Day 5: Perfection is a subjective concept

Perfection

Perfection is an interesting thing. I wonder if it exists. We see things through our own lenses and interpret them based on that. What is perfect for me may not be perfect for me. As many of my imaginary readers know I am a mathematician and it’s tempting to regard mathematics as a source of truth. If I knew what was perfect in mathematics then I might have an algorithm to determine perfection. Alas it is not so.

Euler: a bit of a human calculator

A perfect number is a number that is the sum of its divisors (including 1). Examples are 6 = 1 + 2 + 3 and 28 = ! + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14. So is 2,305,843,008,139,952,128 but I won’t give its divisors here (it was discovered by Euler in 1772 with only a brain and an pen).

The thing is that these numbers are all even and no one knows whether an odd perfect number exists. It doesn’t seem likely but, for a mathematician, that’s not good enough. We do know that an odd perfect number cannot have 105 as a divisor and we know that, if it existed, it would be bigger that 10 to the power 1,500 (which is a bloody big number). But we do not know and cannot prove whether one exists (whatever it is) nor that one does not exist. So perfection, by this definition at least, is flawed.

I was struck by this today when we looked at the Taj Mahal. One of the most important geometrical concepts is symmetry: this is about ways in which you can move an objet so that as a the result of the movement the object looks the same. Mughal architecture was based on symmetry. It was based on a reflective symmetry. Draw a line down the middle of the object and the left hand side looks the same as the right had side, as if the line was a mirror.

The Taj Mahal is perfectly symmetrical. And its perhaps because of its apparently perfect symmetry I found it less overwhelming than I expected it to be. I could not see the same symmetry (though it may have been there it was not obvious) in the Hall of Mirrors (Sheesh Mahal) at the Amber Palace near Jaipur (which we see on Day 7). This perhaps all goes to show why I try to live by the aphorism “it is better to be vaguely right than precisely wrong”.

Driving to Agra

We spent the morning driving to Agra from Dehli. It’s about 200 km but that doesn’t mean 2 hours and you’re done. There is a freeway but it took us at least an hour of crawling through the Delhi traffic to reach it. Once reached it is an interesting road. Someone told me once about driving to the top end and about the corrugations in the road and how they sound and feel of the suspension drives you round the bend. This I think was a similar experience. The road is a bone shaker.

We had been surprised over the last few days that we had not seem any accidents on Delhi’s roads. The main facility in a car appears to be the horn followed by the steering wheel, the accelerator and only finally the brakes. I did see an indicator being used but I think the driver had knocked the indicator stalk by mistake. On our way out of Delhi and on the other side of the road there was an accident. The tailback was horrendous as the whole road was blocked.

Skipper Damien strides purposefully toward the facilities when we stopped on the road to Agra

Once on the road it was interesting to see the countryside. There were new sights for us to see. The first thing we noticed was the chimney stacks. There were lots of them. Once out of Delhi you enter the state of Uttar Pradesh and it seems that this area is a significant producer of fly ask bricks. Now I wouldn’t know a fly ash brick from a house brick but my good friend Wikipedia is there just to clear up these moments of ignorance.

An environmentally friendly fly ash brick chimney

Fly ash brick is a building material containing class C fly ash and water. Now you know. Except you don’t because we don’t know what is fly ash. Again Wikipedia steps in: “Fly ash, also known as ‘pulverised fuel ash’ in the United Kingdom, is one of the residues generated by coal combustion”. But even Wikipedia gave up at Class C fly ash. I suppose there must be Class A and Class B fly ash and I suppose they must be better in some way than the Class C. We shall never know. I did learn that “fly ash bricks are light weight, therefore, transportation is easy. Also fly ash bricks are uniform in shape and size in comparison to burnt clay brick, so they require less mortar in brick work and finishing work resulting saving of cement mortar”.

My betting is that these are a sample of Uttah Pradesh's finest fly ash bricks. 

Please tell me you don’t want to know any more about this.

We saw many dried cow dung heaps. These dried cow dung cakes are used as fuel in rural India. There were also what we thought were hay houses or shelters. We worked out later that they were probably for grain storage. I did not manage to get a decent picture of these but they were round with a what looked like a conical roof. There were fields full of a yellow flowered crop that we learned was mustard.

