Monday, February 09, 2009

My first visit to the Tajmahal



It was 10 years ago, when I was a fresh grad from school and took up my first job as Structural engineer. I was working on my second major project, design of a waste water treatment plant for the city of Agra. The city where Tajmahal is situated...
The design was complete and the construction was on, when we went on our first field visit. It was three of us, my boss, an accounts person and I...
It was a day trip from Delhi and we started early in the morning to meet the schedule...

We reached the construction site while the fog was still lifting and sun wasn’t completely out of the clouds, after the initial meeting and site orientation discussion, the site inspector and I headed out to inspect the site... I managed to climb on a counterfort wall that was about 30 feet high, to give me a better vantage point of the site.
Just as you would expect from a novice engineer I was asking tons of questions to the guy next to me and was very engrossed in the technical discussion when I happened to turn my head to see what’s behind me.
The landscape was all green and the sun rays were filtering through the clouds and made everything glow and there in the distance was a white familiar structure, ‘the Tajmahal’.
It has been a while since that day, but that first sight is still crystal clear in my memory...
Later in the day while my boss was busy in a meeting, the accounts person and I sneaked out to take a closer look at the Tajmahal, but I had no camera, no journal... nothing, not even a pen to make a note about that day till today...
Even in the most mundane situation, Tajmahal seemed magnificent but I still long to go back there sometime... in a more traditional way, with family, with friends, with love of my life....

What made me revisit that day from 10 years ago, well my Mum and Dad are going to be in Agra on Valentine’s day and although they don’t plan to visit the Tajmahal in this trip... I thought, how romantic!

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