A Trip to the Taj Mahal

A Trip to the Taj Mahal

My first and only trip to the breathtaking Taj Mahal

My first and only trip to the breathtaking Taj Mahal that crowns the glorified city of Agra, which is about 200 kilometers from Delhi, was perhaps a pilgrimage that I could not forget even if I tried. I remember, vividly, the excitement as an eight year old. I was bubbling with energy that morning. My excitement had manifested it self as a peculiar churning sensation in my tummy, that deprived me of a sound sleep all night.

Finally, as I stood in front of the awesome Taj Mahal, its magnificence rendered me speechless. White marble dazzling in the sun, it stood a vision of pure symmetry. The thought of the magnitude of toil behind this truly exquisite palatial architecture was baffling and imperceptible. The architect, without a shadow of doubt, was a genius. Built out of pure white marble that was brought to the location from miles away, the Taj Mahal was an epitome of human ingenuity. Dark cypress, glossy lawns and tranquil lagoons with the image of the heavenly Taj Mahal rippling across its surface, proved to be the perfect setting, plunging me into an ocean of peerless beauty.

The merciless sun was beating down as it was peak summer in India. Emanating from the palace was an aura that is not in my capacity to weave into words. Comprehensible only by experience, it seemed that time had stopped (I wish it did!). Illumination from the dome fell on the cenotaphs of Emperor Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahall, the queen of his realm and his heart. The attention to detail was abundant. Delicate wreaths and scrolls emerged intricately from marbles, brown and violet. Lacelike calligraphic inscriptions in Arabic adored themselves to every doorway. They were notes from the Quran and signified the hand of God in the creation of the masterpiece. Truly speaking, its magnificence and splendor does make ones mind doubt if indeed the Taj Mahal was the work of mortal hands.

As I surveyed the Taj Mahal, with my senses overwhelmed with what my eyes beheld, it was almost as if I had been teleported to a different realm. It all came to an abrupt conclusion when I was painfully brought back to a place with dimensions which could only be described as distressing. I witnessed something that silenced my perception of life, forever. Never before had I seen images so gruesome and the place could not have been more ironical. Right beside the symbol of affluence there were people afflicted by abject poverty. The paradox was stunning. Dwelling in a cluster of dilapidated huts, poverty and despair reverberated from every corner.

Having been born and brought up in a family that has been blessed with basic amenities and more, I, as a child was alien to poverty and the wreath of sufferings that accompanies the curse. Incidentally, India has been ailing with poverty ever since its inception as an independent nation. The shroud of love and care with which I had been brought up was very much how I defined and perceived life. I could not have been more wrong. The things that I witnessed shook the very grounds on which my world revolved. My excursion to the once symbol of affluence and love from time immemorial, the Taj Mahal, was an eye opener in more than one way. It revealed to me another side of life that was equally fathomless, as the splendor of the palace, clad in pearl white marble. It branded an impression on my mind that is as indelible as the exotic beauty of the Taj Mahal. I guess being a child magnified what I saw by telescopic proportions

As I looked on with horror, I saw children; their innocent faces and eyes virulent with childish fervor almost beguiled the onlooker of the suffering and torture that poverty had unleashed on them. Malnourished and a body plagued by diseases, they sought nourishment from rotten victuals, picked up from garbage cans. With nothing to armor their body, they roamed about naked, exposed to the elements. Begging on the streets, it seemed that their self respect had long been charred by the fire of the degrading humiliation of their circumstance. The very soul within them exhibited a lifeless form.

The orgy of desperation and anguish that I saw in the eyes of the children was just the beginning of my journey through the annals of poverty. Soon, the true dimensions of the land that sustained them were revealed to me. Black was all that met the eye. Slime from sewerage waste slithered on the earth. Ferment with bacteria and a breeding ground for illnesses, the stench was over powering. The very life sustaining water that quenched their thirsts came from a near by tank where it was stagnating. Algae, which thrived in the water, presented it with a light green hue and the power to kill. Pure drinking water seemed to be a myth. Dwelling in feeble huts made out of stubs of wood and occasionally reinforced with bricks and stones with plastic sheets improvised to serve as roofs, it was their only escape from the elements (or they thought). With no room for sanitation, it seemed that there was indeed no room for human life to exist.

The flood gates to my emotions had been opened and they found voice in the tears, welled from the ocean of sorrow deep within me, which now washed my cheeks. I was silent. The memory of the Taj Mahal’s charm and beauty was a distant past, lingering in the shadows of my newly found sadness. The intensity of what I witnessed invaded my cerebral nucleus, begetting an avalanche of thoughts and questions. My inner turmoil had consumed me in totality. Seeking not an answer, I sought realization, for I knew that an answer meant nothing more than jargon and an act of expanding one’s mere vocabulary, if not accompanied by realization. But, it is imprudent to assume that they are concomitant.

Days passed and I contrived not to dwell on the recent happenings. My efforts were a fiasco. Like embers, the thoughts and pictures were still very much alive in my mind and constantly perturbed my sea of thoughts. Words were superfluous, as my innocence had painted a panoramic insight to my feelings, through my facial expressions. It was not long before my mother read me like an open book and questioned my melancholy. I can never say why I never went up to her earlier, but ultimately realization in the form of a sermon was beseeched.

The mechanism of “karma” and the workings of the Cosmic Motor that were explained to me were, then, still obscure. Thus, the “answer” remained undigested by the limited power of comprehension of an eight year old but realization had been given birth. Tranquility, then, found no barriers within me. My once perturbed mind sought permanent refuge in the dawn of truth that I was indeed blessed and that life was far from a bed of roses. I realized that with every day came night and with every night came day. They went hand-in-hand and such was the decree of the Cosmic Being. Life might be a different context, but the rules that govern it are essentially the same. Life is synonymous with balance. The realized ones, who were brave enough, have preached the doctrine of balance and balance alone. The idealism of equality stems from economic disparity. Ever since the dawn of human civilization, man has been a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. Yet he strives to achieve something that is unattainable, namely equality. But, then again, it is idealism that justifies all of humanity’s actions- be it the pursuit of war or peace. Thus, I realized that the extremely rich and the extremely poor walked the same path of life, side by side, as the much sought after vision of equality was an ideal, and thus unattainable in its very nature. “Ideals”, in the words of Carl Schurz, “are but like the stars, we never reach them, but like the mariners of the sea, we chart our courses by them”.