet’s customer service you are speaking with someone in India. When you work or play on your computer you likely are using software code written by an Indian. When you walk into any teaching hospital in the United States you will see plenty of Indian doctors. There was a time when many of those young doctors who received their medical degrees at American universities remained in the United States. Today an ever-increasing percentage of them choose to go home to India. And if you travel to India as I do, and you interact with Indian professionals, you see India from a much different perspective than the limited one I saw it from in 1978. Certainly the young Army major walking the streets of Calcutta and the defense official staying in world-class hotels in New Delhi are likely to see and experience different things. But having done both, I believe I have a better understanding of India than I would otherwise have. In today’s turbulent post-9/11 world it also is comfortable to know that the country with the world’s second largest Muslim population, very few if any Indian Muslims are members of Al Qaeda. This can be attributed to a vibrant, pluralistic democracy in which people from all India’s major religions have positions of leadership in the Indian government. Like the United States, Great Britain, and others, India has principally been the victim of terrorism, not the breading ground for it. I have no idea how many more times I may return to India, but I would like to see Calcutta, now called Kolkata, again. I know there is much more to the city than I saw there in 1978. And I would like to visit the Taj Mahal again and take another picture of Mumtaz.
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