The Taj. You have to see it to believe it: nothing else in the world is so grand and so perfect. I mean, I could be biased.
In an era of constant movement the Taj is one of the few places I have come to twice: first in 2017 work onboarding, and now more than three years later in December 2020. The glorious marble monument to eternal love looks the same as it did three or 300 years ago, but I am looking at it with different eyes.
When I look at the Taj now I understand something about the ground it stands on: the holy, glacial-fed, utterly polluted river that is its backdrop, the gardens and havelis built by subsequent emperors to admire it, the scars left by the insatiable British who looted it as they plundered the subcontinent, the deep desperation but magnificent human spirit that characterizes Uttar Pradesh of which the Taj is the crown jewel. I know how to tell who is lying to me on the street, how harsh or gentle to be with each, how to find the hidden places with the really good views. Moving around Agra I notice the patterns in the pulsing street life, the ways that the chaat and mithai and shoebox-cyclewallas and bare refugee camps tell the distinctive story of the place.
In the brutality of 2020 it is easy for me to feel that I am digressing, wasting time. But I did not know any of this the first time I came here. And while none of this knowledge is marketable, its meaning is that it deepens my connection to the human experience. That’s worth it. That’s what we’re all after. To me, that’s what Changing Tires is about; and it strengthens me to think that each of our squad is continuing this quest in our own way, pushing the way we look at the world, and our work, and our people, and ourselves. We are getting there.