Jaws

I have travelled through that road 3-4 times before. Everytime, looking at the peaceful, majestic, posh, pleasing, awe-inspiring palaces. They are valued at millions and above the number of fingers that all of us have !

Would always be thinking, who exactly owns these p(a)laces. Senators, CEOs, Business men ? It always remained a mystery !

This is the 'potomac'/'river rd' area in DC.

I had KR, hubby of my cousin come over for the weekend. He had a friend, that we were gonna say 'hi' to. Hopped onto my car and drove down, and when we took the exit i was suprised to see where we were on. River Rd. I said interesting....KR set the expectations straight by the giving the background of the family and the home we can expect to see. The number of acres of the order of 'elements of the world'.

As always the drive was exhilirating. Then we finally stopped in front of a 'palace'. There was a 'Mercury Mountaineer' in front of the place. The apartment had a cul-de-sac of its own, bigger than any cul-de-sac of the public places have seen before. The apartment had 8 full bedrooms including full baths and other rooms that we were too demoralised to count. Three levels, each housing its own full-service kitchen and all of them super-sized. To rub it in, we were driven around the 'locality' and show some of the 15-20 million homes...and i don't know how long my jaw rested in the same 'dropped' position. All along, I kept telling myself...'Arvind, you are doing ok, this is not a dream ! ' until we reached a place where we were all left searching for words. Words we have been using since our birth. Multitudes of decades worth of learning all to no avail.

The place was built on 15-20 acres of land with royal lion statues in front of the gates and angel guarding the home and 'wide' gates in front all with state of art gadgets in place. The place was unpriced. It is better not to !

I was told the place that we went to, the single 'window' in their hall was worth well above 65K dollars !

Now i was really afraid that someone had to wake up before i go crazy and write this on my blog. Every though that flashed my mind was punctuated with expectations of the same....but it never happened. As KR pointed out, when we stood in front of the place, looking like bees in front of aeroplane, so disproportionate a scale, that we could hear the breeze flowing, not wind, breeze !. We could hear the single leaf shifting its position. Pin drop silence !

Man ! was that a mystical experience that i will ever forget ! Humbling, intimidating, thrilling and enlightening !

My rest of the day was spent ranting and raving to near & dear ones about the experience and how, it changed my perspective in life ! and now ye'all get to put up with the same !