Vaah Taj!!

 

The early December morning sun beating on the monument of love. Its beauty ablaze in full floral glory. The wonder in white marble with inlay ornamentation, carved plant motifs, inlaid creeper designs; silver and gold work on the ceilings; Persian inscriptions carved in ornamental cartouches; repetitive stylized creepers inlaid on borders; marble and precious stone inlay. How much your aesthetic sense can take in under the pleasant onslaught on your senses! The arches, windows, cupolas, panels with ornamental cartouches, incised painting in multiple colors… Keep watching and trying to have a knowledge of all these details. Then you give up. Not possible. It’s a sea of beauty, only there to be felt. So you surrender to the seductive arrows of beauty and then you simply feel it, bask in this white beauty.

Here you feel that stones have a soul, a dancing one. Go to Taj Mahal to see it and feel it. Tourists are loitering in awe on the spacious plinth around the shrine of love. With soaring spirits people look up to the Taj, lost in its majesty. This is pure appreciation. But there is someone who has crossed the threshold of appreciation, built upon it to achieve something more substantial—reverence. To him it’s a living temple of beauty and he the priest. The elderly white gentleman is in love with the deity, beauty. He is performing rituals. He has some physical disability which makes him walk with a slight droop on mildly moon-walking legs. He lights a lamp of love in obeisance to the shrine. As he and his friend move around clicking pictures, he stoops down to pick little pieces of paper and patches of green shoe covers which the tourists have to wear while going into the tomb of love. It’s his business to keep it clean, safe, at least as long as he is here; to contribute his effort in maintaining the sanctity of this place.

The tourists are simply clicking pictures, chatting, laughing, enjoying the proximity to this wonder of the world. But this man is in awe of the beauty in marble. Any scrap of paper is a stigma to the splendor of the shrine of love. It’s heartening to see him going slowly with his cleaning job. It shows the depths of his feelings for this wonder of the world. A girl hops onto a ledge on the monument from the platform. Her boyfriend starts clicking pictures. The shoe covers would spoil the picture. She removes them. The Taj might be spoilt but not the picture. The gentleman walks to her and reminds her that it’s forbidden to do so. We Indians don’t care about such things. They ignore him. He reminds her twice and then finding her to be inconsiderate enough to commit this illegality, he sadly walks away.

I would term him as the best tourist visiting Taj Mahal on this particular day; someone who felt the definition of love etched in its grand design, beautiful patterns and relief pictures. Every square inch on the beautiful memorial is a complete story of perfection and flawless faith to make something unparalleled. Every little flower, leaf or geometrical pattern shows the endless hours of artistic passion. You are lost in a maze of beauty.

The sanctum-sanctorum of love, bearing the graves of the emperor and his beloved queen, lies under the main dome. The lofty vault enclosing a rich history of love and pain. Every inch carved with chisels drenched with tears of ecstasy. It’s a sea. One can’t grab its immensity. So the casual tourist, clueless how to appreciate it or say anything, settles down to the base-level appreciation. The main high-vaulted chamber echoes with voices. So they shout their names and feel pleased to hear them echoed in the unbelievably lovely interior. Little do they realize that stones have petalous souls and these shouts count as pollution doing damage to this grand creation. If at all you have to say something, say the name of the person whom you have really loved and hear its echo.