India, behind walls, is a different world. It can be a stunningly beautiful and luxurious world. The type of world that only a 3rd world country can truly realize. When your employees cost dollars a day, just about anything is possible. You would expect to be waited on hand and foot and you would be correct. There is the guy to hold your bag, the guy to walk you to your room. The 3 guys at the front desk standing there waiting to check you in. There are 10 guys working on the lawns, keeping them immaculate. There is the little old lady with her straw broom, removing the last remnants of a windstorm from earlier in the day. India behind the walls, is just as much a hive of activity as India beyond the walls, it’s just more orderly.
When you consider this level of service and combine it with the incredible beauty and history of India, you get a remarkable experience. You blend, thousands of years of history and Islam, Hindu, Jainism, B’hai, Christianity, then add in a hundred years of British rule, shake it up and what rolls out is India.
All the major tourist attractions are behind these walls and reflect almost all of that mashed together history. Most of these monuments are guarded by more soldiers than you can count, yet they seem very accessible. There are even more locals enjoying the monuments than you would expect. I guess they are also taking their turns enjoying the unique history that is India.
The entire point of my trip was to finally get behind those walls and see the Taj Mahal. It is a mix of Islamic and hindu architecture and design. It is mathematically exact and architecturally aesthetic. The Raja wanted everything to line up, everything to have meaning, everything to be exact. He wanted to honor his late wife, with the most beautiful and architecturally amazing building ever built. He succeeded far beyond what even he could have hoped for. He spent the equivalent of billions of dollars, in today’s money, and employed 20,000 workers for 22 years to construct this homage to his late wife. After the completion, he had spent so much money, that his son had him arrested and imprisoned him in the castle, where he would sit for hours looking out the window at his beautiful creation. Even after he went nearly blind in old age, he had a mirror brought in, so that he could gaze at the buildings reflection and remember his wife.
Most people don’t realize, the Raja had many, many wives. He built the Taj only for 1. The others are buried, rather non-descript on the grounds of the Taj, in the surrounding wall. I guess the other wives didn’t meet his standards. Having been married in the past, I think that every man should build something like this for the woman they love. Every woman that is kind, gentle and loving deserves this sort of honor. Every wife that loves her husband, obeys him, doesn’t give him any headaches, doesn’t question his decisions, follows him to the ends of the earth without complaint, deserves this level of commitment. Every wife that happily lives her entire life in devotion to her husband deserves a Taj Mahal. I guess the Raja’s other wives didn’t meet his standards and perhaps because of those standards, no other Taj Mahal was ever built, anywhere else on earth!
bgjflyer 