According to the husband, this sentimental fantasy cost him more than 15 million rupees ($ 202,000).
An Indian built a replica of the Taj Mahal, a universal symbol of eternal love, in Burhanpur, in the center of the country, as a sign of love for his wife and also as a message of peace for his country.
“We want to send a message of peace and religious harmony,” he told the AFP Anand Prakash Chouksey.
“There is a lot of hatred around us,” he continued, “love solves all problems in life and the Taj Mahal is a symbol.”
Positive energy
This architectural masterpiece of Indo-Islamic art, the country’s top tourist attraction, was built in Agra in the 17th century on the initiative of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan to perpetuate the memory of Mumtaz, his deceased favorite wife.
Anand Prakash Shuksey’s wife, on the other hand, is alive, and was able to give her opinion on the construction of the palace, a third smaller than the Taj Mahal, located 800 km away.
“My wife just asked for a meditation room. She is a pious woman, ”he explains. “According to her, the dome brings a different atmosphere and a lot of positive energy,” she adds.
Its reproduction required three years of work, sixteen years less than the mausoleum that inspired it.
According to the husband, this sentimental fantasy cost him more than 15 million rupees ($ 202,000).
Love poem to marble
The Taj Mahal shines in Agra, on the banks of the Yamuna River, like “a pure and lonely tear (…) on the cheek of time”, according to the verses of the Indian Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore, dedicated to the monument, a true poem of love of marble.
“We used Makrana marble to build the building,” the same material the Taj Mahal was designed out of, “explained Chouskey, who plans to affix the Indian flag to the top of the main dome.
He will not be fully satisfied until, at last, he has made the symbols of India’s most popular religions appear on the minarets that stand at the four corners of his Burhanpur palace.
Mumtaz died in that same city, giving birth to her fourteenth child in June 1632, after having accompanied Shah Jahan to suppress a local revolt.
“The structure of the ground did not allow then to build the Taj Mahal here, so it was erected in Agra,” where Shah Jahan and Mumtaz rest side by side, he said. (I)
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