Feb 22, 1999

A commoner's tribute to his wife is marked by royal vision.

By Stephen David

He doesn't have the royal pedigree. Nor the resources to put up a monument as grand as Shahjahan's. But 49-year-old Mukund Muniyappa's aspirations are no less grandiose. Visit Vijayanapura in Bangalore's suburbs and you will realise how love can make a king of a commoner.

A veritable Taj Mahal stands within the burial grounds there. Its white, bulbous dome, about 25 ft high, glows in the soft morning light. Its arresting, ornate minarets, slightly shorter in height, shimmer on all four sides. You might indeed be deceived into thinking this was the 17th century mausoleum that stands on the banks of the Yamuna in Agra.

Draw closer and you are likely to encounter an endearing sight: a man, a little boy by his side, offering prayers, lighting an incense stick in front of a portrait of a woman. Ask him and the modern-day Shahjahan will tell you that it is the picture of his wife who is interred within the tomb.

When his wife died in a road accident Mukund Muniyappa felt he would go mad if he did not keep her memory alive in some significant way.

"Come rain or shine, I have to seek my wife Gouramma Ramadevi's blessings every morning," says Muniyappa. "Without that I don't begin my day at all." Shattered by her death in a road accident at the age of 23 -- a speeding lorry had killed her near their Ramamurthy Nagar home when they were on their way to a movie seven years ago -- Muniyappa, then 42, had to get himself to do something that would keep him going without her. True, she had left him a son, the little boy Mukunda, but the factory worker-turned-land developer knew he had to keep her memory alive in some significant way, otherwise"I would have gone mad".

Seeing his predicament, his friend L. Jayakumar had shown him a picture of the Taj Mahal, explaining how Shahjahan had got it built for his wife Mumtaz Mahal as an indelible tribute. Of how Iranian architect Isa Khan had designed the monument and how 20,000 workers hired from India and Central Asia had laboured on it for 22 years. "That's when the idea actually struck me," admits Muniyappa. "Of course, I did not have the resources of the Mughal emperor nor the clout that he wielded." But he was determined to replicate the world's wonder for his wife.

Not having seen the real Taj didn't deter Muniyappa either. He may not have had 20,000 workers at his command but he had a friend who understood his requirements. Accordingly Jayakumar worked out the technical details while Karupaswamy, a Tamil mason from Vellore, helped give shape to Muniyappa's Taj on about 1,600 sq ft of the 3,600 sq ft Vijayanapura burial ground.

Bangalore's Taj is smaller in scale, of course, and not entirely made of marble -- parts of it are in intricate concrete -- but it is a good replica. There are no precious stones either and no watercourse leading up to its path. And you have to hop, skip and jump over thick bushes and walk in and out of other tombstones to reach the mahal.

Jayakumar and Karupaswamy are believed to have given their all to the love project. "The Tamil mason worked so hard that his hands even bled while he was building it," offers Shankaranarayanan, Muniyappa's younger brother and business partner. By the time the structure was completed -- it took two years -- Muniyappa had spent about Rs 8 lakh, a portion of which came from his real-estate business and the rest from the voluntary retirement scheme which he opted for when he resigned from the public-sector Indian Telephone Industries Ltd as a crossbar operator.

But the finished structure was well worth the money for Muniyappa. "I think I have understood to some extent how much Shahjahan loved his wife," he says, more at peace with himself now. As general secretary (Bangalore south) of the Karnataka Dalit Coordination Committee, he also finds solace in fighting for the rights of the downtrodden. Every January 13 -- the day Gouramma died -- Muniyappa makes it a point to feed as many poor people as he can. On this day, as on others, the locals in the area throng the mausoleum. Not only as a tribute to the departed one but also to a story of true, eternal love.

© Living Media India Ltd