So I figured I would start this post right where I ended the last one. Mai-Ann and I awe-struck and staring . . . or should it be dumb-struck, and staring? We were definitely speechless.
What I immediately noticed was the variation in the Marble. It’s all white marble, and the images I’ve seen of it often seem to flatten the color variation. This may in part be the photography, but we were told the color does appear to change throughout the day, with the edifice appearing yellow at both sunrise and sunset and milky white at noon when the sun is directly above. Personally, I think the variation in the marble-tones is stunning, particularly on the domes where everything you see is marble – no inlay work – so the variation only enhanced the appeal of this magnificent building. As you walk through the Gateway Arch the Taj appears to get further and further away, an optical illusion created as the monument shrinks away from the archway walls and the reflecting pond, gardens, and surrounding structures come into sight
The Short Story
I said it before – my Facebook check-in – and I’ll say it now: it’s a story as old as time:
Boy meets girl, Boy falls madly in love with girl. Boy and girl marry. Girl dies. Boy decided to build a little something to honor girl’s memory. Boy is rich; labor – 20 000 people/ day – and materials are cheap; boy builds for 22 years.
Voila, the Taj Mahal
The Longer Story
- The Boy: Shah Jahan, the Fifth Mughal Emperor of India[1592 AD – 1666 AD]. He ruled India from 1628 AD to 1658 AD; and then things got nasty in a sibling-rivalry sort of way. I know, that’s a big surprise with who-knows how many kids by his seven wives and a nice little empire to run, but that’s another story .
- The Girl: Mumtaz Mahal, Mughal Empress [1593 AD – 1631 AD] – The Emperor’s third and favorite wife (of seven) and mother of 13 of his children, plus a few others that apparently didn’t survive long enough to be counted.
- Married: May 10, 1612 AD, five years after their betrothal on a date selected by astrologers to promote a happy marriage . . . I guess it worked.
- Boy’s hobbies: besides the obvious which produced 13-plus children by just one of his seven wives, The Boy liked to build things . . . or rather to have things built. Along with the Taj Mahal, some of his other creative endeavors include:
The Red Fort in Delhi
- Taj Mahal Means: Taj = Crown, Mahal = Palace . . .so yes, the naming of the Taj Mahal Palace (really really nice Mumbai Hotel) is redundant.
- Purpose: Mausoleum – planned as a final resting place for The Girl, but the remains of both The Boy and the girl are entombed in the basement of the Taj Mahal.
- Designed by: A board of architects – seems this committee got it right – likely with the chief architect was the same lucky guy who designed the Red Fort.
- Design elements: Way too many to mention here, but the Taj Mahal is a building within a building, including an entire inner dome.
A small taste of inlay work
- Constructed of:
- White marble – hauled nearly 400 km from the quarry
- Red sandstone – hauled 40 – 50 km from the quarry
- Black onyx, jade, crystal, lapis lazuli, sapphire, carnelian, and numerous other precious and semi-precious stones from India, China, Afghanistan, and elsewhere used for inlay work.
- Constructed by: 20 000 laborers/day . . . its good to be a Mughal Emperor!
- Construction dates: 1631 AD – 1653 AD, yup it took 22 years NOT including construction and landscaping of the outer courtyards. Other completion dates are often cited because there isn’t full agreement on defining completion: is it just the Taj Mahal? should it include the main surrounding structures and courtyards? the outer courtyard?
- Tricks of the trade:
- A gentle slope – a 15 km long ramp for hauling materials
- Beasts of burden – elephants, oxen, humans, etc.
- Brick scaffolding – It’s thought that the entire building was created with a brick form/scaffolding, then marble used to face the brick before the original brick structure was all removed.
- Free giveaways (rumored) – told workers they could keep all he brick they took from the scaffolding. The scaffolding was deconstructed in one night instead of years.
