You can’t put love in Lockdown. This is a lesson we’re learning now more than ever in the midst of the Covid-19 Pandemic. I saw that same message long, long ago in a place far, far away.
In these days of quarantine, self-isolation and Social Distancing, it’s often hard to spend quality time with the people we love. Zoom calls have become the popular medium to inter connect the physically distant population of our world as we strive to halt the spread of the virus. My youngest daughter Julia makes sure our family all keep connected through Facebook Chat and remote family movie nights have become an essential part of the weekly routine. I’ve long since learnt however that, even in a time before the wonders of our modern technology, lovers still reached out across the void even through prison bars.
Even with the first hint of the coming sunset the heat continued to be unbearable to me. At it’s height the temperature had reached almost 50C as we’d strolled through the grounds of the Taj Mahal. Now we were in the nearby Agra Fort and I eagerly sought any shade I could find to try and cool down. In the shade of a quiet room with barred windows I looked out and saw the light of love as it had shone from a time hundreds of years ago when these buildings had been constructed.
Looking out to the Taj Mahal from the Agra Fort as Emperor Shah Jahan would have done during his house arrest here from 1658. His mortality bound him to the world, away from his love Mumtaz Mahal who had died many years earlier. The walls and barred windows held him a prisoner in the Agra Fort. Yet his love remained, as I felt it then, free and eternal.
Inspiration Through Adventure 