We landed at Heathrow, London, Terminal 4 at 2.30 pm London time. By the time we left the airport, it was six. The group arrived at the Holiday Inn Express Terminal 5 hotel at 7:00. Our check-in was followed by a continental dinner. The daylight in London lasted till nine. As a result, one felt one had eaten lunch instead of dinner.
The following day, we departed for London sightseeing after an English breakfast. We travelled to London City Centre, crossing zones 3, 2 and 1. Our travel guide was Sari, and the coach driver was Sam. We first visited the Natural History Museum, followed by the Victoria and Albert Museum. There were brick-laden houses on the way. We passed through the Piccadilly Circus, Hyde Park, Hyde Park Corner, the statue of the Duke of Wellington on his horse, the Fountain of Opera, Trafalgar Square—Nelson’s Column and its four lions, considered zero miles for London, where Bollywood movies are shot. We attended the ‘Change of Guard’ ceremony at Buckingham Palace, held every other day. It’s a royal ceremony that we were able to shoot. The royal guards change shifts in a formal ceremony, accompanied by the marching band. Next was the Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Parliament Square and 10 Downing Street.
London Eye
West Minster Abbey
We crossed the Thames riverfront humming an old classic, ‘Scarborough Fair’. The symbol of the two dragons, indicating you’re in London, was superb. The city of London is colloquially known as the Square Mile.
The ‘London Eye’ (Ferris Wheel) gave a panoramic view of the city of London. It has 32 capsules. It takes 32 minutes for a circle with 32 people, reminding you of the 32 boroughs of London. One capsule represents one borough.
London Bridge
The next was the Phantom of the Opera, the Tower Bridge on the left of the London Bridge. We drove past the London Bridge and the fire monument of the 16th century. We also had a bite and a stroll on Oxford Street, followed by dinner at the Hot Plate Restaurant.
London Bridge
The following morning, we were up at three to board the famous Eurostar train to Paris from St. Pancras International Station, London. The train was at 7.01 am. We left the hotel at 4.30 in a coach to reach the station by five. The security check at the railway station was tedious because of the luggage. After security, one technically leaves the territory of the U.K. and enters Europe on a Schengen visa after immigration. Twenty minutes before departure, we were informed of our gate number. We sat in bogies 12 and 13 after walking past gate 10. Soon, the Eurostar train 9004 to Paris left platform 10 from St Pancras Railway Station. After a point, it entered Europe, leaving behind the U.K. It took 2 hours and 20 minutes to reach Paris. We were there at 10.20 am, exactly two hours and twenty minutes of travel time, but by the clock, it was three hours and twenty minutes because the continent of Europe is one hour ahead of the U.K. time. There are breathtaking tunnels under the English Channel. The train crosses them in about 35 minutes on the way to Paris-Gare-du-Nord railway station. The local tour guide in Paris was Senthil, an Indian expat. He began with a Vannakam—Tamil Namaste. The tour commenced with the Opera House and the Greek Church, rich in Greek architecture. Next was the Golden Flame and the bridge where Lady Diana died in a car accident. Then followed the Place De La Concorde, Macaline, Shawn Elizey, and the famous Eiffel Tower.
Later, we visited Napoleon Bonaparte’s tomb in Les Invalides. At 2 pm, after lunch at ‘Welcome India’, we left for the Eiffel Tower. It was jam-packed with umpteen souvenir shops. The names of French authors Jules Verne and Victor Hugo graced many shops and public spaces in Paris. It reminded me of the statue of Sherlock Holmes in Baker Street. It took an hour to get across the security gate and reach the summit level of the Eiffel Tower. The aerial view of Paris from there was splendid. The summit level was earlier closed. Later, they opened it. We were lucky to get the tickets. We had a drink in the Champagne bar. The Eiffel Tower has three floors: the first, the second, and the summit level. The pillar elevators and the stairs take you to the first and second levels. To reach the top of the Tower from the second level, one needs to locate a separate elevator meant for it. In the same sequence, one can come down. After beholding the Eiffel Tower, we undertook a river cruise on the Seine River.
PARIS CITY FROM IFFEL TOWER
We reached our hotel at eight. After some free time, we drove down to ‘The Champs-Élysées’, the main street of Paris. We had a photo session there under the glittering lights. Thereafter, we went to the Eiffel Tower again. It was an amazing sight to see it lit up Eiffel Tower at eleven at night. It was the longest day of our tour—from 3 am to midnight and from London to Paris.