Pool, pillars, and grounds
- Surrounded by:
- Four marble pillars – supposedly slanted away from the mausoleum at an angle of less than one-degree, just in case they should come-a-tumbling-down.
- Reflecting pool & Mughal gardens – the view we can all recall from pictures and film.
- The Great Gateway, A Mosque, and a Guest House, all absolutely-nearly identical.
- The rest of the story . . . or not:
- The Black Taj Mahal – Some say The Boy planned to build an identical complex with a black marble Taj Mahal on the East bank of the Yamuna River directly across from the white wonder. The Black Taj Mahal would have been The Boy’s tomb but there was a power-hungry son, Aurangzeb, and eight years in jail and other such stuff so the Black Taj was never built. True or just a cool story, I don’t know, but the ONLY ASYMMETRICAL ASPECT of the Taj Mahal is The Boy’s tomb which rests directly to the left of The Girl’s tomb. The Girl’s tomb, both of them really, the actual one in the basement and the publicly displayed one on the main floor, rests dead-center in the mausoleum in perfect alignment with the Great Gateway (North-South . . . I think . . . but then I’m directionally challenged), with her face looking towards Mecca.
- Or, we got it all wrong – Like William Shakespeare (is Willy really Shakespeare?) and the Da Vinci Code, everything we think we know is a mythic lie of epic proportions and the Taj Mahal is really an even more ancient Shiva Temple.
- The demise of The Boy – this bit is so wonderfully King Lear that I couldn’t resist sharing it. In 1658, or thereabouts, The Boy of our story became ill. Unlike Lear, The Boy had wayyy more than three kids and enough male heirs to ensure the whole succession-by-gender thing, but even that doesn’t guarantee that passing on the rule of an Empire will be a clean and easy affair. With Daddy ill, a few of the boys decided to wrest control of their own little realms away from the empire. Now breaking up the empire didn’t sit too well with one of the other sons, Aurangzeb, who happened to be quite the negotiator and a pretty fair leader. Aurangzeb rode to the rescue of the Empire and no doubt a few heads rolled. But power it seems, can be a difficult thing to give up. Having saved the Empire and with dad still ill, it was pretty easy to transition medical-care to imprisonment. It seems The Boy did recover from his illness, but by then the Empire had a new Emperor and Daddy had a quaint little jail cell in Agra, where, by looking in a mirror held far out a window, he could view his favorite wife’s resting place.
- Estimated cost: 32 000 000 Rupees (approx. $15 000 000 USD). . . then . . . as in the 17th century . . . you know, nearly 400 years ago.
- UNESCO: became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983. The UNESCO short description reads:
An immense mausoleum of white marble, built in Agra between 1631 and 1648 by order of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his favourite wife, the Taj Mahal is the jewel of Muslim art in India and one of the universally admired masterpieces of the world’s heritage.
- Viewing:
Just pay it
- Open to the Public – Saturday – Thursday, daylight hours . . . more or less
- Closed Fridays – except for limited use of the Mosque
- Night Viewing – from 8 – midnight five nights each month (the Full Moon night and the two days before days after the full moon). Exceptions are Fridays and the month of Ramzan
- Sunrise – best viewed from the Great Gateway. Plan for between 6 and 7 AM
- Sunset – best viewed from the across the Yamuna River where the Black Taj Mahal would have been constructed (there’s a park facility there). Plan for between 6 and 7 PM
- The Actual Tombs – apparently open to the public for a few insanely busy days each year. I couldn’t find the specific dates.
- Cost – 20 Rupees if you are an Indian National, 37.5 times that amount, 750 Rupees (approx $13 USD) if you are a “foreigner.” Just bite your tongue and pay; you can afford to get here to see it, you can afford the thirteen lousy dollars.
- Annual visits – between three and eight-million people depending on your source . . . so basically, A LOT. All sources agree that fewer than 1 000 000 visitors come from outside on India, so that gives you some idea of how significant this monument is in a country where a huge portion of the population earns less in a month than many North Americans spend at Starbucks. Pay the 750 Rupees and be happy.
