American Taj

With a press of a button, the wife of the U.S. ambassador started the fountains going, and one by one, led by Prime Minister Nehru and his daughter Indira, the distinguished guests made their way by the dancing water. They mounted the great marble steps, crossed the terrace paved with smooth white pebbles from the banks of the Ganges, passed beyond a series of slender golden columns, and disappeared behind the great golden-studded white screen. Then came the inspection of the air-conditioned offices with their doors of teak, the elaborate servants' quarters, the great aluminum shade through which the sunlight filters into dappled patterns below. "I was enchanted.'' said the Prime Minister, and the Indian newspapers spoke glowingly of "a dreamlike, haunting beauty and an atmosphere of romance.'' With that, the new, $2,400,000 U.S. embassy in New Delhi was finally open to the public and ready for business.

"The Finest Architect." Never before had the U.S. Government gone to such length to impress a foreign country with an embassy. As architect, it hired Edward Stone (TIME Cover, March 31 ), designer of the American Pavilion at the Brussels Fair. The building was dubbed the Taj Maria* for Stone's wife ("Mr. Stone is the finest architect in the world," says she), and the embassy does capture much of the magnificence of an ancient Indian taj. As in the temples and palaces of old, most of the work was done by hand, each finished piece transported by Indian artisans from makeshift workshops on the grounds. Stone himself was awe-struck by the result. "Breathtaking," he would say to visitors. "Simply beautiful, simply beautiful."

Compared to the other new embassies in the diplomatic enclave of New Delhi set up by Nehru, it is. About the only people who ever had any serious objections to it were its chief occupants, Ambassador and Mrs. Ellsworth Bunker. Bunker, a man of conservative tastes, complained about the lacy grille that covered the great expanse of glass, plaintively said. "I want to see the blue sky." Mrs. Bunker, who not long ago began promoting long-handled brooms for Indian sweepers--and thus closely resembled the character in The Ugly American called "the woman who unbent the backs of our people"--had even more serious things to grumble about.

"Can You Believe It?" With all that gold out front, she said, why should the servants live in squalor in the back? Harking back to the days when she triumphantly introduced cold running water into the servants' quarters of the U.S. embassy in Argentina, she demanded bigger rooms, toilets and even balconies, instead of the sparse quarters that Europeans customarily provide for their help in India. "Can you believe it?" said she. "They weren't even going to have chimneys for their stoves." Harriet Bunker's crusade cost an extra $250,000, probably delayed the completion of the building 200 days. But it was worth it. "This is a real landmark," said one Indian last week. He was talking not about the jewel-like chancery itself, but the motel-like adjoining servants' quarters, the like of which New Delhi has never seen.

* After the Taj Mahal, named for Mumtaz Mahal, adored wife of the Mogul Emperor Shah Jahan.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.