I had often heard the praise of the Taj Mahal from my friend, so I had keen desire to see it, the most graceful and matchless tomb of Mumtaz Mahal at Agra. Last year, on the twenty-first of October, I went to Agra with the mirage party of my brother. It was the first time for me to visit Agra. How could I resist the temptation of visiting’s the Taz-Mahal, of whose beauty and charm I had been hearing so much since my childhood?
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I saw the Taj Mahal on the night of Sharad Purnima. On the night of Sharad Purnima, its beauty is at its height. The Taj looks very beautiful in the moonlight.
The Taj Mahal was built by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan. He built it in the memory of his beloved wife Mumtaz. It is a wonderful and world famous mausoleum. It is said that it took twenty years to built, and that twenty thousand workers were employed to build it.
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I, with some friends, reached the Taj in the evening just after sunset. We went into the beautiful garden with its pleasant walks, tall, dark Cyprus trees and smooth, green lawns. There stood up before us the wonder of the world. It is made of white marble, a splendid white dome in the centre with minarettes round It., one at each corner of the plant from on which the great mausoleum stands.
From a distance, the Taj Mahal looks small and delicate like a fairy place, but as we gate nearer we see how large and solid, it really is. When we went of the marble steps and stood close to it, the demo seemed to soar high up to the blue sky. I stood at the bank of the river Jamuna, the water of which was all silvery white in the moonlight and it made the building look more beautiful than ever. The Taj was reflected in the water of the river. It was a very beautiful scene. We went inside, and saw the marble tomb. It was all decorated with precious stones and was beautiful covered over. There we thought of the queen whose body lies buried in this grave, and the great love of the king who was constructed such lovely memorial to make her immortal. The real tomb of the queen, Mumtaz Mahal, lies in a small room lower down which one can reach by descending some steps. This hall is charming, for it has most beautiful patterns of marble-works and the florist made of alternate squares of white and black marbles. Every thing in this hall, i.e., walls, screens and tombs are covered with inscriptions from the Quran. There are also floral designs inlaid with beautiful precious stones of different colors.
Soon it was full moon. We enjoyed the wonderful sight of the Taj in the light of the full moon. It looks like a building of pearls, or a place made of silver. So bright and tender it was that it seemed to be made of white clouds. The gleaming white marble, the white shadow, the soft moon light, the perfect silence, despite the fact that there were thousands of visitors and the sweet scented garden, all made it a sight never to be forgotten. Standing before it, one seemed to be in a dream world.
The Taj Mahal is described variously by poets. It has been described as a “Poem in Marble” or a “Dream in Marble”. Rabindranath Tagore wrote many excellent poems on the Taj Mahal. No photographs, no picture, no portrait can describe its full splendor and brilliance. One must see it to appreciate it fully. One who visits Taj by moonlight cans no longer doubt that the Taj Mahal is the most beautiful and splendid on the earth. It is, indeed, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
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Next morning we visited some other historical building of Agra. We visited the Red Fort and saw the Dewan-a-Am and the Dewan-a-Khas. Then w went to see the ‘Adama-Uddaula” and the tomb of Akbar at Sikandra, near Agra. However, we could not do full justice to those building as we had to return home with the marriage party in the evening.
Submitted to RB by Aatish Palekar