The Taj Mahal of Agra
I’m not sure why we bothered to visit the Taj Mahal, really. Considering we used to live in a building so similar. Or at least that’s what our old landlord told us. Before we were married, we rented a 2-story duplex in Etna. On the phone when I was setting up an appointment to view the duplex, the landlord told me, You’ll definitely recognize the building. It is the big one on left side of the street. It is so grand that some people call it the Taj Mahal of Etna.
I definitely see the resemblance. Don’t you?
The Taj Mahal of Agra, on the other hand, is really a spectacular building. It gleams, especially in the early morning light in the couple of hours after sunrise. I’m a sucker for symmetry. It’s what I fell in love with on our first house (not the rental) and it’s what I fell in love with on the Taj. I knew the Taj Mahal would be beautiful from afar; I didn’t realize that it would also be so beautiful up close. Its elegance astounded me.
The true test of how amazing the Taj Mahal was its ability to lull us out of our cranky moods. The night before we visited, we went to bed at a decent hour because we planned to get up at sunrise. India had other plans for us. There was some sort of festival going on – always a festival – that involved tinny, haunting music blasting out of a loudspeaker. A loudspeaker that was directly outside our room. A loudspeaker that, true to its name, was so loud that we could still hear it even when we played music through our noise-isolating headphones. The only way to drown it out was to play the most raucous rock’n’roll we had on top volume. Periodically the festival music would die down. Once we realized, we’d turn off our Ipods and settle in for some sleep, finally. Then, chanting would begin, followed by music even louder than before. This special brand of torture didn’t end until 3:30 in the morning – two hours before sunrise. It is a good thing the Taj Mahal of Agra didn’t look a thing like the Taj Mahal of Etna.
Breathtaking! Funny story, too. I can’t believe the landlord said that.