Shravan Charity Mission is an NGO that works for poor children suffering from life-threatening diseases, especially cancer. Our posts are meant for our readers, including children and adults, and have a huge variety of content. We also accept donations for our mission. Should you wish to donate to the cause of cancer? The bank details are given below:
The use and abuse of Nari-Shakti in earlier Europe has many legends to be told. The gruesome story of King Henry VIII gives jitters. The royal blood of England was bereft of moral values, as if. King Henry VIII was the Eighth King of England. He was famous for many things, but he was also famous because he had six wives. He was not a kind husband. People say that loving fathers took their daughters away from the palace when he was looking for a new wife as his Queen. They did not want the King to choose their daughter to be the next Queen of England, because some of his Queens had very short and unhappy lives. There were six of them—three were Katherines, two Annes, and a Jane. One was the King’s wife for twenty-four years, another for only a year and a half. One died, two were divorced, and two were beheaded. It was a dangerous and uncertain life. The first, Katherine of Aragon was divorced after 24 years of marriage. The second, Queen Anne Boleyn was sent to the tower and beheaded. The third Queen Jane Seymour died due to complications twelve days after giving birth to a child. The fourth Queen Anne of Cleves was divorced within six months of marriage. The fifth Queen Catherine Howard was also sent to the Tower and beheaded. Henry VIII widowed the sixth Queen Catherine Parr. But why did, King Henry, divorce two wives, and kill two others? What were his queens really like? Catherine Parr, the sixth wife, lived on after the King died in 1547 to tell the story. One day she goes back to the palace of Whitehall and finds a box of old letters written to the King- one from each of the first five wives. They are sad, angry and frightened letters. They tell the story of what it was like to be the wife of Henry VIII of England. Such was the abuse of ‘Nari-Shakti’ in sixteenth-century England by no one else but by the King of England himself.
British Queen Victoria was the Empress of India. One can read that in the stone she laid on the 17th Day of May 1899 in front of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Queen Victoria reflects the positive kind of ‘Nari-shakti’ in England.
‘Nari-Shakti’ is a revered word. India is called ‘Bharat-Mata’. But Bharat-Mata the epitome of Indian Nari-Shakti had to face the wrath of Videshi Nari-Shakti—the British Crown.
King Edward VIII of England gave up his throne to marry Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee and he himself became the Duke of Windsor. As a consequence, he was succeeded by his brother Albert, who became George VI. Wallis Simpson was a ‘Nari-Shakti’ of the romantic kind.
The famous French short-story writer Guy-De-Maupassant in his short story ‘A Sale’ presents another abuse of Nari-Shakti. It is a unique story with a lot of tongue-twisting French names. It opens and ends in the courtroom. There are two defendants, Cesaire-Isidore Brument and Prosper-Napoleon Cornu. They appear before the Court of Assizes of the Seine-Inferieure, on a charge of attempted murder, by drowning, of Mme (Madam) Brument, the lawful wife of Brument in the story. The judge delivers a verdict that refrains anyone from selling a woman and that too in cubic metres and fixes a limit to doing business but the jury doesn’t punish the offenders but acquits them with mild strictures—an abuse of Nari Shakti both by the offenders as well as the jury. Kudos to Maupassant for highlighting the malady in society.
All that glittered in Europe was not gold. Wake up and smell the coffee at home.
Shravan Charity Mission is an NGO that works for poor children suffering from life-threatening diseases, especially cancer. Our posts are meant for our readers, including children and adults, and have a huge variety of content. We also accept donations for our mission. Should you wish to donate to the cause of cancer? The bank details are given below:
NAME OF ACCOUNT: SHRAVAN CHARITY MISSION
Account no: 680510110004635 (BANK OF INDIA)
IFSC code: BKID0006805
*
Publications of Kamlesh Tripathi
BOOK TITLE: GLOOM BEHIND THE SMILE
(The book is about a young cancer patient. Now archived in eight prestigious libraries of the US which include Harvard College Library; Harvard University Library; Library of Congress; University of Washington, Seattle; University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; Yale University, New Haven; University of Chicago; University of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill University Libraries. It can also be accessed at MIT through Worldcat.org. Besides, it is also available for reading in the libraries and archives of Canada; the Open Library; Cancer Aid and Research Foundation Mumbai; Jaipuria Institute of Management, Noida, India; Shoolini University, Yogananda Knowledge Center, Himachal Pradesh and Azim Premzi University, Bangalore and the Library of Cancer Aid and Research Foundation, Mumbai. The title also finds a mention in a book titled ‘Enduring Cancer: Life, Death and Diagnosis in Delhi’ by Dwaipayan Banerjee published by the Duke University Press).