Our Visit
Hollywood Style
Foolish pics
Back at the tourist center Sanjay introduced us to a photographer who would come along and take pictures of us on tour for just 100 Rupees ($1.80 USD) / purchased image. We said, “what the Hell, why not?” Lets face it, how many times have all of us vacationed at wonderful locations and taken dozens of pictures, only to discover that there isn’t a single decent picture of we-the-vacationers? What we forgot when we made this decision is the apparent fascination Indians have with posing; its impossible to walk through a mall, or restaurant, or public washroom, or any other location for that matter, without seeing someone or several someones, with pouty lips, inhumanly arched bodies, and other characteristics of 1950’s Hollywood publicity photos or other such foolishness. Don’t get me wrong, we all have our wonderful foolishnesses, as I’m reminded every time I watch One Week, one of my favorite Canadian movies with its never-ending “world’s-biggest” fascination in Canada. Anyway, all of the professional pictures have to be taken before stepping off the platform at the Gateway arch, So our first 15 minutes were spent following the photographer’s instructions. AAARRRGGGgggghhhhh!!!!
I bought the entire set of 22 printed photographs, a few because they were good and most the rest to be permanently destroyed before anyone else ever sees them. Sorry folks, everything that evokes images of Marilyn Monroe or James Dean, using the faces and bodies of Mai-Ann and Blair is now a pile of ashes. I will however share one brief moment of foolishness (intentionally blurred); but ask for no more! That said, Sanjay is an excellent photographer, so we still managed a few photographs that include he two of us. It was, in my case, a really bad-hair day, but vanity be damned; with the Taj Mahal as your background, either everyone or no one looks good . . . or so I’ll tell myself.
And the rest
The rest of this blog is pretty much a photo tour. We hope you enjoy the pictures; they really don’t do the Taj Mahal justice, but we had fun taking them. The images are more or less in the same order as the tour and their are captions to explain them if you open the individual pictures.
At The Center
At this point we entered the Taj Mahal. There are a few NO PHOTOGRAPHY signs, so of course people are furiously snapping away with everything from 1990’s style flip-phones to the latest and greatest it digital SLR cameras. If this was a no-photography-because-we-want-to-sell-you-postcards-and-books situation, I might have joined the throngs; but its a mausoleum, a tomb, someone’s final resting place, albeit a level or so below for the real things; respect and reverence won out.
As for the no-photography-because-we-want-to-sell-you-postcards-and-books thing, I actually find myself wishing there was more of just that here. With the exception of the Gandhi Ashram in Ahmadabad, we haven’t actually gone anyplace where you can purchase photographic and information materials about the specific historic site we are visiting. A lot of the places will have some sort of book store etc, but you are most likely to find books and whatnot on a larger topic with a page or two dedicated to the place you are visiting. Yes, I actually kind of miss that money-grabbing aspect of the North American tourism industry.
Getting Back to the Taj Mahal, it’s important to remember that this is a building within a building, two domes included. The archways are the entrances to the outer building, but there are actual doors at the entrance to the inner mausoleum. Just before the main (South) door there is a large fenced-off grate in the floor with a simple sign indicating that the tombs of The Boy and The Girl are down below. As we half-pushed and were half-shoved into the square inner chamber we saw that the chamber is dim, lit only by a single [low wattage] chandelier high above the center of the room -a recent addition I’ll venture – and sunlight that enters through the doors and a few honeycombed openings. Well, the room is lit by that and the hints of light seeping through the translucent marble, even in the inner chamber, simple yet awesome.
