Taj covered from all angles

So you've always wanted to hold the Taj Mahal in the palm of your hand? Or perhaps stand on top of the world's loveliest building?

No problem. A team of about 200 photographers outside one of the world's greatest monuments to love can help you realise your dream.

"It's all about trick photography," said Sandeep Shivhare, a photographer who's been clicking people in different poses for more than a decade. "But things have changed since the advent of digital cameras. Now there are fewer takers for our pictures."

Loving memory

The Taj's birthday, though, has brought a boom for Shivhare and other photographers at one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

India has just begun six months of celebrations marking the 350th birthday of the white marble mausoleum, built by grief-stricken Mughal emperor Shahjahan in memory of his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal.

The monument was completed in 1654 and since late last month there has been no shortage of people posing in front of the famous backdrop to celebrate its anniversary.

On one day recently, hundreds of tourists from Indian brides in tinkly red bangles to giggly school children and Western backpackers streamed in and waited their turn to sit on a white marble bench on which many celebrities have been photographed.

Princess Diana has sat on it, as has from former US President Bill Clinton, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Jacqueline Kennedy.

The team of photographers many of them with nothing more than rudimentary cameras know all the best angles. They say that all together they click about 1,000 photographs a day at Rs50 (Dh4) a piece.

Popular bench

The most popular poses?

"The Holding Taj", which creates the illusion of pinching the top of the onion dome and "The Jumping Taj" which has people flying off the Taj.

"For people from Britain, we call it the Diana Bench, and if there's somebody from America, we say it's the Bill Clinton Bench," laughed Shivhare as people jostled to be photographed near the Taj's manicured lawns. "Otherwise, it's just the VIP bench." The Taj is in the old town of Agra, 200 km southeast of New Delhi.

D.K. Burman, an official organising festivities in Agra, said recent celebrations, including a kite-flying contest and a concert of Indian classical music with the Taj as the backdrop, were all part of selling the monument to the world.

"It's part of our marketing strategy. Although the Taj gets many visitors, you can't stop marketing it. It's like Surf, the detergent, it sells a lot but that doesn't mean you don't market Surf any more."

The government of Uttar Pradesh state, where Agra is located, has also sought permission to open the Taj for night viewing on full-moon nights as part of the celebrations.

Day or night, though, the monument is breath-taking. The perfection of the white marble mausoleum has always captivated photographers.

Mystical marvel

There are countless books on the subject, but one of the best known is by Indian photographer Raghu Rai, who captures the Taj Mahal in its many moods dreamy and mystical in the monsoon mist, radiant against a marmalade-coloured winter sky, and pensive and eternal against the flames of a funeral pyre.

"Just like Shahjahan loved Mumtaz, I love the Taj Mahal. It's that kind of an affair," laughed Rai recently in a programme on television channel Headlines Today.

Legend has it that Mumtaz Mahal won Shahjahan's heart when she was just 15 at a festival where the nobleman's coquettish daughter told him a large bauble of glittering glass was a diamond worth Rs10,000 (Dh810), a princely sum in those days.

Grief-stricken

Apparently, she teased him that even he couldn't afford that amount, whereupon the prince handed her the money and also his heart. When she died giving birth to their 14th child the grief-stricken emperor is said to have turned grey overnight.

Over the next 22 years, 20,000 workers laboured to fashion the perfectly shap-ed dome, four minarets and marble walls inlaid with precious and semi-precious stones.

The story goes that Shahjahan ordered the hands of the builders be cut off and the calligraphers blinded so they could never recreate the Taj Mahal.

"It's still the most beautiful building in the world. The romance and the whole story are just amazing," said one Australian tourist. "No visit to India is complete without seeing the Taj."