Agra 2

In real time, Ross and I are in Kolkata. He only has three days left here, and I only have eight. On the plane, I annoyed Ross by singing my own version of "The 12 days of Christmas:

"On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:
FIVE GOLDEN RINGS!

Five golden rings, five golden rings, five golden rings,
and Fiiiiiive goooooollllden riiiiings."

I told him it was Sonic's version. He retaliated by reading me his book about the atmospere of Venus. It seemed boring, even for him.

In blog time, it's still two weeks ago in Agra.

When last we left out heroes, they were planning to see the Taj Mahal at sunrise. Somehow, this plan actually happened, and our friendly tourguide met us outside our hotel at 6:15 sharp. Mom and Dad took a rickshaw, so Ross and I navigated a treacherous field of lepers, cow dung, and peddlers all by ourselves.

"We are lost," said Ross after some time.

I agreed. "We'll have to make a life here."

From then on, whenever we'd been momentarily left alone and were sure we'd be stuck in India forever, that was all we'd say. Some of the places we'd be forced to "make a life" at included Rajasthan, the Thar Desert, and a Delhi shopping complex.

We somehow made it to the Taj Mahal. Our guide kept stopping at every pool of water, exclaiming "Friend! Friend! Take picture of reflection!" (He pronounced it refleckson.)

The Taj Mahal's color changes distracted me so much that I almost missed the troop of monkeys stalking tourists. Although I was pleased to finally get some monkey pictures, the story about the unfortunate Indian mayor they murdered kept coming to mind. The animals' hissing didn't help. Ultimately, some unspeakable monkey acts were accidentally witnessed, leading my father to compare them unfavorably to the famously sex-crazed Shah Jahan.

--

It is understandable that Indians would take an interest in Ross. He kind of stands out. But perversely, they seemed to be even more interested in his hat. Once, a strange man grinned broadly at Ross and said, hilariously, "Fancy guy, fancy guy! This is a fancy guy!" to no one in particular. Ross was nonplussed.

At the Taj Mahal, some idiot tourists approached Ross and asked to borrow his hat to take a photo. For the second time in two days, he was thoroughly shaken. Ross, whose politesse is usually more than enough for any situation, had no idea what to say. Thankfully, my mother was there to give them hell.

"Why didn't you just say 'no'?" I demanded.

"I...I didn't know..." he trailed off miserably, and I felt kind of ashamed for asking him.

He seemed to cheer up when he saw a flock of parrots and pigeons feeding on our way out of the monument.

Our next stop was the Lal Killah, or Red Fort, an amazing city-fortification made of red sandstone. We hadn't spent an hour there before some asshole family man who clearly should have known better asked Ross for his hat. My mother and I both said "Absolutely not," and Ross, who had hesitated, looked sheepish.

"You are a full-time job," was all I said.

Later, my guard slipped and some idiot tourists had gotten him alone and snapped a photo or two. I think he secretly enjoyed the attention.

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Our next stop, if you can believe it, was McDonald's. Not wanting to miss the chance to snap some pictures of Ross in his least-favorite habitat, I was pleased as punch. Indian McDonald's is interesting, and not entirely bad. I will say that the models in their ads are ugly, horrible people who will probably die alone unless someone takes the initiative and rids the world of their blight through homicide. Their strange "Maharaja Mac" burger started Dad on an obnoxious royalty kick wherein he started to behave as though he were the Maharaja. Unfortunately, since he was American, most people treated him that way.