Taj Mahal - Day 3

Day 3 (Sunday 12th Sept 04’):
As decided the previous night, we woke up at 4:30 am. Today was to be a big day, we were going to finally see the Taj Mahal, for the very first time in our lives. After the regular morning routine and a good English breakfast, Snehi and I left to go see the Taj Mahal, which thankfully to the convenience of a lot of time-constrained tourists like us, opens at 6:00 am. The hotel manager had told us that we could choose to walk for 15 mins or take a cycle rickshaw to the Taj. Due to heavy pollution effects being manifest on the Taj's white marble, the government has levied restraints on traffic in the vicinity of the monument. Now only man-driven cycle rickshaws or pedestrians are allowed to venture within a certain radius of the monument, to avoid it from further cosmetic damage, as the white marble has started turning yellow. We luckily found a cycle rickshaw outside the hotel and settled him to take us to the Taj for Rs. 20. It's amazing to see the polarities we have reached in India; how some parts of the country still continue to function fairly well in amounts, for which in other parts of the country you could'nt even buy a good lunch. Even within developing nations like ours, there exist typologies of developed and developing cities. It's just about the degree of variation and relativity with which you compare them to each other. Anyways, so we managed to get to the Taj by 6:15 am, about 15 mins behind schedule. Thankfully, we were visiting at off-season time, so there was hardly a queue for tickets. Being Indian helped, as we had to pay less than 1/10th the price for a foreigners ticket. The board over the ticket window clearly read : Indians: Rs 40. Foreigners/ Non Indians: Rs 500.
One nation's subsidy, another nation's discrimination? Flanged by tour - guides offering their services to us at competitive and therefore tempting rates, Snehi and I finally picked our guide for the morning. A dark, stout, henna-haired, paan-chewing Muslim gentleman. This was going to be a memorable tour; he was going to be a guide Snehi and I would never forget. Making our way through the security checks ( different boths for men and women) we discovered that mobile phones were not allowed inside. So Snehi had to rush to the nearby locker room as pointed out by the lady guard to deposit her phone there. All set after that, we finally entered the Taj Mahal complex through an arcaded forecourt where some of Shahjahan's other queens lie buried. The forecourt also has the Jilau Khana, a bazaar with cloisters leading to the main entrance of the tomb. The imposing gateway is made of red sandstone highlighted with marble and has octagonal kiosks on top. It is an imposing 30 metres high and a fitting entrance to the Taj Mahal, inscribed with a beautiful design of inlaid flowers and calligraphy. As we walked on this path, towards the arched doorway, our guide kept telling us about the Taj and Shahjehan, the ruler who built it for his dear wife Mumtaz Mahal. Mumtaz Mahal, who died while delivering her 14th child, was deeply loved by Shahjehan. On her death, the royal court kept away from celebrations of any kind for two whole years. On her deathbed though, Mumtaz Mahal made Shahjehan promise her two things; that he would not remarry after her death and that he would build a tomb for her which would be an outstanding monument, one reflective of his unsurmountable love for her. As Snehi and I heard these stories, the corrupt 21st century women that we are, we kept giggling ( which obviously annoyed our guide) at the assertiveness and diplomacy of the queen, who knew how to control her man, even after she was long gone. We certainly had a lot to learn here:) What made our guide really memorable and annoying to Snehi, was that he insisted on knowing the best spots from where the Taj should be photographed. So everytime I wanted to take a picture, I would be dragged by the guide ( who would carelessly hold my hand) and make me stand on certain invisible points marked on the ground, from where I was to photograph the vista. By the end of the tour, I had let go of my original ideas to photograph the Taj based on my photographic instincts, instead Snehi, my Nikon and I found ourselves dancing literally to the tunes of the our guide. Was this just an Agra-guide thing, or did all tour guides feel that they had a rightful authority over their customers and their cameras? There really is a very thin line in a tour- guide's job description; between being your "guide" ( which is why they are called that in the first place) during the tour and actually forcibly designing your experience and imposing it on you. Just about then we had caught our first glimpse of what could be the Taj's dome over the complex wall. My bias for the "element of surprise" in architecture, somehow made me disagree with Snehi when she yelled out; "Shwets, see that's the Taj". I was more like "No Snehi, It will not be visible till we reach a certain point such as the arched doorway coming up further"....I felt like there was a ceremonial route we had to embark upon, at the end of which we would see the grandTaj. As we walked up ahead, we entered the dark octagonal chamber under the gateway (the light streaming in from the opposite doorway draws you towards it). Here, framed by the arch of the doorway, the Taj Mahal reveals itself to the viewer with dramatic power. At the end of a long walkway, framed by landscaped gardens and an ever-changing sky, the Taj Mahal's snowy marble glittered in the sunlight as I said "Snehi, That's the Taj." What followed was a Taj-Mahal moment! Both of us were stunned beyond words can convey on our first glimpse of the Taj...It was White!!!..a Stunning White structure against a beautiful cyan backdrop, like a perfect painting...a small piece of what Heaven may look like! Thankfully our guide let us have our two minutes of magic, without interruptions, following which of course was a photo shoot all directed by him. The Taj Mahal stands at one side of a garden laid in the tradition charbagh style, with its square lawns bisected by pathways, water channels and rows of fountains. Halfway down the path there is a square pool, its limpid waters reflecting the marble tomb. Unlike other tombs, Taj Mahal stands at one end of the garden instead the centre. This was done deliberately, to leave its vista uncluttered by any other building. The Taj Mahal took 22 years to build and as is well known, all the masons involved