Longing

378th years ago, Mumtaz Mahal or The Chosen One of the Palace, passed away after giving birth to her 14th child, out in a tent while touring for her beloved husband's military campaign, where Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan fought for his empire.

Mumtaz was portrayed as the perfect wife with no aspirations to political power. She was a great influence on the Emperor, apparently often intervening on behalf of the poor and destitute.The intimacy, deep affection, attention and favour which the Emperor had for Mumtaz Mahal exceeded by a thousand times what he felt for the other two wives.

Too distraught at the loss of the unquestioned love of his life, the emperor was inconsolable and went into secluded mourning for one year - he came out with his hair turned white, his back bent, and his face worn. Thereafter, he ordered for the construction of Taj Mahal - symbol of devoted, undying love to his Mumtaz Mahal, his third wife - as one of the four promises made at Mumtaz Mahal's deathbed.

The masoleum took 22 years to finish by the greatest Moghul craftsmen available during those days - so stunning no castle in Europe could beat - and she was finally laid to rest inside the magnificient beauty 23 years after her demise. The tomb of Shah Jahan bears a calligraphic inscription that reads; "He traveled from this world to the banquet-hall of Eternity on the night of the twenty-sixth of the month of Rajab, in the year 1076 Hijri."

It is well known fact that to some people, the sight of Taj Mahal is capable to evoke such personal and emotional feeling that tears will roll down your cheeks, sobbing your longing for the true love - involuntarily - just like how poetically described by the Emperor himself, who was imprisoned by his son in Agra Fort till his death, across the city: -

"Should guilty seek asylum here

Like one pardoned, he becomes free from sin

Should a sinner make his way to this mansion

All his past sins are to be washed away

The sight of this mansion creates sorrowing sighs

And the sun and the moon shed tears from their eyes

In this world this edifice has been made

To display thereby the creator's glory"

One of the myths surrounding this beauty relates that once a year, during the rainy season, a single drop of water falls on the cenotaph, as inspired by 1913 Nobel Prize Winner Rabindranath Tagore's description of the tomb as "one tear-drop...upon the cheek of time".

Sometimes, there is this feeling - that you cannot described (what, why, when, where) but at the sight, smell or out-of-nothing-at-all could trigger such emotion, that could render you speechless, gazing emptily into the crowd, listening to the silence when two hearts longing for each other.

Longing, indeed, is beautiful.

Longing - Matthew Arnold

Come to me in my dreams, and then

By day I shall be well again!

For then the night will more than pay

The hopeless longing of the day

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times

A messenger from radiant climes

And smile on thy new world, and be

As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth

Come now, and let me dream it truth

And part my hair, and kiss my brow

And say: My love! why sufferest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then

By day I shall be well again!

For then the night will more than pay

The hopeless longing of the day