A Teardrop on the Cheek of Time: The Story of the Taj Mahal (45 page)

At sunrise we watched half the building blush softly pink. In the evening the sunset tinted the other half a peachy-orange. Just minutes later as the dusk sky provided a mauve backdrop, the Taj faded into purple silhouette. The semiprecious stones sparkled in the setting sun. In moonlight they glittered and glimmered like fireflies as the Taj itself grew softly silvered, sometimes half-dissolving into a melancholic, mysterious mist. Given the beauty of his impressions of the changing light on Rheims Cathedral, or on French haystacks so similar to those in fields around Agra, what would Monet have conjured from the interplay of light on the Taj Mahal? What nocturnes would Whistler have produced?

We found it impossible to keep simultaneously in focus all the ingredients that we thought contributed to the Taj Mahal’s beauty. To concentrate clinically on one element, we discovered, quickly overemphasizes it and distorts its relationship with the others. In any case, there is something inherently elusive in the Taj Mahal’s beauty. Francis Bacon wrote in 1625,
‘that is the best part of beauty that a picture cannot express’
. There is indeed an intangible dimension to one’s perception of the Taj Mahal, perhaps encapsulated by Keats’s assertion that beauty is truth and truth is beauty, or perhaps related to the fact that the Taj itself transcends any reproduction, any second-hand enthusiasm. For Islamic visitors, the knowledge of the truth of the Koranic inscriptions, an appreciation that the complex was designed to represent a paradise on earth, can only add to their sense of beauty. For many, many others, ourselves included, the knowledge of the other central truth that the Taj Mahal is the expression of Shah Jahan’s love for Mumtaz Mahal is fundamental. He was by no means an entirely admirable man, but the depth of his love and the scale of his loss as expressed in the Taj Mahal are overwhelming. Poet Sir Edwin Arnold wrote in 1886:

Not architecture, as all others are,
But the proud passion of an Emperor’s love
Wrought into living stone which gleams and soars
With body of beauty, shining soul and thought
.

Perceptions of this love colour all responses to the monument, inducing in some a sensual feeling that the marble exhibits a flesh-like glow and that the dome represents a milky breast, or in others the concept that the Taj Mahal is an enchanted castle in the air. Standing together beside the flower-inlaid cenotaphs of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz lying side by side, we understood that the Taj Mahal was, above all, the product of deep emotion. At the heart of all the grandeur and magnificence lie two human beings who loved each other.

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