in the process had to part with their hands, as Shahjehan wanted to ensure that his monument would never be duplicated. Turns out his own son Aurangzeb's tomb in Aurangabad, called "Bibi ka Maqbara" built at the end of the Mughal era in India, is a cheaper duplicate version of the Taj. Being early in the morning, the place was not very crowded. As is the experience of many, Snehi and I were drawn towards the monument, from the moment we saw it. Luckily the guide did not insist on stopping anywhere on the path in between. It was a beautiful day and time to see the Taj, as the morning sky was crisp, clear and a perfect shade of blue. The sun had just risen and its early morning rays were beginning to create the magic on the gems studded within the facade of the Taj's various arches. Only as you walk towards it, do you actually realise the scale of the monument. "It makes you feel so small, you have no choice but to be in awe of it" I told Snehi. We reached the famous white marble seat in front of the monument, where every visitor to the Taj, sits and takes a picture. Bill Clinton and his daughter Chelsea did it, Musharraf and his wife did it...today Snehi and I did it! We sat together/ alone on the seat and took our classic picture in front of the Taj, on the marble seat ( which proudly hangs in my office now) After a little more walking, we were on the plinth of the Taj. The plinth stands on a high standstone platform and at the far ends of this base are two identical sandstone structures, a mosque to the west and its jawab, or echo, to the east. This was the mehman khana or guesthouse. Thus, the main building is not just of great size but beautifully proportioned and balanced in design, perfectly symmetrical along both its axes. The only asymmetrical aspect as our guide pointed out to us later, was Shahjehan's tomb which lay to the left of Mumtaz Mahal's in the cellar below the monument. The original idea of keeping the monument truly symmetrical was corrupted when Aurangzeb (Shahjehan's wicked son), realised that his dad has plans of making a similar tomb for himself, but in Black marble which would stand right across the Yamuna river. If only Aurangzeb would have let him do it, today we would proudly have two wonders in the world, standing face to face in Agra. But as our guide animatedly described to us, Aurangzeb was in no mood to let his dad spend a few more crores of ruppees in building the Black Taj. Instead, he plotted the death of his two other brothers by packing them off to war and after throwing his father in prison ( in the Agra fort) claimed the throne for himself. The only consolation he made, was to give his dad an access to a view of the Taj, from the windows on the top of the fort. We sadly couldnt make time in our tight itinerary to visit the fort, but we were told that the fort had a telescopic lens in the window on the top, which facilitated Shahjehan's viewing of his departed wife's tomb in his last days. Had to be true love, as they call it! Walking around the monument, the guide showed us the various artistic features imbibed on the monument, including Arabic writings which distorted perspective to inscriptions of gem stones laid out to receive light in patterns. Pointing towards the minarets on the four sides of the Taj, he shared more trivia: Apparently a lot of Romeo's ( lost in love) had plunged to their death from the minarets, thanks to whom the minarets were now not accessible by regular tourists. He also said we had good timing, as the cellar containing Mumtaz Mahal and Shahjehan's tombs was open for view; done so only for three days a year, during Mumtaz Mahal's death anniversary. The Taj has an identical tomb built exactly above the cellar, on the entrance level, so that visitors do not tread the ground directly above the original tombs. We went down the narrow staircase to the cellar and paid our respects to the royal tombs. The guide showed us an inscribed circle, app. 5 inches in diameter on Shahjehan's tomb, explaining that this is where the Kohinoor diamond rested before it was "stolen" by the British and taken to London. It was another Taj Mahal moment, briefly declaring my London-Agra trip as a "Kohinoor quest: Then and Now"...In London, I had seen the India's most treasured (and stolen) export to Britain, in it's present home at the Tower Bridge museum and in India, I had seen where it originally lived in the glorious years of the Mughal era. Snehi and I, then visited the rear courtyard of the monument, where the guide showed us the blueprint ( kind of a silhouette drawing scaled 1:1 in the courtyard behind) of the spire on top of the dome. It was also here, in the rear court that our guide completely stunned Snehi, when he took both of us by our hands, made us stand on either side of him on another invisible vantage point, to show us the rear Taj view. Snehi was disgusted, as she truly believed the guide's frequent physical maneouvers were attempts at trying to achieve physical proximity with us. I was'nt too sure whether it was this, or he was just trying to be an assertive father-figure like our other guides on this trip had been. A few more photographs later, we found ourselves looking at our watches, as it was time for us to leave the Taj and get back to our hotel. As we headed out of the monument, we were joined by a guard with his suspicious police-dog sniffing all over the place. The guard told us security measures had been tightened around the Taj recently, as had been cleanliness measures, especially since it was declared a World Heritage site by the UNESCO in he year 2000. The experience had been a mixed one, a short but certainly an infallible one. As we stepped out of the Taj complex, through the same archway we had entered, Snehi and I looked back for one last glimpse of the Taj, from the very place we had had our first one. Somehow, it may seem to be romanticised, this experience we had, but you cannot escape the romance in the air at this site. This was history, it was'nt mythology and it was all for love.
The headstrong romantic in me, loved the idea that love can be manifest at this scale; the passionate designer in me loved the idea that it can be done so in one of man's most accurate, simple and beautifully constructed built forms; the poet in me agrees with Rabindranath Tagore.."The Taj is a tear on the face of eternity!"
Thus ended our three day whirlwind tour of Agra;
Time well spent..
...with an old friend
...with an old monument
...in my old home, India!