At The Taj Mahal, Grime Amid Grandeur

By Meenakshi Ganguly/Agra

If you're lucky enough to get a room with a view, you'll see it right away. A shimmering monument of white, it floats above the shabby city of Agra. From afar, the Taj Mahal is as beautiful as the poets promise--a glowing tribute to obsessive adoration and a symbol of India around the world. But up close, the picture begins to crumble. Acid rain and condensation from the former Mughal capital's coke-fueled factories and, environmentalists say, a nearby oil refinery are eating away the marble and turning what remains the color of unloved teeth. The famous canals and watercourses stink. Garbage abounds. And attempts at preservation have proved ineffective, clumsy and lacking in either funds or purpose.

The trouble begins even before you enter the mausoleum that Emperor Shah Jahan built for his second wife, Queen Mumtaz Mahal. The crowds are huge (the site attracts 40% of the tourists who travel to India). And because authorities have banned fossil-fuel vehicles in the area, visitors must rent electric cars or carts drawn by horses or camels to get close to the mausoleum, even as flies swarm around the animals and the dung they scatter across the potholed roads.

After lining up for tickets ($20 for foreigners, 40[cents] for Indians), there's a second line, longer and sometimes more costly. Security guards on watch for terrorists frisk bags and bodies at two separate checkpoints, confiscating anything from a long list of banned items, including tripods, mobile phones and video cameras. And if the guards don't get your equipment, the thieves might: pickpockets work the lines.

But there's no denying the awesomeness of the sight once you're inside. The gardens, the ornamental fountains. The minarets, the enormous marble arches. It is big enough, still white enough, as it stands against a clear skyline. The symmetry is perfect. But as soon as this impression passes, the details settle in. Plastic bottles litter the lawns; the canals are dirty; guides offering tours for an inflated price are maddeningly insistent. The colored engravings are chipped and in places have fallen off. In the basement, the graves of the Emperor and his beloved are off limits, the entrance blocked with untidy wire mesh. The inner sanctum smells of bats and pigeon droppings. Enormous beehives hang from the arches; black smoke stains mark where other hives have been burned off. The river behind the tomb is sluggish with sewage.

It's not that India hasn't tried to take care of the Taj Mahal. Several state environmental lawsuits have demanded action. Polluting foundries and factories have been closed down on the orders of the country's Supreme Court. But the Archaeological Survey of India, the agency responsible for the conservation of the historical site, has neither the funds nor the know-how to carry out its duties.

Last June, for the first time in decades, a faint beacon of hope pierced the choking fumes. The Tata Group, India's mightiest industrial chain, took on the landmark's preservation. The company has previously converted former palaces into functioning hotels and promises to bring in international experts from the Getty Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution and UNESCO, among others, to help restore damaged engravings and stones and revamp the lighting system. In a move that could spell an end to the bedlam around the entrance gates, Tata also plans a tourist center that will offer interpreters, computerized ticketing, banking, a fleet of shuttle buses, a cafe and washrooms. While some see this as the transformation of the site into something like contemporary Versailles in France, others see it as a commercial affront. There are angry challenges to the Tata deal. Is this the Taj Mahal or the Taj Mall? And is the country's national heritage now up for sale? Can the Taj Mahal be purchased for a paltry $383,000?

An army of 20,000 men took 22 years to build the Taj Mahal, finishing at last in 1653. The hands of many of the workers were later mutilated to prevent them from duplicating their work elsewhere. Saving India's great jewel may take a similarly monumental and ruthless effort.