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‘The Taj Mahal, a bewitching marble grave monument in the north Indian city of Agra, is a testament to the undying love of Moghul Shah Jahan for his wife Mumtaz. Between 1631 and 1648, he built this wonder in memory of her’

I have a very strong enthusiasm to discuss about love, lately and that feeling called me to share with you an enchanted structure of Indo-Islamic masterpiece so called ‘Taj Mahal’.

Described as ‘A tear on the cheek of the world’ by Rbndranath Tagore, an Indian poet, this magnificent monument with 22 domes and 4 tapering minarets, surrounded by 8 hectares gardens with decorative landscape, required over 20,000 workers and artisans for its finest completion. To ensure that the Taj Mahal does not sink into the ground, the building structure was designed to bear the dome weight by distributing it throughout the entire building.

Shah Jahan employed the Venetian Geronimo Veroneo and the Frenchman Austin de Brdeaux to decorate every surface of the monument with not fewer than 60 different types of precious stones; the surrounding stone can only be seen by a powerful magnifying glass. The architectural harmony and its aesthetics value remains no denial. At the point of his demise, in 1666, Jahan was buried there beside his beloved wife, Mumtaz.

Experts have debated about what makes the Taj Mahal unique and beautiful. Some suggest that it lies in the structures’ marvellous proportions and symmetry, while others argue in favour of the way that the marble buildings interact with the light, giving the Taj Mahal ever a changing character as the sun rises and sets. Still others believe that its inherent beauty lies in its purpose – a man seeking to cast in stone his love for his departed wife.

Back to our main course, how do you express you love? Does it compulsory for you to express your love in a material form like what Shah Jahan did; he lose all focus and perspective due to his obsessive sadness because of the death of Mumtaz and the mourning led him create Taj Mahal which later caused an emergency state of bankruptcy of the enormous cost of the Taj Mahal, or in a poetic form like Shakespeare did in his sonnet?

Does it via a repeated mobile phone calling for every single night or ‘I let you go, for now and for good’.

Source:

100 Wonders of the World; From Manmade Masterpieces to Breathtaking Surprises of Nature by Michael Hoffman and Alexander Krings.

Picture:

http://www.indiafolder.com/indian-monuments/img/Taj%20Mahal.jpg