Ideally, I should write about my trip to India in a Chronological form that would make some sense. But sometimes, the need to write something is so overwhelming that order of events becomes irrelevant.

I can tell you the complete history of Mughal empire, mostly because I read the whole thing and partly because of Beautiful Eyes. He has seen the places that I have read about and when we talked he would tell me in details how the place looked. Of all the places he described to me, the one that I have never forgotten was Khuldabad. It is where the tomb of Aurangzeb is.

Aurangzeb, ( Alamgir: world seizer) under his rule, the Mughal empire grew the largest and he was one of the richest Mughal emperor who earned about  £38,624,680 ( in 1690)/year. For a man with such great wealth and power, he could have built huge mausoleum for himself. Instead he made skull caps and wrote copies of Qur’an and earned the money for his own use and told his grave should only be built with the money he earned himself. ( If I am not mistaken it cost 8 RS to build his unadorned plain tomb)

Beautiful Eyes told me about the small walk uphill to the Shrine of the Sufi saint. shops on either side of the walk, the door to the shrine that leads to the room where people sit and read Qur’an and then you come out to the court yard and on your left is the tomb of the greatest Mughal emperor. You climb the marble steps, past the marble façade and find a large rectangle tomb, a plain simple structure.

When I went there, the place was exactly as he described and as I walked, the only thing that was missing was the warm soft hand that always held mine.

These places, we were meant to have seen together, at least that is what he promised me. One day, I will take you to all these places..

Sometimes, life doesn’t give you all that we really want.

I showed the tomb to Yaya and told her the story.

As I left, I turned to look, perhaps I could see him standing there?

I didn’t take any photos because I didn’t want to.

http://anushankarn.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/aurangzebs-tomb.html