A crushed Shah Jahan said:
When you behold the memorial,
a sight so masterly, yet sorrowful;
you will inevitably admit
an aching little bisecting wish
that adorns your yearning lips....
parched,
barren,
effete......
And from the world's lid,
the luminaries too
would sob and drip.
#
He could well have been talking
about my beloved's words ;
......so utterly breathtaking
that a sigh poignantly quivers
in my dithering being.
Her words meander.
It is no wonder:
for all of us saunter
in thought and speech
one time or the other.
At times her words are poised and easy.....,
wonderfully jolly, sensationally starry:
They shimmer like the four minarets (1)
on the full moon night;
....brilliant......resplendent.
Then they taper from the dome
and stop halfway between the tomb
and the solemn reflecting pool:
They are calmer, sober,
and you know,
a little factual;
...what they call discriminating
intellectual, rational......
Soon the words leave charbagh (2)
and hit the red sandstone walls (3)
crenellated with flawless wisdom;
spotlessly beautiful
like the lifeless marble
that proudly commemorates
Mr. Shah Jahan's love
in grim, cold blooded grace.
We talk about
riders and scruples,
kith and kin,
restraints and constraints,
fidelity and modesty.......
....and I can not help
but to sadly agree
to the placid logic
in our impeccable scripts.
#
Logic is a wonderful remedy
for the radical and foolhardy
but for every cure,
there is a spin-off.
Deep somewhere,
a delicate,
two-cent sentiment
collapses into atrophy
and.......silently
another part of me
becomes a
meek monument
of disposable history.
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(1) The four minarets of the Taj Mahal
(2) The garden that starts from the end of the main gateway and ends near the squared base of the mausoleum is an integral part of the Taj Mahal structure.
(3) The building material used is brick-in-lime mortar veneered with red sandstone and marble and inlay work of precious/semi precious stones. The mosque and the guest house in the Taj Mahal complex are built of red sandstone in contrast to the marble tomb in the center.
Inspired by: The typical victory of logic and rationality over emotion and sentiment. A parallel is drawn between the irrefutable beauty, yet the apathy of logic and the Tajmahal, which is elegant and yet a symbol of sorrow and loss.
