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The Qutub Minar – India’s own ‘Leaning tower of Pisa’. When someone told me this I took it with a tea-spoon full of salt. I phat-phatted in an auto-rickshaw towards the Qutub Complex in Delhi, India’s capital city.

All through the jolting ride I prepared myself for a visual treat- after the Taj Mahal, I had better. My first sight of the Qutub Minar was indeed awesome. Framed within a broken archway the Minar looked like a magnificent light-house beckoning me to come closer. Like a sail-less boat I drifted closer, in a daze.

I walked towards this structure, almost 800 years old, wondering what kind of scaffoldings they would have used to reach a height of 72.5 metres, that is almost 24 storeys.

The closer I got to the Minar the more awesome it was. The diameter at the base of the tower is 14.3 metre and that at the top is 3.8 metres.
The word ‘Qutub Minar’ means ‘axis minaret’. The tower has five storeys, each marked by a projecting balcony. Intricately carved and fluted.
Architecture –par excellence! One wonders how many hands would have worked at it; how many hours of painstaking labour? In this age of steel and glass, I dare not hazard a guess.

Let me touch on the history of the Minar – the tower was built in three stages. Qutb-ud-din Aybak, the first Muslim ruler of Delhi, commenced construction of the Qutub Minar in 1193; but could only complete the first storey. The second, third and the fourth storeys were completed by his successor and son-in-law, Iltutmish in 1230. The Minar was struck by lightening in 1368 AD and the fallen top storey was replaced by two storeys, the fourth and the fifth in 1370 AD by Feroz Shah Tughlaq. So many hands have built the Minar over a period of 177 years, yet neither the beauty of the structure nor the wholesomeness of it is lost….

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