Fuel for the winter

Apart from this the road was about as interesting as the average freeway which to say not very. Some relief was gained from the odd signs like “over speeding invites prosecution” which makes perfect sense but which is a completely un-English form of expression.

The keen reader will wish to know exactly the route we took. He may be disappointed as I cannot be sure this is the way we went but if I was using Google Maps to drive from Delhi to Agra this is the way I would go.

Agra

The outskirts of Agra seemed to go on forever and were characterised by more cows and donkeys wandering the street than I had expected. We passed the so called “baby Taj Mahal” which is, in fact, the Tomb of I'timād-ud-Daulah (which means “pillar of the state”: he was actually called Mirza Ghiyas Beg and he was a Persian official).

There are so many of these structures falling into disrepair. This was at the side of the road into Agra. 

A goat wanders around at the side of the road into Agra

I am not really sure what this is nor what the man inside is doing. He may of course live in it. Even if he does he will have satellite and a mobile phone.

We made it to the Jaypee Palace Hotel which was our hotel for the night. After the delights of the Visaya this was a sight for sore eyes. But in line with my theory of perfection it wasn’t an hotel that I warned to. Excellent service, spotlessly clean and great facilities but was a hotel that (apart from its Indian dressed staff) could have been anywhere.

The Jaypee Palace Hotel nestled in the hillside. It did not look like this.

We were greeted with an admonition not to carry guns, explosives and ammunition, we went through a metal detector and then we received a garland of marigolds.

Security was full-on at the Jaypee Hotel. We had to pass through a metal detector on our way in.

There was in the foyer a massive bouquet of some yellow flowers which we enjoyed hiding behind.

The G and I hiding behind a bunch of yellow flowers. I expect the flowers have a name and that you, Gentle Reader, know it. But I do not. I am not a flower type of guy.

The G and me suitably garlanded

There then came the critical question of lunch. Our fearless skipper (Damian of the Spirit House) thought we should eat in the hotel but I was delighted to learn that this would not be possible and so we piled in the bus went instead to a restaurant called A Pinch of Spice and I may say that this was a good choice. One of the dishes we had was called Kashmiri Dum Aloo which is stuffed potato with cottage cheese (paneer) in a tomato sauce. Spectacular.

I should not make fun of this as my Hindu is crap.

Agra Fort

We had a packed afternoon and evening. We started with the Agra Fort. This is a truly massive construction. It’s quite rightly a UNESCO world heritage site and it’s about 2.5km from the Taj Mahal. It was a whistlestop tour for us as we had lots to do. It is 94 acres in area with walls that are 70 feet (about 20 metres tall). It’s really a walled city.

The Red Fort. It's big. Really big. And impressive.

And it's still impressive (and big) when you get inside.

Some sort of structure on the site dates back to the 11th century. Sikandar Lodi (1488–1517) was the first Sultan of Delhi who moved to Agra and lived in the fort. He governed the country from here and Agra assumed the importance of the second capital. In 1556 the Mughals under Akbar took it over. Realising the importance of its central situation, Akbar made it his capital arriving there in 1558 (the year Elizabeth I ascended to the throne of England and France).

Some detail from some columns in the Red Fort.

More Red Fort stuff.

Akbar did a load of renovations but it was his grandson (Shah Jahan, 1592 – 1666) which turned it into the construction that we see today. He was also the dude that built the Taj Mahal. The fort changed hands and was the scene of much intrigue and dispute over the next couple of hundred years. It was the site of a battle during the Indian rebellion of 1857, which caused the end of the British East India Company's rule in India, and led to a century of direct rule of India by Britain.

Enough, enough - I can take no more pictures of the Red Fort.

Taj Mahal

The story of the Taj Mahal is pretty straightforward. I have a book on it that I should have read before I cam; I have had it for years, started reading it and then put it down and never picked it up again.

Shah Jahan was born in 1592. He was the son of Jehangir, the fourth Mughal emperor of India and the grandson of Akbar the Great. In 1607 he caught a glimpse of a girl. It was love at first sight; the girl was called Arjumand Banu Begum. He was 14 years old and she, a Muslim Persian princess, was 15. They married in 1612.

