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The Taj Mahal

from a visit in February, 2000

After years of entering through a side door, visitors now enter as originally intended, through this red sandstone gateway. Well, not QUITE as originally intended: you have to go through a wooden framed structure that purports to be a metal detector, though it has no visible wires or attached electrical apparatus.

Stepping through the gateway, this is what you see. The classic Taj picture. I need to clarify that too though: this is what you see in the middle of the day. A blindingly brilliant Taj, almost too bright to look at.

It is just like they say: the Taj changes with every passing moment. The sun slides a hair further west, and the Taj changes color. You blink and look again: the Taj has changed again. We think of the Taj as enduring, unchanged by time, but part of what makes it so achingly beautiful is how its beauty changes with each moment, as fleeting as a butterfly.

I tried to leave the Taj after an hour's visit, but I turned back to look once more, and, like Orpheus, was stuck. I stayed until closing, sorry that the grounds are closed at night.

Here is the view FROM the Taj, looking back at the entrance.

Scenes on the grounds: lawn mowing, sentinal duty.

The Taj framed inside an arch of the mosque just to its north.

Having been deprived of seeing the Taj at sunset and by moonlight by strict closing hours, I made a point of returning at dawn. But there was no Taj! Thick fog shrouded it completely. You couldn't see it until you were right up on the platform, practically touching it.

Then, for one very brief moment, the fog thinned, and I saw ... a dream. Suspended in the air above me hung the fairy-tale dome, faint as a whisper, as insubstantial as the mist surrounding it -- and yet there it was. Like seeing a thought, a hope, a dream. It was the most beautiful sight I'd ever seen.

I feel to the ground and snapped this photograph. The fog closed in seconds later, not to lift for hours more.

Another lovely framing, this from near the entrance gate.

My cousin Mia.

Classic tourist shots of Mia and myself.

More of same.

A detail of the marble and inlay work around the outside of the Taj, an inspiration and model to carvers and handicrafts sellers throughout India.

With all the talk of the Taj, and all the photos, have you ever heard tell about the inside? Or seen photos? I hadn't. It is very dark inside, and I hate using a flash, so these photos are a bit blurry: they were taken handheld at 1/4 of a second! They show the lovely inlay work around the fake tombs of Shah Jahan and his beloved Mumtaz.

But here's the neatest thing about the inside of the Taj: put a tiny flashlight gently up against the orange carnelian in the inlaid flowers and they light up like something on fire, sparking brilliantly in the darkness.

The other perfect thing inside the Taj I couldn't capture with my camera: someone calling out a Muslim prayer in a deep rolling voice. The dome catches and echoes it with such authority it sounds like Shah Jahan himself is calling out from the past. As he is.