Movie Reviews, Theatre in India, Travel trails --- see images of life through Sonali Jha Chatterjee's logbook...

Monday, 1 August 2016

My Dreams and Passion


I am blogging about my dreams and passions for the Club Mahindra#DreamTrails activity at BlogAdda. You can get a Club Mahindra Membership to own your holidays!

I am a History buff and from this love emerges the love for travel, art and culture. If I could just travel to all the places rich in history (which is almost the entire world!!) I think I would be the happiest person. I know I would barely be able to cover all the places I would want to visit in my lifetime, but the journey is so full of wonder that I don’t mind leaving it incomplete.

This is all about time travel, only going backwards. As I enter monuments frozen in time, I cannot resist caressing the walls or the pillars. I shut my eyes trying to recreate a moment from the past. I feel a deep sense of longing for that era. Every image in an ancient place of worship, a boudoir in a palace, a palace garden, each of these has a story to tell and I really would love to have been a part of all that.

Imagine being a part of the bustling Meena bazaar during Shahjahan’s time in the Red Fort premises which is now like any other flea market. Imagine Fatehpur Sikri where Akbar held council with the navratnas of his darbar, or his discussions on Deen-e-Ilahi at the Ibadat Khana. Old Forts and underground tunnels almost resound with gunfire.

While in Kurukshetra in Haryana, I stand under the huge peepal tree where Lord Krishna delivered the Bhagwad Gita to Arjuna before the Kurukshetra war, trying to imagine the scenario. A little ahead lies the Bheeshma Kund , a water body created by Arjuna’s arrow to quench Bheeshma’s thirst and as I dip my fingers in it I love to feel that I am a part of that story. Whether it is mythology or history, it is a part of our past and it grips me.

As I tour the Ajanta caves I try to look into the lives of monks and their daily routine. I try to see how the artists went about painting the walls in darkness filling them up with exquisite scenes or sculpting a majestic profile of the Buddha.
It is really an exciting and enticing moment to be sharing history going back hundreds or thousands of years.

History for me is not gone, it is close at hand. One needs to feel it and make a connection. As I travel, I love to interact with people asking them about their past and the changes in their environment in the past few decades. I am attracted to  art that each place speaks of which varies from the way houses are made, to the dress they wear, moving on to their culture including language and food.

It is a never ending romance that I share with travel, art and culture and with the time I have I hope my passion makes my life rich and meaningful.

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