Taj Mahal, India's best known historical monument built as tribute by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan to his wife Mumtaz, is becoming a victim to the ravages of time.
AGRA: Nawab Jafar Abdullah was heartbroken when he stepped into the chambers of Taj Mahal where the tombs of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz are located. The chambers are opened once a year. This time, he was stunned to see how the mausoleum was turning yellow, brown and green from inside too.
"It is marble but doesn't look like it any more. The graves are yellow, quite like elephant tusks but very yellow. The walls of the chamber where the tombs are don't look like marble. The walls appear to be turning brown and there are patches of green all over," he told NDTV, convinced that conservators should do something to save the chamber that was at the heart of the monument. "Fast".
This week, the Supreme Court in Delhi reached the same conclusion when it saw some photographs that showed the beating the 17th century white marble stunner had taken due to pollution and apathy of government agencies.
"We don't know whether you have or perhaps don't have the expertise. Even if you have the expertise, you are not utilising it," Justices MB Lokur and Deepak Gupta told government law officer ANS Nadkarni.
"Or perhaps you don't care," the bench remarked.
The soaring white marble mausoleum is considered one of the finest examples of Indo-Islamic architecture that poet Rabindranath Tagore described as "one tear-drop . . . on the cheek of time."