It’s a profound privilege to see one of the wonders of the world. It was Matt’s birthday today, and I’m sure it will be one that he remembers always.
It was very foggy this morning. The Taj Mahal looked like a ghost, insubstantial, almost transparent. Peculiar how dream-like the Taj is, and yet the red buildings surrounding it, beautiful as they are, seemed perfectly solid and tactile, while the Taj floated, like it was suspended in milk.
What a strange and beautiful monument to love. From far away, it has a pale, ephemeral quality. But up close, it’s built of huge slabs of solid marble, covered over with sinewy and delicately flowering designs. It’s unquestionably the most extraordinary mausoleum in the world. It’s the clean, pure heart of a filthy, chaotic city.
We went to eat a birthday dinner at a rooftop restaurant nearby… a magnificent view of the Taj. And a very different view from the postcards, too. From our vantage point, the Taj Mahal was rising like a fairy-tale cloud palace in the midst of a sea of corrugated metal, trickster monkeys, and buildings in an advanced state of decay. Open sewage runs through the streets of Agra; dogs skulk with dirty children in the alleys. But the Taj is always there, omnipresent, floating whitely above the refuse.
There is some unintentional comment here about death. What is it. Purity? Or something shadowy and hidden? Something crawling in the dirty streets and peering darkly through the gates into a magnificent garden…
I feel it all around me. But I feel life, too. Even if it comes out in smudged colors and cage-rattling coughs.
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1 comment:
The contrasts in India must be staggering (as per your description of the Taj). There were certainly contrasts in Africa, but nothing to the scale of India.
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