‘A tear drop on the face of eternity’ said Rabindranath Tagore, India’s greatest poet.
‘Everything that is pure’ wrote Kipling.
‘Everything that is pure’ wrote Kipling.
Mughal Emperor, Shah Jaman erected the Taj Mahal as a mausoleum to the memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal, only to be overthrown by his son Aurangzeb, who imprisoned him in the Agra Fort across the river Yuman, from where his only view was of the exquisite structure.
The story is well known and while it may be hard to feel too much sympathy for one potentate unseated by another, particularly as Jaman unseated his father, the sheer epic scale of the dazzling white marble edifice has to rank as the greatest building ever constructed, both in terms of its heart stopping beauty and its gigantic scale.
Rising at 5am, we walked the short distance from the Maya guesthouse, turned right at the roundabout and headed for the main gate. Yesterday we had tried the same thing in the afternoon but, confronted with a queue of 10,000 or more, patrolled by aggressive hawkers and battalions of pickpockets, we choked, turned and ran for the exit. It stands as amongst the best decisions we have made.
We stood for 30 agonizing seconds as the gate man put his things in order for the day, and then with his nod, slipped through the first and second red sandstone gates and to the third where we stood, mesmerized. We were the first people to cast their gaze on the Taj Mahal on the 356th anniversary of Shah Jaman’s death in the fort, six years after the mausoleum was completed.
The magnificent, white Taj is framed beautifully by the blood red arch of the main gate and from the symmetrical red sandstone archways of the identical mosques that flank it.
The multitudes soon followed, but for a precious few minutes, as the darkness lifted from blue to purple to the creamy light of the Rajasthan dawn, we were alone with the iconic marble lady. The view is ubiquitous, from a thousand Indian curry houses to every ‘500 things to see before you die’ book.
Even having seen its progenitor at Humayan’s tomb in Dehli, the Taj Mahal defies hyperbole. It is perfectly preserved and brilliantly white. Inlaid with flowers and extracts from the Quoran by a Florentine artisan, the distance shots that we all know, do not do it justice. The huge dome is a geometric wonder. The four minarets, designed to be slightly off vertical so that they would fall away from the dome in the event of an earthquake, stand like giant chess pieces; sentinels for nearly four centuries, watching over the remains of Mumtaz, in a powerful demonstration of genuine grief. What Shah Jaman must have thought, surveying his creation from captivity, we can only guess. Paradoxically, I hope his grief gave him some comfort from the betrayal of his son.
A squall passed through, leaving pools of water on the marble platform. Macaque monkeys, knelt to drink from them, in a strange mimicry of Muslims at prayer. They prowled the marble expanses, climbed the buttresses from the river bank and raided the litter bins although food is strictly banned from the complex. An adolescent jumped from the parapet, onto my back. I shook him off and he, and a crowd of his compatriots sauntered off to harass a group of colourfully veiled women bustling around one of the western minarets.
All is not beauty, though.
Ponies pull decrepit carts for tourists, some lame, others hobbled, all exhibiting pronounced ribs and protruding hips. Camels are grey with dust and lacking the hump that holds their reserves. Infant children sit in the roadside filth, monkey’s steal food from stalls, rubbish accumulates and dung lays thick on the roadway.
Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal is viewed by many as an undesirable place to stay for the night, a home for scams and scammers, rude tuk-tuk drivers and fraudulent gem shops.
But, all this aside, once within the walled cloisters of the mausoleum, outlandish and enigmatic beauty is the memory that remains with you.
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