Looking up, you see the the interior of the inner dome, no false ceilings here . . . or rather this dome is the false ceiling for the outer dome that we all know and love. In the center of this perfectly square room is an equally square two-meter high honeycombed-marble barrier, resplendent with elaborate inlay work similar to what is seen throughout the Taj Mahal, both inside and out. Most common among the inlay work is images of lotus flowers, a symbol of beauty. Beyond the barrier, dead center and in perfect North-South alignment (I looked it up) is a recreated tomb of Mumtaz Mahal, The Girl, difficult to see well, but undoubtedly beautifully adorned. To her left (when facing North) is a slightly larger, higher tomb, equally stunning I’m sure, but somehow slightly less significant by its off-center placement, the recreated tomb of Shah Jahan, The Boy of our story.
Having walked / been pushed around the entire centerpiece – I hate to see this place on a really busy day – we managed to squeak our way out through the same door by which we entered. we wandered through the hallway – inner and outer building walkway – on East side of the Taj. Still no pictures from the inside, but you get an excellent feel for it all by looking at the exterior images, just think of yourself as being sandwiched between two of those buildings, one big one small, and just a little simpler ornamentation, no scripture on the inside if I recall correctly. As we exited the North archway, we were treated to the view of the Yamuna River, and the Gardens where the Black Taj Complex was to be built . . . maybe.
More
And On Love
So The Boy built this whole complex to honour The Girl, his favorite of seven wives, for eternity. When it comes to the whole love thing I could probably stop there, but there were a few other things that occurred to me as we basked in the Taj Mahal glow:
- This is a monument OF love not TO love – The entire complex is a monument to The Girl of our story, and to Allah / God; remember one of the buildings that frames the inner courtyard is a Mosque. Scripture from the Quran frames all of the entrances to the Taj Mahal and even to the inner courtyard. The Muslim belief is that the Quran was dictated verbatim to Muhammad by Allah, so in Death The Girl is wrapped in layers of what many consider the most beautiful earthly structure ever built and the words of God. To The Boy this had to seem as close to an eternal Heaven on Earth as he could ever create. Now if that’s not an act OF love . . .
- It’s a place of LOVE not ROMANCE – I’ll grant you that constructing this little edifice may be one of the most romantic gestures in human history. It’s good to be a Mughal Emperor with what must have seemed virtually unlimited resources. It’s hard not to be awed by the love story and by the building and its grounds, but all of that is the historical romance of The Boy and The Girl, it doesn’t really generalize to the several million visitors each year. The Taj Mahal is breathtaking and the entire complex is stunning; but come on folks, its a tomb, or as Sanjay kept saying, “graveyard,” and its right beside a mosque. I assure you there was no modern-day romance in the air, at least not for me.
- It’s best the Black Taj Mahal was never built – while completing Black Taj complex across the river would have made for an unimaginably spectacular destination and a pretty fine graveyard for The Boy, it seems to me that building a second monument for himself somehow undermines the act of love that is the Taj Mahal. I may be wrong, but if there really were plans to build a Black Taj Mahal, its completion would have changed the significance and symbolism that the Taj Mahal holds in the world today. It’s fitting and meaningful that the only thing out of perfect-alignment in the entire complex, is the body of The Boy, lying beside The Girl, higher than his wife, but somehow still lesser, just so he could rest for eternity his true love.
An Afterthought
I’m not sure why, or when, but it sometime over the last few days it occurred to me that there are absolutely no furnishings in the Taj Mahal and what we saw of the surrounding complex. There are a few stone benches in the gardens, but the buildings are bereft of the furniture and art we have come to expect when visiting magnificent buildings, including portraits of any sort. Even largely ruined castles in Europe will often have vignettes to help create a sense of the place’s past majesty; and yes, even tombs and mausoleums have been known to include artifacts of or about the person(s) within.
I didn’t notice the absence of these embellishments at the time for one very simple reason: they don’t belong. The entire Taj Mahal complex is a singular work of art. To add anything else would simply detract from . . . I guess from its perfection.
Now that is Awesome!
Thanks for the facts:
- Wikipedia
- The Official Website of the Taj Mahal
- Our tour guide, Sanjay, Traditional India Vacations
Related Posts:
Blair's India 