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"How do you know all that?" I interrupted her.
She pointed to a brochure stuck in a holder at the center of the table, and then began to laugh. "Do you want me to read the price list?" she asked.
"Why would I be interested?" I replied. "Come and see India and its pompous history, all condensed into seven days." I began to laugh. "I'd sooner spend a single day with you in peace and tranquility at the Taj Mahal. Isn't the Taj Mahal counted as one of the Seven Wonders of the World?" I asked. "I have seen pictures of it. It really looks beautiful."
"You haven't seen anything yet," Indira countered me. "Just wait, Peter."
"This means getting up at four," I said and began to yawn.
"What's wrong with getting up at the first hue of dawn, Peter? I can guarantee you it will be worth it?"
The moment that we came back to Indira's apartment after from our long-extended lunch celebration, she went directly to her bookcase. "Do you want me to tell you the official story of the Taj Mahal?" she asked. She searched for a book. Moments later she motioned me to come out onto the balcony with her.
I couldn't help notice that the book in her hand was printed in English. It didn't say anything about the Taj Mahal being a temple of love. I asked her about it.
"They left the most important detail out," she commented. "The official story of the Taj Mahal begins in 1612," said Indira after we were seated with another cup of tea. The tea in the teapot had become cold by then, but who cared?
"The official story of the Taj begins in 1621 when a woman by the name of Mumtaz Mahal became married to Prince Khurram, who later became the fifth Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan. His marriage with Mumtaz Mahal is said to have been the love-match of the century. She became her husband's inseparable companion. She accompanied him on all of his journeys and military expeditions, even the arduous ones. She became his comrade and his counselor. It is said that she also inspired him to acts of charity and great benevolence towards the weak and the needy. It is also a fact of history that she bore him thirteen children during their marriage, and that she died at the birth of her fourteenth child. Her death occurred after eighteen years of marriage in 1630. She died in Burhanpur in the Deccan, to where she had accompanied her husband on another military campaign. The great tragedy occurred barely three years after her husband's accession to the throne. Moved by grief, her husband, now the great Emperor Shah Jahan, decided to perpetuate her memory for all times to come, by building for his beloved wife the grandest tomb ever created on the face of the Earth, as a monument of his love."
Indira laid the book on the table. "It is being said that the sad circumstances of the empress' early death, who had been well loved by the people, had inspired many of them to join the emperor's intentions to build the grandest mausoleum for her that has ever been built. It took eighteen years to complete the construction work, with the involvement of over twenty thousand workmen and a vast transportation infrastructure of a thousand elephants."
She paused abruptly and pointed at me. "You were correct Peter, the main construction work was completed in 1648, although some minor work dragged on till 1652. The Taj stands tall in many respects, Peter. It is built on the high banks of the river Yamuna in Agra, and towers more than 240 feet above the ground. It became the jewel of Agra, of the great capital of the Mughal monarchs."
"Can you imagine the coincidence," I interrupted her. "This beautiful work being created on such a vast scale, and it being erected at the same time that Europe was tearing itself apart in the Thirty Years War? By the time the Taj Mahal was complete, Europe lay in ruins, with half the population of Europe butchered to death. However, almost as gradually as the Taj Mahal was constructed, and just as momentously, a mental monument was being raised up in Europe that overpowered the Thirty Years War in 1648 and stopped it."
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