I don’t know whether it is true but they say Mark Twain once classified all the people in the world into ones who had seen the Taj Mahal and ones who had not. I am sadly from the latter group. But nevertheless i was overjoyed when it was selected as one of the new wonders of the world through world wide polling. Everyone knows of the history and the legends of the romantic tribute to love.
I find that the old Hindi movies romanticized it even more by including many a romantic duets with the actors cavorting around with the Taj in the background. However for me this joy and pride realated to the Taj is more distant than it would perhaps be to my parents. When I think of romantic locations I no longer think of the Taj. When i think of the Taj I think more of the news that keeps coming of the deterioration of the wonderful mausoleum. News reports of how the marble is getting eroded by the pollution, or how the Jamuna is getting clogged and is drying up. It is estimated that the area around the Taj contains five times the amount of suspended particles (such as sulfur dioxide) that the Taj Mahal could handle without sustaining everlasting damage.
And still we hold our heads high, we type out TAJ on our mobile phones and send sms’s to salute our national pride and when it is selected we rejoice and share the feeling of having done something for our country. 
I would surely like to visit the Taj Mahal one day and stare in awe at the huge structure that has made all of us so proud. I would love to stand there and wonder how it would have been in the mogul era. Go back to the world when love meant so much and memories could be made everlasting in such a grand way.
And lets not forget the others who made the cut! The Great Wall of China, Rome’s Colosseum, and three architectural marvels from Latin America, Jordan’s Petra, Peru’s Machu Picchu, Brazil’s Statue of Christ Redeemer and Mexico’s Chichen Itza pyramid are the others.