BOOK TITLE: ONE TO TANGO … RIA’S ODYSSEY
(It is a book on ‘singlehood’ about a Delhi girl now archived in Connemara Library, Chennai and Delhi Public Library, GOI, Ministry of Culture, Delhi; It is also available for reading in the Indian National Bibliography, March 2016, in the literature section, in Central Reference Library, Ministry of Culture, India, Belvedere, Kolkata-700022)
BOOK TITLE: AADAB LUCKNOW … FOND MEMORIES
(This is a fiction written around the great city of Nawabs—Lucknow. It describes Lucknow in great detail and also talks about its Hindu-Muslim amity, which is the undying characteristic of Lucknow. The book was launched at the Lucknow International Literary Festival in 2014. It is catalogued and included for reading in Askews and Holts Library Services, Lancashire, U.K; Herrick District Library, Holland; Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, USA; Black Gold Cooperative Library Administration, Arroyo Grande, California; Berkeley Library, University of California; The Peshastin Public Library and The George Public Library near Washington, a Northern Central Washington Libraries branch; the Flagstaff City-Coconino County Public Library in Arizona in the US and the Salina Public Library, Kansas, USA.
BOOK TITLE: REFRACTIONS … FROM THE PRISM OF GOD
(Co-published by Cankids–Kidscan, a pan India NGO and Shravan Charity Mission, that works for child cancer in India. The book is endorsed by Ms Preetha Reddy, MD Apollo Hospitals Group. It was launched at the Lucknow International Literary Festival in 2016).
BOOK TITLE: TYPICAL TALE OF AN INDIAN SALESMAN
(Is a story of an Indian salesman who is, humbly qualified. Yet he fights his way through unceasing uncertainties to reach the top. A good read not only for salesmen but for any reader. The book was launched on 10th February 2018 at Gorakhpur Lit-Fest. Now available on Amazon, Flipkart and Onlinegatha)
BOOK TITLE: RHYTHM … IN POEMS
(Published in January 2019. The book contains 50 poems. The poems are about our day-to-day life. Poems from this book have been published in Shillong Times, Bandra Times, Bhavan’s Journal and Arunachal Times and Goan net. The book is available on Amazon, Flipkart and Onlinegatha)
BOOK TITLE: MIRAGE
(Published in February 2020. The book is a collection of eight short stories available on Amazon, Flipkart and Notion Press)
BOOK TITLE: AWADH ASSAM AND DALAI LAMA … The Kalachakra
(It is the story of the man who received His Holiness The Dalai Lama and his retinue in 1959 as a GOI representative when he fled Tibet in 1959. The book was launched on 21st November 2022 by His Holiness The Dalai Lama at Dharmshala. The title is archived in the library of the Department of Information and International Relations (DIIR) Government of Tibet, Tibet Policy Institute (TPI) and the personal library of His Holiness The Dalai Lama. The title is also archived in The Ohio Digital Library, USA. It was recently included in the digital library of the world-renowned company APPLE. Included in the library of Friends of Tibet and Maharashtra Mitra Mandal Library in Bandra, Mumbai.
(POEMS, SHORT STORIES AND ARTICLES OF KAMLESH TRIPATHI PUBLISHED IN JOURNALS AND MAGAZINES)
BHAVANS JOURNAL
Short stories, Book reviews and Articles published in Bhavan’s Journal: 1. Reality and Perception, 15.10.19; 2. Sending the Wrong Message, 31.5.20; 3. Eagle versus Scholars, June, 15 & 20, 2020; 4. Indica, 15.8.20; 5. The Story of King Chitraketu, August 31 2020; 6. Breaking Through the Chakravyuh, September 30 2020. 