TETE A TETE WITH MY WINDOW

It's noon here in Stanwell in London. The weather has been kind since morning at 10 degrees centigrade, in comparison to what it was this time last week. I can hear the sounds of vehicles plying on a road about a hundred metres away from my house. There comes the sound of a vehicle and then a silence and again the sound of another vehicle and again.

My work table is beside the smallest window in my room and it's through this window I get a view of a large span of greenery outside. There are two other bigger windows, but they don't offer me that view. This small window is my favourite window. I am standing beside it and looking into the expanse outside. Many times I talk to myself loudly, standing beside this window and I can feel the window responding to me.

It's the onset of winter and the few children who would have otherwise come out in the evenings to the park opposite to my house for their evening play sessions, are now happy sitting inside their homes. Their shrill shouts of excitement was something I enjoyed, while I watched them from my favourite window.

Sometimes a vehicle goes through the street where I stay. It could be a car of someone who stays on our street, an Amazon delivery van or a food delivery bike and that gives me the opportunity to just see a human. That's the only opportunity I get to see a human these days through this window.

I can hear the sound of flights taking off and landing at the Heathrow airport which is about 15 minutes away by car from my place. The sounds come in with small pauses in between.

The rows of trees on either side of the park opposite to my place, which were lush green when I had come down in September, now stand like sentinels who have been through a battle, all barren and stripped. A few leaves of burnt golden brown shade, are still tenaciously holding on, oblivious to the fact that the next gush of wind will probably bring them down to the ground, only to join some of their mates who lie there.

When I view the outside through this window, I have a strong feeling of seeing a still photograph. It's only when few of the leaves give up their tenacious hold on a tree and come down, when either a waft of wind blows or when a busy magpie, flies up and settles on one of trees that I realize that it's actually a real scene.

I whisper to myself "Is this what I was looking for?". I had whispered the same thought with the same vibration and intensity, many times since the cold weather had set in. My favourite window had been listening to all these all the while. "Yes I think this is what you wanted", is the reply I sensed that the window was giving me.

Well, I asked myself whether one of reasons to decide on coming to United Kingdom all the way from India was to live in a peaceful and quiet atmosphere. The answer had always been a loud 'Yes' when I thought of that idea while in India. It was the same answer when I had landed here and spent those initial weeks. The window in my office room at my home in Chennai is adjacent to our main street and every day I would hear a plethora of sounds and noises, small and big, right through the day, that together came out as a nice piece of cacophony. I could hear the noise of bikes, autorickshaws, water lorries and other vehicles go up and down and a huge pothole on the street that was never repaired, only magnified the noise when each of these went over it. Honking is pretty normal in India and we would almost get a feeling that driver is actually sitting on the horn. Vendors added another dimension and school children at the beginning and end of the school sessions took it to a crescendo. An assignment in the United Kingdom was for me a sure escape from all this. And I had expressed the happiness of having escaped from all this to my favourite window here during the first few weeks. I had been livid for no reason with my loved ones on several occasions at home when I got frustrated because of these noises and sounds. It was just an involuntary vent from my side.

But with every day inching towards the cold season, I could sense the other extreme setting in. The extreme of absolute silence and stillness over a vast expanse that my eyes can see and ears can sense, every day. If I have to see a human today, I have to walk to a bus stop or a shop on the high street that is ten minutes away or to the TESCO grocery store seventeen minutes away.

While I stand here with this deep thought, I can sense my window tell me "May be you need a place where you can get a balance, with some level of sound that will keep you sane. And for that you need to be patient and keep trying different places to stay".

My window probably does not know that every time I break a house lease and shift, it is going to turn my purse into a pile of ash :)

"Or it may be that you really don't know what you want", came another statement from my window. It startled me but then I smiled and realized that what it said could also be true.

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