The Alluring Past- My Encounter with the 'Deceiving Elf"

It is not often that a building triggers a line of thought in my mind. Being a nature lover, I have not been a great fan of buildings. But some buildings are not just buildings. Here before me was a living being narrating a story to me. 

The deafening silence struck me as I entered the grand palace.  As I sat leaning against a pillar on the open courtyard, I imagined the people from bygone ages who would have sat there for discussions and for playing board games. Now it was all silent. But only silent and not dead. The images were there blaring aloud. It was like I could see them all before my eyes. 

My toddler's squeals echoed the long hall. I could not help but imagine how once it would have been full with the squeals of many other toddlers, the original inhabitants of this grand mansion. As she played on the floor tracing her fingers along the intricate patterns of the Athangudi tiles, she sat silently. She sat that way lost in thought for a long time. I wanted to ask her what she was thinking, but stopped. I decided to let her find her own way in this landscape. 

The palace with many doors looked like a maze. I entered and was caught in it. A pleasant sort of entrapment. As I sat with my little girl on a window sill at the end of one of the numerous long corridors of the palace, we looked out into the sky. For a moment I was transported to the 1930s. I was a young woman sitting at the window and imagining... what would a young woman of that time have been thinking? Or, would any young woman of that time have sat there at all? But I know for sure, that for a little while, it was surely a window to the past.

This great mansion was a time machine transporting me to the past. Was the past the same as what it was showing me? I would never know. But somehow, I was drawn to it. I wished I could remain there for always. It was not just a ticket to the past. It was, for me, an escape from the present. When the future is uncertain and when the present is painful, the unknown past is the best place to be. The call to leave for home, disturbed me from my pleasant reveries. I could not but help say like Keats in his "Ode to a Nightingale':

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell    

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.

I unwillingly came back to the present. Stepping out of the palace, I put on my footwear, I saw an extension wing of the palace, which said "No Entry". I enquired and found out that it housed the maintenance workers. Reality struck me full force. Even if I came again to visit this place, I would only see it as a relic from the past. The first encounter will always be a special one and like no other. As I came out of the arch and stepped into the vehicle, I took one last glance hoping to carry away the few moments I wandered in the wonderful past. As the vehicle moved past the palace, I looked through the long line of windows and smiled to myself as a part of me waved back from the palace. Will she be there if I come again in search of her? Will I come again? Maybe . Maybe not.  Let her be there, enjoying her time with the past, the "deceiving elf." The thought that a small part of me was back there was somehow comforting and satisfying.