7. The Questioning Spouse, October 31, 2020; 8. Happy Days, November 15, 2020; 9. The Karma Cycle of Paddy and Wheat, December 15, 2020; 10. Power Vs Influence, January 31, 2021; 11. Three Refugees, March 15, 2021; 12. Rise and Fall of Ajatashatru, March 31, 2021; 13. Reformed Ruler, May 15, 2021; 14. A Lasting Name, May 31, 2021; 15. Are Animals Better Teachers? June 16, 2021; 16. Book Review: The Gram Swaraj, 1.7.21; 17. Right Age for Achievements, 15.7.21; 18. Big Things Have Small Beginnings, 15.8.21; 19. Where is Gangaridai?, 15.9.21; 20. Confront the Donkey Within You 30.9.21; 21. Know Your Strengths 15.10.21; 22. Poverty 15.11.21; 23. Top View 30.11.21; 24. The Bansuriwala 15.1.22; 25. Sale of Alaska 15.2.22; 26. The Dimasa Kingdom 28.2.22;27. Buried Treasure 15.4.22; 28. The Kingdom of Pragjyotisha 30.4.22; 29. Who is more useful? 15.5.22; 30. The White Swan from Lake Mansarovar 30.6.22; 31. Bhool Bhulayya 15.9.22; 32. Good Karma 30.9.22; 33. Good Name vs Bad Name 15.10.22; 34. Uttarapath—The Grand Trunk Road 1.12.22; 35. When Gods Get Angry 1.1.23; 36. Holinshed’s Chronicles 15.1.23; 37. Theogony 15.2.23; 38. Poem: Mother 14.5.23; 39. The Nag Mandir 30.6.23; 40. The Story of Garuda 30.7.23; 41. Janmabhoomi vs Karmabhoomi 31.8.23; 42. The Ghost Town of Kuldhara 15.9.23; 43. The Tale of Genji 15.10.23; 44. The Soul Connection 1.12.23; 45.Book review: Jungle Nama … a story of the Sundarban 16.3.24; 46. Book review: A Forgotten Chapter 16.5.24; 47. Exploring Ancient Egypt, 1.8.24; 48. The Story of Dhruva, 16.8.24; 49. Two Hundred Years of Tea in Assam 16.9.24; 50. The Cosmic Messenger 16.10.24; 51. Biblioburro: The Four-Legged Library 16.11.24
THE SHILLONG TIMES
Articles & Poems: 1. Poem: Happy New Year 8.1.23; 2.Poem: Spring 12.3.23; 3.Poem: Right and Wrong 20.3.23; 4.The Gush of Emotion—Writing, 26.3.23; 5. The Nag Mandir, 7.5.23; 6. Poem: Mother 7.5.23; 7. Poem: Rain Rain 9.7.23; 8. Poem:You Come Alone You Go Alone 6.8.23; 9. Poem: Rain Rain (Second Time) 10.8.23; 10. Poem: Guru Teacher 1.10.23; 11. Poem: Autumn … The Interim Heaven 15.10.23; 12. Poem: Happy Diwali 12.11.23; 13. Overcoming Blindness: Learn it the John Milton Way 10.12.23; 14. The Happy Prince and The Happy Man’s Shirt 31.12.23; 15. Annus Mirabilis -2024 7.1.24; 16. Gandhi to Mahatma Gandhi- Incidents that Shaped Gandhi in South Africa 28.1.24; 17. Poem: Together But Not Made For Each Other, 11.2.24; 18. The Birds Bees and The Spiders of Nicholas Guildford and Jonathan Swift 25.2.24; 19. The Overcoats of Nikolai Gogol and Ruskin Bond 10.3.24; 20. The Ethnic Colours of Holi 24.3.24; 21. A Lesson from Dalai Lama, 21.4.24; 22. Poem: Morning Walk 28.4.24; 23. Trip to Rhine Falls, Switzerland, 19.5.24; 24. Poem: Hurt 2.6.24; 25. Poem: Your Conscience Was My Sign On 16.6.24; 26.Poem: The Eerie Ways of Time 7.7.24; 27.Poem: Celebrating the T20 World Champions 14.7.24;28. Read to Rise above mediocrity, 4.8.24; 29. Poem: Desire vs Reality 11.8.24; 30. Jack Ma’s Pristine Advice to Employers, Employees and the Youth 22.9.24; 31. Tagore and Kipling 3.11.24;
THE ASSAM TRIBUNE
Article: 1. The Magic of Reading 11.12.23; 2. Gandhi to Mahatma 29.1.24; 3. Geography of Solitude 8.4.24; 4. A Lesson From Dalai Lama, 22.4.24; 5. A Source of Inspiration, 29.4.24; 6. The Four-LeggedLibrary, 12.5.24; 7. Age and Achievement, 10.6.24; 8. Read … To Rise Above Mediocrity, 1.7.24; 9. Crusade for a College, 25.8.24; 10. Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory (Panorama) 27.9.24; 11. Short story: Love in the Air, 20.10.24;
THE ARUNACHAL TIMES
Poem: 1. Hope—In The Arc of Twilight, 13.8.23; 2.Poem: Spring 3.3.24; 3.Poem: The Morning Walk 10.3.24;
BANDRA TIMES, MUMBAI
Articles & Poems: 1. Poem: SPRING, 1.4.23; 2. Poem: Mother, 1.6.23; 3. Poem: Rain Rain, 1.8.23; 4. A Lesson From Dalai Lama, 1.6.24; 5. Read to rise above Mediocrity 1.8.24
Aritcles: 29.12.2020: Indica by Megasthenes; 14.3.22: About The Dimasa Kingdom Assam; 10.12.22: Grand Trunk Road–Uttarapath; 5.10.23: The Ghost Town of Kuldhara Near Jaisalmer;
(ALL THE ABOVE BOOK TITLES ARE AVAILABLE FOR SALE ON AMAZON, FLIPKART AND OTHER ONLINE STORES OR YOU COULD EVEN WRITE TO US FOR A COPY)
Shravan charity mission 