A Sigh made Stone 2

                                    “Pearl-crowned, when midnight airs aside have blown
                                     The clouds that rising moonlight faintly kissed;
                                      -An aspiration fixed, a sigh made stone.”
                                                                                     H.G. Keene, The Taj


“O Noble, O Magnificent, O Majestic, O Unique, O Eternal, O Glorious...” began the Ninety Nine Names of God, inscribed in calligraphy on her tomb inside.
Inside the inside, Mumtaz Mahal, Venus of the East, lay with her face turned right, facing Mecca. She had died in, and from, her fourteenth pregnancy and, in apparent sympathy, the last blood red streaks of the failing sun filtered through the balcony screens and roof openings of the interior, capturing the remaining lapidary gemstones that the British hadn’t chiseled out, while they had been replacing Shah Jahan’s gardens with lawn.
The echoes we made in her darkness were as perfect as the crimson-lit magic we emerged to. Along the paving stone path, our feet hadn’t felt the ground. We stared in wonder, in a heavenly dusk, at a pearl formed of ether, at beauty so profound as to be agonizing. There were no words, but Shah Jahan’s. ‘The sight of this mansion creates sorrowing sighs and makes sun and moon shed tears from their eyes. In this world this edifice has been made to display, thereby, the Creator’s glory.’
The recipe for making a Taj Mahal was simple. Excavate three acres down to 160 feet, above a riverbank. Fill with dirt. Dig hundreds of wells and fill with stone to form footings. Form a fifteen-kilometer tamped-earth ramp, to transport materials to the construction site. Build a marble platform on one of sandstone. Instead of lashed bamboo, erect a colossal brick scaffold to mirror the tomb (and have it easily dismantled overnight by decreeing that anyone can keep the bricks taken). Find a thousand elephants to bring translucent white marble from Rajasthan, jasper from Punjab, jade and crystal from China, turquoise from Tibet, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, sapphires from Sri Lanka, and carnelian from Arabia. Recruit twenty thousand laborers from across Northern India, sculptors from Bukhara, calligraphers from Syria and Persia, stonecutters from Baluchistan, and inlayers from Southern India. Mix well, and bake for twenty-two years.
I pedaled Robyn and one of the rickshaw waif wallahs back to the Akbar, and Percy and Julie followed behind. We shared our day’s impressions with Ali Baba, who produced late night veg cutlets, a guitar, and a promise to come with us the following night, to reveal the secrets of the Taj.
Sixty years before Shah Jahan, descendant of Genghis Khan, Timerlane, and Charlemagne, began his monument to Mumtaz, his legendary grandfather, Akbar the Great, built a city, twenty miles away. It lasted a year less than it took to build. After fourteen years, Fatehpur Sikri ran out of water, Rajput goodwill, and time.
Our two waif wallahs, with freshly laundered checkered tea towel dhotis, were waiting outside the Akbar next morning. They pedaled us to the Igda bus station by the GPO, for a forty-five minute delay and a three rupee local bus, another hour and a half slowly-slowly, down a track lined with large mimosas, along fields of green corn dotted with white double-chinned cows, and rice paddies and water buffalos, to the ancient deserted city.
Still surrounded by the five mile long wall built during its original construction, we climbed the rocky ridge, and the fifty-two steps to the 180 foot high Buland Darwaza Lofty Gateway, and into the most amazing ghost town in the world. Above us, inscribed in black and white marble calligraphy, inlaid into the red and buff sandstone, was proof of Akbar’s religious broadmindedness: “Jesus, son of Mary said: ‘The world is a Bridge, pass over it, but build no house upon it. He who hopes for a day, may hope for eternity...’”
We donned slippers, and entered the rectangle of the Jama Masjid mosque, for it’s floral watercolors, and central mihrab adorned with an inlaid stone mosaics, glazed tile borders, and golden inscriptions on royal blue. Far pavilions. We left our slippers to rest on the terrace of the palace of Jodha Bai, the Rajput princess who became Akbar’s third wife. When Portuguese pirates captured her ship and refused to release her, Akbar laid siege to the Portuguese colony at Daman.
Less weighted was the house of Akbar’s Hindu court jester, the Birbal Bhavan, described by Victor Hugo as ‘either a very small palace or a very large jewelry box.’
But the most fascinating part of the abandoned city lay in front of the five tapered stories of the Panch Mahal, Akbar’s ‘windcatcher’ pleasure palace of pillars and pierced lattice screens, perfect for playing hide and seek with his harem of slave girls.
The pea-green ornamental pool in the foreground contained an elevated central square stage island, connected by four stone bridges, on which Akbar could direct life-sized games of pachisi, played with human pieces, on the adjacent Diwan-I-Khas.
We made it back to Agra by late afternoon, in time for a stroll through the lanes around the Akbar, and a horse-drawn tanga carriage to Aircon Kwality Caterers, for mutton cutlets and the late apparitional reappearance of Percy, who had eaten at a better, cheaper restaurant.
Then came the finest evening, O Noble, O Magnificent, O Majestic, O Unique, O Eternal, O Glorious... O, the finest evening. It began, continued, and ended with, and because of, Ali Baba. We had been playing guitar until he looked up.
“It's time.” He said, producing a tola of hashish. We looked at him with concern.
“Babur brought it from Afghanistan.” He said. “His great, great grandson, Shah Jahan, also drank opium with his wine. Did you not see the inlaid poppies on Mumtaz’s tomb?”
We moved quietly into waiting waif rickshaws, the cool night down to the Yamuna River, and through the main gate into another world- a bright waxing gibbous moon hung in space, casting the guava dome in its pure silver. The Taj received it and turned it soft, even, diffuse and golden. Topped with it’s own gilded moon finial, horns pointed to heaven and surrounded by lotus motifs, Shiva’s trident appeared alongside the essential symbol of Islam. Ali Baba took us to the right-sided gate and made us walk backwards and forwards, and through the gate the glistening teardrop on the cheek of time floated gigantic towards us as we retreated, and shrank as we advanced.
And around the back we sat and watched as the moonlight spilled over the dome, drowning its quarter-configured projection on the onion's apex; and he showed us how the ‘W’s on the front flattened out as we attacked, how the precious stones in the pietra dura inlay could only be discerned by the light of the full moon, how the front minarets leaned outwards only a touch, and how life could be dark and cool and sharp and, at the same time, illuminated, blood-steamed and serene. It was, to every ghost there, the finest evening. Years later, Thoreau reminded us. If you have built castles in the air... Back in our garden room at the Akbar, however, on that finest evening, infused with the love of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz, we watched the fireflies, dancing on the lawn.