It was as if the Yamuna River turned as black and
thick as tar and swallowed the emperor whole. The weight of his wife’s death
pulled him deep into a void of terrible suffering that was bottomless and
inescapable. The common people felt great pity for him, for they knew that Shah
Jahan had lived the most comfortable life as emperor, with all the privileges
in the world. And so to have his most beloved Mumtaz Mahal taken from him
surely caused pain unlike any suffering that they knew in their lives. For
them, poverty and disease and death were so common that it was never a surprise.
Shah Jahan, who was always protected from such
realities, was not prepared to deal with the death of his true love. The
emperor could not cope with the loss. To attempt to mend his broken heart, he commissioned
the best architects and engineers of the day to build a mausoleum of a size and
scale that befitted his love for Mumtaz. As she was the most beautiful woman in
the world, he demanded that the building be erected in the most beautiful
material, Rajasthani white marble. It was to have inlays of jade and crystal
brought all the way from China, turquoise from Tibet, and lapis lazuli from
Afghanistan. Mumtaz was pious and humble, and so a mosque was built on the
western end of the complex. Four minarets were erected to soar into the sky,
places where the muezzin’s call could echo through the area in somber humility
to the God that had taken Mumtaz away. The gardens surrounding the mausoleum
were to be made in the image of Paradise, so that all would know that no
greater woman had ever been born and that in death she was surely the brightest
star in Heaven.
The construction took more than a decade. Shah Jahan
oversaw every detail with fiery intensity; it had to be perfect. She was
perfect. Anything less would be a disgrace to her and to his love for her. From
afar he measured the symmetry, demanding unprecedented exactness. He scolded
and beat laborers who did not comply with his wishes of complete dedication. The
building was his lunatic obsession. He observed every day’s work with implacable
attention and a silent desire that once the Taj Mahal was completed, the
emptiness in his heart would somehow lift and he could escape the overwhelming
helplessness he felt as he was getting pulled deeper and deeper into the black
void.
Twelve years later he stood inside the finished mausoleum.
He looked up at the inside of the main dome and tears rolled down from his
cheeks and fell onto the marble tomb that held the remains of Mumtaz. The
building was truly emblematic of Heaven. The resplendent white marble gleamed
in the sunshine. The intricate carvings and stonework, the inlays of precious
stones and ethereal thuluth script at the Great Gate – which read: O Soul,
thou art at rest. Return to the Lord at peace with Him, and He at peace with
you. – made the Taj Mahal an
otherworldly paradox; it was both solid and ethereal. In the morning mist,
those who saw the Taj Mahal for the first time wondered if it even existed, or
was it some trick of the clouds? Angels could reside in the building’s rooms
and feel as comfortable as if they were still in Paradise.
With all the splendor of the Taj Mahal – its
incomparable gardens and beautiful crystal ponds, its perfect symmetry – still,
it was not enough. As Shah Jahan wept under the central dome, he knew that his
powers were limited and that he too was as human as those he ruled. All the emperor wanted was for Mumtaz to be
alive again, to hold her hand and gaze into her eyes – an act that was once so
simple, but that now all the riches in the world could not restore to him.
No comments:
Post a Comment