Approaching the Taj Mahal, you pass the great Fort Agra, built by three Mogul emperors, and an extraordinary structure in its own right. We drove by it, marveling at its massive double walls, towering gateways, palaces, courts, mosques and gardens. Impressive as it was, even more so perhaps than Fahtepur Sicri, we wouldn’t be stopped. We were on our own pilgrimage to a monument called the most beautiful in the world.
The Taj Mahal is rightly called a monument to love. We were delivered to its gate by crowding into a small electric shuttle bus that carried us to the entrance. Once inside, this white marble mausoleum stands serene and perfect in a garden of cypresses, with reflecting pools shimmering silvery white, fiery red, or pale pink depending on the time of day and the elements. It has been the subject of countless artists and poets, but what makes it so unique is its fairy tale love story.
In 1612 a young woman of royalty, Arjuman Banu, captured the heart of the Mogul Shah Jahan. At the age of 21 she married him and became his favorite wife. Many stories of her wisdom and generosity are told. She was an advisor to her husband and bore Shah Jahan 14 children. She died in childbirth in 1630, accompanying her husband on a military mission. Before she died, she begged the Shah to build a monument so beautiful the world would never forget their love.
The broken-hearted Shah Jahan locked himself in his private chambers for a month, and when he emerged, his hair was white. Six months later he began the process of honoring her request. An army of 20,000 laborers worked for 17 years creating the vast tomb of white marble and inlaid precious marble and gemstones. The Taj Mahal was completed on the anniversary of her death. The Shah it is said, spent his last years locked in a room gazing at his wife’s burial site. He is buried next to her in the Taj.
Our first view of the Taj Mahal was awe inspiring. The white marble domed structure contrasted with a brilliant blue sky; the two slender towering minarets perfectly balanced on each corner added drama and beauty and two red sandstone buildings—a mosque on the left and its mirror image (built purely for symmetry) on the right, are perfectly placed.
We added our shoes to the pile of a thousand or so decorating the front lower walk and entered the darkened cool interior walking slowly around the inside of the mausoleum. It is cool but with the crowds, not quiet. A constantly changing light filters through marble screens chiseled like filagree and decorated with tiny individual patterns of flowers designed in semi-precious stone. The perfectly smooth surface of each uniquely designed flower of a variety of semi precious gemstone is incredibly intricate and you marvel at the creativity and artistry it took to create each flower.
And the Taj Mahal is all that it is described to be.
We understood that once the sun goes down sunset turns the Taj marble into lemon yellow, then pumpkin orange or pure white against a moonlit sky.
It is indeed the most incredible monument to love that one can imagine.
But, never mind love. I was more concerned about my shoes as I exited the Taj.
We had been requested to remove our shoes before entering the marble interior. I was wearing my brand new walking shoes, purchased just a day before the trip began. I loved them. I want to wear them forever. I almost didn’t find them as we walked along the piles and piles and piles of hundreds of shoes stacked outside the Taj. Finally, I came to our guide and he pointed to the two-foot pile of shoes owned by our Bus 17. I examined the pile. No shoes belonging to me.
He pointed to the second pile.
Again, no shoes.
I was beginning to panic. I envisioned myself walking barefoot around Delhi, into the railroad station and for the rest of this tour! The piles of trash came to mind immediately. Just as my thoughts became totally negative, he pointed to a pair of black shoes, for some reason standing along high on a shelf in the back. My shoes had been separated from all the other thousands of shoes in front of the Taj.
Somebody surely wanted my shoes, I thought, gathering them quickly to my feet.
We walked leisurely in the late afternoon sun around the Taj, viewing the river to the rear, talking photo after photo to our hearts content.
We had received ample time to create a irreplaceable image of the Taj Mahal in our minds—as for me, I will see it vividly reconstructed in my memory for the rest of my life.
But other images of India, not so pristine, will also remain etched in my memory.
We returned at 7:30 p.m. to the Agra Railroad Station where we were to catch the return express train to Delhi. We were warned to stick close together, don’t get separated, ignore the beggars, stand on the platform. We were handed a heavy box dinner to eat on the train ride back. It was now dark, and the noise of the platform was deafening. Beggars besieged us and we huddled close in order to avoid them. Then a swarming group of little ragged dirty children surrounded us. Perhaps only five or six years old, the troup was dirty, barefooted, with torn clothes and matted hair. One child was a hunchback, obvious because he had on no shirt. Another child held a baby perhaps three months old, hanging on to the baby even as he begged, played, jumped up and down from the platform to the train tracks below and, along with the other children, narrowly avoiding the oncoming train as it whizzed by. But he was tender and careful always with the baby, perhaps his brother.
This gang of homeless children was alone; they swirled around the tracks, jumped up and down from the platform, hopped into the plastic garbage bags empty from our box dinner, using them as houses to sleep in on the tracks for the night. Then they would approach us with pitying faces, begging for food or rupees. There were other pitiful homeless beggars who approached us too, but for each and every one of us, these children presented a tragic, unforgettable image of poverty in India.
The train was late. We didn’t board it for another hour and a half. We saw the children the entire wait. Finally, an eternity later for us tired folk, the late train arrived and took three hours to return to Delhi. None of us touched the food in the boxes. We were worried about spoiled food. There were sixty wasted boxes of food gathered up as we left the train in Delhi.
It was almost midnight. This was almost the end of an unforgettable day. But returning, the walk through the Delhi train station in the middle of the night reinforced our better understanding of the incredible poverty and homelessness in India. We snaked through the darkness of the station and out into the parking area, again surrounded by hordes of homeless people, lying on plastic tarps, sitting in the gutter, sleeping in chairs and on the ground, sitting motionless near small bonfires that lit up the darkness. It was like walking through a nightmare.
By contrast, our hotel had rose petals welcoming us as we walked through the latticed entrance. We were back in our own world.
But what an unforgettable world of the poor we had experienced that long long day.
I’ll never forget my 21-hour visit to the Taj Mahal—and beyond.
