Rumpled Trousers

The Taj Mahal

Posted by The Holy Goof , Saturday, October 23, 2010 7:45 PM

I am sitting here.
Beneath a tree on the east lawn of the Taj Mahal. I arrived when the gates opened and have spent most of my day exploring the grounds. I am speechless, in awe. I have no way to articulate how i am feeling and i feel completely inadequate at making any sense of this. All I can say is that i felt caught, swept up, in this momentum of bodies rushing toward the gates of the Taj. The velocity of hands and arms and legs made it easy for most people to ignore the throngs of beggars lining the street which travels directly to the entrance. but every so often my eyes would fix on a particular scene and i felt transfixed. a small child bathing in a pool of filthy water. an old man sleeping beneath the unreliable shade of a weathered canopy. emaciated dogs roaming about, looking for scraps of food, entire families doing the same. elephants, camel taxis, donkeys, rickshaws. all if it pushing and pulling at the senses, shoving the shoulders of my being, meeting me directly in the eye and waiting for my next move. and then there we were, just when i felt ready to scream at the invasive nature of all of it, we stood before the main gates and moved inside where all of the chaos came screaming to a halt. from the main gate you are deposited into a plaza surrounded by two more gates. One to the south and one to the north. One gate for royalty and the other for…me. I took off my shoes and climbed through the entryway. i was deposited on a platform which faced a linear reflection pool. surrounded by gardens and footpaths, which lead right up to the Taj. There she was. glimmering in the early morning light. absorbing the warm hues of summer and casting them about. We were not meant to withstand such beauty. My body was pulled, lead to her feet. and i climbed obediently the steps before me. a mausoleum so full of life. a tribute of his undying love. their tombs in the centre of the room. i sat for almost an hour. listening to their voices bounce off of her walls and climb out through the clerestory. i am in love. love. love. love. love. Behind the Taj lies the yamuna river. and beyond that the banks in which Shah Jahan meant to erect 'The Black Taj'. you can still see the foundations and irrigations ditches of the project which were never finished. There is so much detail that a photograph cannot relay. and so i spent hours wandering around just observing, staring at all of it. the inlay work of the pietra dura, the incised painting of the ceiling, spandrel detail, the jail screen carvings which surround the cenotaphs inside of the tomb. the calligraphy of the outer pishtaq. I asked krish what they do when they need to replace or repair the Taj and he told me that the artisans who originally built it were under strict government contract not to work on another project, infact…the artisans today who work on the taj are direct descendants of those same men. I was fortunate enough to visit their workshop and watch them in action. sent my parents a marble chopping block with an floral inlay, the same stones used throughout the taj.
Picked up a statue of Saraswati, the hindu goddess of education and music for Jess. Picked up a little elephant for Kaila. I wandered back here, to watch the sun set over the Yamuna River, to glimpse the Taj one last time before heading to Jaipur through the backroads of Rajasthan.