The Window!

Hello, here is a new blog from a new land. They call it the city of love. Yes, your guess is right and so Bonjour!

After a couple of weeks in this new land, roaming through the streets of the island late in the evenings after the lab work, the trigger it created to the heart and mind is difficult to fathom. Though still carefully assimilating the memories like expensive pearls on a string, it would be a crime to not at least try to write being in a place where great authors, poets and artists constantly outpoured their creativity and arts. Though it is a city of love, I prefer to name it a city of contrasts, because you won’t believe situated on such an island is a university which has produced more than 30 noble laureates in arts and science and to name one well known would be Madam Marie Curie and her husband Piere Curie.

While people make love on the bank of Seine and on the other hand, a classic science and arts on the other part of the island, this place is much like a hot, classic lady difficult to comprehend. With such intriguing contrasts, the city deepens its mystery and smiles with that alluring gaze in the yellow lights while smelling all cheese and baguettes.

I was constantly reminded of the fact that rooted in love everything is possible. Yes, this is another proof of it. So, it was a weekend and after completing a late evening work in the lab, we were looking for places to visit in the weekend and found the place called Versailles, where there is a palace and we selected it as it was supposed to be free on first Sundays of every month.

Even a simple trip becomes an adventure in a new place. Searching for metros and RERs to the place and after map reading and gaining some random confidence to head to the place, we started. After the travel and getting down in a damn new place where you only know its name,

breathing the air of a new place in a different part of the planet, a sort of bliss filled the soul and it, in turn, gave a boost of confidence to head further looking for the name boards.

After a bit of walk, we finally reached the Versailles Palace! As I believe it is mandatory to get to know about the place before we visit, the person who accompained me gave a gist of the place that it was a historically important place where the great kings starting from Louis 13 to many of their successors lived before the French revolution. I was just listening to it as we entered through the gate of the palace.

Those magnificent buildings and the fine-scale arts took up all space in the mind as we explored the palace with the help of a free audio guide provided by the palace staff. As we enter each rooms and the audio guide tells the stories of each room and when we at last look at the painting of the kings who lived there, it just takes us back to centuries. After a while of loading too much information, I was just standing near a big window through which a breath-taking panoramic view of gradens was visible while waiting for my friend to join me. When I mildly touched the handles of the windows, a surge of hot blood flushed to the head while the heart was beating a bit faster and the hands were shivering for a while, then everything went back calm, while just a bit of tear droped out at the sides of eyes. Why, was I overreacting? Definitely not,

it was not just a window to see the gardens, that window opened doors to a million thoughts outright. Isn’t it breath-stopping to think that you are standing in a place where a series of great kings thousands and thousands of years back lived there?

As I was standing there, I suddenly thought that how many great people would have stood at the same place years back and either enjoyed the view or were lost in thoughts. How much romance between a king and queen would have taken place while they were enjoying the gardens through the window or how many historically important decisions were sown in minds of kings when they were seriously thinking by the window-side or how many sad love notions of queens- the windows have heard when the king left for war or maybe the kids of king were playing besides these windows. Even when the french revolution broke, the last kings and queens who stayed here would have just longingly seen the windows for the calm that was taken of. These windows have definitely seen a lot than that we could imagine. So, standing at such a place took my breath for a moment and utlimately it led to a greater calmness of the mind. Thoughts were racing as to of great kings, queens and the people who would have lived, who would have dreamed and who would have pursued it, fought for it and the enemies who planned to conquer this empire and suddenly the question ‘what’s at last of all this drama?’ left me humbled while the audio guide in my ears was telling about the bed where many of those kings died and their bodies were placed for public to pay respect to.

The window just reminded the ‘nothingness’ and the mysteries of existence and the window opened doors to the inner self.

The window smiled at the ambitious me who planned to get back home soon to send a pending mail with a most profound question “Does that even matter in such a great existence?”. I know this is going to make me crazy and these thoughts are planning to take its place for weeks in my mind, so I was carefully walking away from that line of deep thoughts. But, as always I lost and I was now in a conversation with my mind as the window smiled naughtily at us.

I left the window in a state of eternal bliss and calmness as my thoughts raced to the fact that after hundreds of years, someone similar to me might think of me by standing at the exact window, while the window would still be listening to these monologues. I said goodbye to the window and told the window to convey my warm regards to all the souls that in the future are going to peep through the window to the past. While I said these to the window, a mild breeze hit my face through the window, which might even be a regards of someone in the past to me! I smiled and the window smiled back.

Silence…….

The window……!

PS: And thinking all these I was reminded of the quote and its truthfulness that ‘traveling makes one humble’. Yes, traveling to newer places and exploring leaves us humbled for being a part of such grand existence. If we are a part of such great existence, we are made of some purpose, which leaves the soul gratified to the existence.