Home > The Taj Mahal: A Monument to Love
The Taj Mahal: A Monument to Love
Approaching the Taj Mahal for the first time, I was filled with both excitement and trepidation. How could this building live up to its grand reputation? I walked along Fatehbad Road amidst a dense crowd of pedestrians, electric buses, camel and donkey carts, and diesel-belching Tata trucks. In order to preserve the gleaming marble from pollutions sandpaper-like grasp, the Indian government has banned all high emission vehicles from the immediate surroundings. But Agra is a bustling city of one and a half million inhabitants and, thicker than ever, trucks and cars still roar past less than a quarter of a mile away. Determined not to be disappointed, and frightened that I might be, I found myself actively managing my expectations, reminding myself that the Taj was just another building, and that I should just appreciate its architecture and not expect too much.
I crossed Gandhiji Park and walked the squirrel-thick lawns sloping gently to the River Yuminas funeral ghats adjacent to the Taj Mahal. A minute later, I was in an alley of postcard shops and tea stalls. Running the altogether mild gauntlet of hawkers, I reached the brick red outer walls of the Taj Complex itself, paid my entrance ticket and passed through a gate in the tall sandstone wall of the outer courtyard. Dropping down several steps to ground level, I stopped. Immediately in front of me was an ornate Moghul pediment decorated with elegant Quranic script above an arched opening, its shape mimicking the Taj's familiar dome. My heart skipped a beat. Through this archway I caught a first glimpse of luminous white marble. I walked slowly towards the archway, the white expanding as I moved. As I passed into the wall and under the roof of the doorway, the sparkling white became the Taj Mahal and between us stretched the symmetrical design of the gardens and ponds.
The fountains tinkled, a slight breeze ruffled hair against my face. In that moment, I was entirely alone. All had receded into a peripheral haze while the Taj and I shared some sort of strange communion; it was one of the true moments of my life. The shaped white-Rajasthani marble and cloudless blue backdrop was enough to make the entire world recede into irrelevance.
Built by the Emperor Shah Jahan for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, the Taj Mahal resonates as a mausoleum dedicated to love. Poet Sir Edwin Arnold saw the Taj as "not a piece of architecture, as other buildings are, but [as] the proud passion of an emperors love wrought in living stone." Rabindranath Tagore was moved to describe the Taj as a "teardrop glistening on the cheek of time."
Mumtaz Mahal died giving birth to their 14th child, leaving Shah Jahan shattered by his loss. He began construction after a dream, basing the design on the Itmad ud Daulah, a smaller exquisite mausoleum on the north bank of the Yumina. Years later, and almost blind, Shah Jahan's last view on earth was the Taj - via a mirror held close by a servant. He died imprisoned by his son Aurangzeb in Agra's Red Fort across the river, never straying far from his much-loved wife. His son, Aurangzeb, buried his father next to Mumtaz Mahal; despite being his father's jailer, even he would not separate his father from his beloved in death.
The glistening white marble, the Persian, Islamic and Indian designs in precious and semi-precious stones, the exquisite Arabic script, and the Persian charbagh gardens - none of these are unique, nor indeed, rare. What is unique - what is truly rare - is their combination here. For the Taj is that long sought jewel; something solid that coveys the essence of air and spirit; almost a contradiction in terms. Walking the grounds, I knew deep inside that I had seen one of the most remarkable structures on earth.
