TAJ MAHAL: AN ETERNAL MEMORIAL OF LOVE???

By: Nandagopal Jivana das
(Narender Nolakha)

I born in India, grew up in India but I visited the Taj Mahal only once and that too on a school trip. So, I remember a little bit about it. Shortly after the schooling, I was lucky enough to come in touch with the ISKCON and got connected to ISKCON YOUTH FORUM. So, I never desired to visit it again. I was always thinking that how people can like it so much? I wanted to share a bit about the same.

At first sight, I thought of Taj Mahal as very ‘astonishing’ but the more I went closer to it, the more I was realizing that it was not that much astonishing as I was thinking earlier. This time the famous saying: “First impression is the last impression” didn’t apply. Although, it seems to be very big and great in the Picture but in reality it is a very small place. The marble work inside it is very clear- its walls are so finely worked upon and there are flowers engraved in the stone too, but at end you see the signs of Mughals again and again. Once you’ve seen, you’ve seen.

So, what to say about this “Eternal Memorial of Love”? It was full in itself! Full in show-off and full in sadness too!!!

This is the nature of Love. Whole world is singing its glories, poets and writers are building bridges of its appreciation, psychos are taking it seriously and girls & boys are dreaming of it. Moreover, advertisers are selling it and kings and queens, even sweeper on the road is looking after it.

But what we get at the end? Only sadness!!

This is the topmost secret of this love. Either you don’t get it or even if you get it then it is just opposite to your wishes or it turns into a bad dream. Or if you think like Shahjahan that you’ve got it then it slips from your hands.

My dear friends, this is just a show-off, a cheating, a sought of dream. This is not reality!! It is false because all its work runs behind the body which is nothing but a bag of blood, stools, bones, etc that’s why it seems so good at first sight just out of illusion. If you join two of these bags and add some hormones, you’ll get love!

In this way, TAJ MAHAL was full in itself. Gardens, marbles, lightings, lamps, and what is there in between these?? Two dead bodies!!! At last Taj- a memorial of ideal love- is a place where two dead bodies are buried and if the love, of which it is a memorial, would have been eternal and ideal then it would not have met death at end.

If you want something better then you should love something which is eternal and not that which is destroyed at the end. That which is eternal is the Soul which makes this body living which is distinguished from a dead body. By soul, I mean to say the living energy which is near to every one of us and that energy which keeps this machine like body running.

Soul is the part and parcel of the super soul and that super soul is nothing but a partial expansion of Supreme Personality of Godhead, Lord Krsna Himself.

So, real love means eternal love between an individual soul and the super soul; eternal loving relationship between you and the Supreme Personality of Godhead or between you and Lord Sri Krsna.

To re-establish that loving relationship between you and Lord Sri Krsna, which is much beyond the Taj Mahal, is the aim of ISKCON YOUTH FORUM.
Hare Krishna!