A clarification...

The Taj is a beautiful building, bordering on exquisite and I truly do appreciate it and every other gorgeous building and temple I have seen. I really do enjoy wanding around old buildings and ruins; spending hours finding the small rooms that no one ventures into, examining the inlay marble or paintings that craftspeople spend months, sometimes years, working on. And I enjoy it.

I also believe that everyone person, and every culture, needs to be surrounding by aestetically appealing things, whether they be buildings, or clothing or modes of transportation. People feel better when they live in a beautiful environment.

One of the things I love about India, and I loved about Central America, is the beauty people surrounded themselves with their clothing, and with the things they use their their daily lives. I wish we were more concerned with aestetics in the US, and I'm glad that the current trends in architecture involve building beautiful buildings that are open, airy, and comfortable to use, built to be art that we live and work in.

All of that said, I still am not completely comfortable with putting tremendous resources into buildings and other objects that are not actually used for anything. (The Taj for example.) The temples and mosques and palaces we have visited had an actual purpose (even if I don't agree with that purpose), and the art was meant to be appreciated and enjoyed, but also lived with.

And on a related note, I am really enjoying India in all its forms. However, since I can't express most of my thoughts around my travel companions, my blog is serving as an escape valve for a lot of this stuff.

More from Mumbai in a few days.

what I really wanted to write about the Taj

(Here's what the original ending of the india blog on the Taj. I decided not to post it on the other site, since I doubt many of my work colleagues were appreciate the commentary.)

I'm getting a bit tired of typing now (and I do actually have some work to do), but before I go just a thought on the Taj. Yes, it's a beautiful building with goegrous inlaid marble and all sorts of the other interesting features, but another major aspect of it is that it is a "monument to love" and "romantic," etc. etc. The guide actually asked me how my partner felt about me going to such a "romantic" place by myself. Umm...yeah...it's a building. It took millions of Rupees to build, money that could have been spent on things like roads and schools. And it was built for a dead woman, who couldn't exactly appreciate the gesture made by her husband.

Yes, I'm being a bit of cynic here. I do appreciate the architecture and the artwork that is present at all of the tombs, monuments and temples we have visited over the past few days. But I wish more people would remember the human and social cost of building them.