Mumtaj’s soul rests on Friday. Saturday is full of diversity. It is obvious. Friday’s rest makes weekend more troublesome. If you don’t have a camera, Taj is not a place for you. And yes, you must have someone to accompany, who can click an illusive picture of yours while you can stand stupidly posturing one of your hands holding the tip of Taj. The second hand!? Who cares? I assure you, at that very moment, if someone borrows your other hand for a lifetime, you’ll not even ask for a penny. All you do is stand mindlessly in a hope that the photographer will merge you intelligently with the Taj, and will make your pose look intelligent.
Now on a serious note, what will you do without a camera? All you want to have is a witness. A creative witness, more so! The intellectuality of the purpose behind the visit to the Taj is directly proportional to how far you have come from.
Local guys do well without cameras. They don’t want witnesses. They just want no witness about the fact that they were searching for solitary and they were with someone. Yes, Taj Mahal is in Agra and Agra is in Uttar Pradesh. Anyways, what can be a better place for romance? I guarantee, not even a single girl would have spared her boyfriend, with the question- “Will you build something of this sort for me?” And the guys generally would be responding with a sense of responsibility dissolved with shyness and smile-“Why not?” I say tourism department should nourish these loves, you never know when one such lover might get serious.
North Indians, excluding the inhabitants of Agra, visit Taj Mahal with a pride. They come with a feeling of possession. You’ll hear stuffs like “It’s one of the wonders of the world, it’s wonderful. It’s ours. Take a picture Pinky.” Even when they queue up for the tickets, they keep on discussing “Why are we being charged? It is our national heritage!”, until they buy the tickets. Anyways, they generally come to see the beauty. They don’t hire guides. Before reaching the guides, they already happen to buy tickets for Taj. They don’t want to spend much on their own national heritage. It’s their own. People from Delhi are dudes, they don’t want photographs. You’ll see local photographers there “Color-photo, Color-photo, Color-photo, Sir, you want color photo?” And people from Delhi- “No, no! It’s fine. We are dudes.”
South Indians are the craftsmen of poses. They hug the pillars, sleep on floors, lift a leg, watch the sky, turn into Natraj and leave them there alone, I am sure they’ll lick the walls. They don’t let any pose escape. It’s probably because, they aren’t much habitual of seeing white stuffs, and that too in enormity. Guides don’t attract them too. But they carefully follow the guides hired by some foreigner, whenever they get time from their photography.
Guides earn money through foreigners. Foreigners believe, they are in a foreign country and they ought to not know something, no matter how much research they have done before coming. And the guides there are so trained, that they snatch the word ‘WOW’, no matter how strictly a foreigner beheld his praises.
“Sir, it is one of the wonders of the world.”
“Okay.”
“It is completely built out of marbles!”
“Oh.”
“You see, they carved the marbles too very beautifully!!”
“Oh yes.”
“It was built in 17th century!!!”
“Okay.”
“There wasn’t even computer that time to design the architect!!!!”
“Is it?”
“Sir, there really wasn’t any computer!!!!!”
“Oh.”
“It was really a very difficult task for that time. It took over 3 decades!!!!!!”
“Oho.”
“Sir Mumtaj was unquestionably beautiful. She indeed was the sexiest lady of that time!”
“WOW!!”
“Let’s move Sir.”
You see? If diversity united at a place is what one is looking for, Taj Mahal is that. Not less than people from 15 different states of India and 10 different countries of this world together crowd the place. Although not interacting, not troubling, just clicking and posing and romancing and duding and still coloring the place with their presence. I happened to visit it last Saturday. And what I found was a Technicolor Taj.
