Capital Glow and Blues - 4

On a particular day in November, we decided to visit the Humayun’s Tomb, one of the hot spots for visitors in the capital.  Humayun’s Tomb is listed as one among the fifteen Heritage sites in India.

It is a Taj Mahal like structure, minus the marbles of the Taj. The edifice is flanked on all its sides by gardens.

The tomb was commissioned by Humayun’s wife Hamida Banu Begum in 1562 AD, and designed by Mirak Mirza Ghiyath, a Persian architect. It was the first garden-tomb of its kind in India and is in Nizamuddin, close to the Old Fort that Humayun founded in 1533. It was also the first structure to use red sandstone at such a scale.

On this day, a large number of foreign tourists could be seen.  A particular couple was all lovey-dovey albeit in a corner.

One question kept hovering in my mind. I was left wondering what drew these emperors, mostly Mughals, to construct such lavish, monumental structures, when their subjects lived on a much lesser  modest level , if not in a state of penury. Did love for the arts and architecture motivated them to construct these monuments, or was it really a thirst for immortality, or simply a streak of megalomania existed in them?

The entry fee is quite nominal @Rs 10 per person for an Indian. One also didn’t encounter restriction of taking photographs usually found elsewhere in such heritage sites. A lot of heritage work were actually ongoing.

Overall, this is a good spot to spend a day out with your family. If you’re an admirer of architectural buildings and beautiful, well maintained gardens, it should attract you like a magnet. For the philistine like me, with minimal interest in monumental buildings and history, it provided some enjoyable moments with family amidst serene surroundings, and raised all kinds of questions, some of which I had posed in the preceding paragraph.