Wednesday 20 April 2016
Jaipur, After Dinner

Since tomorrow is a welcome get-up-late day (I have nothing scheduled until my noon pickup to drive to Jaipur Airport), I'll try to post one more blog before bedtime. Of course, my bed is in Jaipur on Wednesday, but my narrative takes me back to:

Sunday 17 April 2016
Agra

It's up early again for a sunrise visit to the Taj Mahal, certainly worth a few hours lost sleep.  There is little I can say to add meaningfully to all that has been written about this building, its mythological love story and its delicate architecture and decoration.  This morning's visit allows me inside where the bodies are buried deep beneath the coffin-shaped monuments.  No photos are allowed inside the building to capture the delicacy of the pinta dura (Italian, "hard stone"), decorative work inlaid with semi-precious stones.  What looks like paint from a distance is really carved into the marble and thus infintely more difficult but more permanent.

The First Gate

Inside the First Gate

The Taj and its Perfct Image in the Pool Waters

Monkeys at Work

Monkeys at Play

  

Family Day

Parting View

In my last blog I called the building "Neoclassic" rather than "Romantic," which is not surprising since the Romantic Age did not begin until long after the monument was completed.  The major trait, of course, is the absolute symmetry; even down to the smallest decorative detail there is no variety or variation.  Each aspect of the Taj is an exact mirror of its twin.  This is partly what accounts for the sublime sense of peace and rest in the design; all is still and fixed.  If the building were Romantic, the smaller designs would all differ and provide the "unity in multeity" that Coleridge so admired. This, or course, is not a criticism of the design, merely a comment.

It's back to the hotel for breakfast and a very short break before Gary takes me to the second important monument in Agra:  The Red Fort (built earlier than the Red Fort in Delhi).  Like in Delhi, this fort is also combination domestic palace for the Shah and military camp for his army (and still is today).

 

The "Baby Taj," was the second inspiration for the architecture of the Taj Mahal (the first was Hunayum's Tomb in Delhi), inspiring Shah Jamal to use white marble instead of the more traditional red sandstone.  Although built on a much more modest scale, the similarities are obvious.

 

 

The accumulation of days and physical exterion is starting to take its toll, so I opt out of an optional tour to a marble engraving workshop and spend the afternoon in quiet meditation (ie, I take a nap).

The next blog will finally get me to Jaipur.