In 1628 Shah Jahan became Emperor and entrusted her with the royal seal. He also bestowed her with the title of Mumtaz Mahal, meaning "Jewel of the Palace". Though Shah Jahan had other wives also, but Mumtaz Mahal was his favourite and accompanied him everywhere, even on military campaigns. In 1631, Mumtaz Mahal died giving birth to their 14th child. While Mumtaz was on her deathbed, Shah Jahan promised her that he would never remarry and would build the richest mausoleum over her grave.

Shah Jahan was so heartbroken after her death that he ordered the court into mourning for two years. Sometime after her death, Shah Jahan undertook the task of erecting the world's most beautiful monument in the memory of his beloved. It took 22 years and the labour of 22,000 workers to construct the monument. When Shah Jahan died in 1666, his body was placed in a tomb next to the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal.

Estimates of the cost of construction vary due to difficulties in estimating costs across time. The total cost has been estimated to be about 32 million Indian rupees, which is around 52.8 billion Indian rupees (US$827 million) based on 2015 values.

The Taj Mahal is without a doubt an impressive building. In this picture its symmetry is slightly marred by the unsightly scaffolding around the minaret on the right. 

[L] The G is further decorating an already decorated corner in the Taj Mahal. [C] This motif is repeated thousands of times around the Taj. The colours are exquisite and are made from finely ground gemstones. [R] Further detail of the motif. That this was done with hammer and tiny chisels is amazing. There are differences between each of the green flowers if you look with an unfairly critical eye. They must have been made with some sort of template.

Jama Masjid 

The Agra Mosque (Jama Masjid) is one of the largest mosques in India and we paid it a visit. Wikipedia tells me nothing about it and in a sense I can see why. It was all getting much of a muchness. I do not mean that in a derogatory way, far from it. I think I was reeling a bit from the sheer size of the monuments we were seeing (and the Agra Mosque is big too). These buildings represent a vast investment of wealth that had to be generated from somewhere. I read somewhere ( I cannot recall where) that India’s economy in the 17th century was as big as Europe’s. I am not sure what that means but it doesn’t feel wrong.

Another big red building. This time it's the mosque. After a lifetime of being used to admiring Christian churches I note the lack of memorials and statuary in mosques (which is due to the prohibition on human and animal imagery and that people don't get buried in mosques). Readers will correct me if I have got this wrong. I will pull out Karen Armstrong's book called "God" when I get home and check this out.

The streets of Agra

On the way back to the hotel we drove down streets packed with the daily life of the city. The shops seem to be clustered into groups of emporiums selling similar products. As we drove we passed a whole group of shops selling recovered car parts (I suppose we would call the scrap merchants). They looked chaotic and perhaps they were but, as I have said, shit seems to work in India so I am sure that if you went into one of them looking for a cylinder head for a Mahindra, then they would find it.

A spare parts shop. As with much of India it looks like complete chaos but in fact that chaos is a veil over a well-oiled system.

In its day the Majestic Fireworks Co may have been majestic.

An Agra side street

Dinner

In the evening we went to a cookery demo at the house of a woman called Monica (which is probably an westernised version of her real name). I thought this was going to be more hands-on than it was but it was good nonetheless. She had a daughter who was getting married two days later. We asked how many guests there would be at the wedding. She didn’t know exactly but between 850 and 1,000. So a small affair then.

She demonstrated several dishes; we had bits of paper to write notes. The way she did her dahl (lentils) was different than the way I do mine; she used asafoetida which I have but I don’t use as I am not sure about it. But I will be using it now. She also soaked the dahl for a couple of hours first. She also did Zeera Aloo which are (sort of) fried potatoes.

Monica preparing Zeera Aloo.

Finally there was the Butter Chicken. I have always used almond meal mine but she did not. She did use a prodigious amount of cream and orange food colouring. The G is not sure about the food colouring but I think I will give it a go. Certainly it tasted far better than any Butter Chicken I have ever made.

The recipe for Butter Chicken as transcribed from Monica's  demonstration. Believe it or not it is written in a standard script. I hope I can read it later.

I think it may have been as close to perfection as a Butter Chicken can be.