"Poetry carved in stone": Agra and Fatehpur Sikri, part 1

This past weekend, most of the students in the Urdu program went on a group trip to another famous location nearby to Lucknow - the city of Agra, where the Taj Mahal is, and the connected Fatehpur Sikri, both cities at the heart of Mughal history and lore. Other than the monuments and palaces, neither city really has much else to recommend it, but the architecture alone is worth risking your life to drive through oncoming traffic for 8+ hours to get there.

We began our Saturday morning with, of course, the Taj, mingling with the throngs of other tourists (Western and Indian) who came to see one of the seven wonders of the world. The Taj really is a wonder - even though I'd seen it before on my last trip to India, there's still something that makes you catch your breath when you first glimpse the white marble dome through the arch of the main gate. We meandered through where there would once have been gardens and a reflecting pool up to the main sanctum, where the tombs of Mumtaz, for whom the Taj Mahal was built, and Shah Jahan, who had it built, lay. Although the Taj Mahal is commonly glossed as a monument to undying love, I think Sahir Ludhianvi says it better in his ode to the Taj where he asks his beloved to meet him at some other place, since "Countless men in this world must have loved and gone,/Who would say their loves weren't truthful or strong?/But in the name of their loves, no memorial is raised/For they too, like you and me, belonged to the common throng." (A different verse from the same poem, in the original Urdu, is as follows: Yeh chaman zar yeh jamna ka kinara yeh mahal/Yeh munaqqash dar-o-deevar yeh mehrab yeh taaq/Ek shahanshah ne daulat ka sahara le kar/Hum gharibon ki mohabbat ka uraya hai mazaaq).

After seeing the Taj, we made our way to the Agra Fort, which would be more accurately described as the Great Mughals' walled city. Inside it are the famous Diwan-i-Am (public audience hall) and Diwan-i-Khas (private audience hall), the Khas Mahal, all white marble and intricate tracery where Jodhaa Bai and other queens would have lived, as well as private mosques, areas for the harems, and once housed pools and gardens. Shah Jahan was also imprisoned unti his death in the Fort by his son Aurangzeb.

Having seen what would have been the height of Agra's grandeur at the time when Akbar made it his capital (1558), we visited Akbar's tomb, which also boasted amazingly beautiful calligraphy and geometric designs. The room where his actual tomb was, though, surprisingly stark - a simple tomb with one lantern hanging from the ceiling, the walls dull white. I suppose that at the time of his death this room would have been opulent beyond belief, but probably due to the difficulty of restoration the decision was made to just paint over calligraphy, carving, and paintings. Nevertheless, I thought the tomb's simple nature was somehow fitting, in the sense that Akbar in particular with his love for exploring religion and life's great mysteries was at peace in a room that was free of all the pomp and circumstance that was a Mughal emperor's trademark. Just a quiet grave and the shadow of the lantern on the walls.

We also saw peacocks competing for attention in the gardens around this monument, which was exciting.