NOTRE DAME

   In the 80’s, while Chandrika was doing her Masters in French, her Professor Jackie Moreau of Alliance Francaise, Chennai used to boast that there  are not as many monuments in India as there are in France. During those days as her fluency in the  French language  was not sufficient to enter into a debate with him to point out that they package and sell better, she let that comment pass. Still it often made us wonder at the number of monuments in France . Yes, Chandrika said, it was Jackie Moreau who introduced them to the wonderful architecture of the Roman and Gothic Cathedrals.

 As Chandrika reminiscences ………  How the invention of the broken arches called Gothic arches  blended so well with the religious élan! The combination heightened and beautified not only the intricate roofs, the exquisite spires, the first ever alluring  windows made possible by the walls supported by the now defining flying buttresses and all that which took around 200 years of hard work and toil in the 13th and14th centuries. These flying arch buttresses which do not touch the ground would have been of great interest to Achan from his keen engineer’s perspective !

 The popularity of the Cathedral was waxing and waning, through later centuries: and Achan was well aware of the book placed within its walls that really stamped its approval forever in history ! -  a book that needs no elaboration - of course, The Hunch back of Notre Dame! by Victor Hugo written in the 19th Century !  

The early-Gothic Notre-Dame de Paris (shown here with buttresses as later modified) features flying buttresses with blocky porticoed pinnacles, surrounding the tall nave, a clerestory, a wide triforium, and two side aisles. Arrows show structural forces (courtesy Wikipedia)

Films made with its background has made us see even from a distance the carillon of the bells on which the Hunchback hangs and jumps !! - Achan made it a point to climb up the nearly 375 steps to the Chimera Gallery and click a photograph of Mom, perhaps keeping in mind the heroine Esmeralda. In contrast to Quasimodo, needless to say,  his love was not unrequited !

    The words “‘stained glass windows,” i think i had heard it from Achan’s lips.. and while watching perhaps the multicoloured rays beaming  through  the Rosace...huge flowerlike stained glass creations on the North and South towers of the Notre Dame Cathedral, certainly, he may have been elated as an artist and not as a civil engineer !

For me the colours of the beams were slivers of dreams combined with the music coming from the great organ inside the Cathedral which i visited again and again and acted, like a guide even….during my two month-stint.. not to forget that the visits did not need any fee and i could see and enjoy the coloured  rays carrying stories in its colours because each piece of stained glass set in lead was a part of  a biblical story or the sun  or astronomical signs !!!   The greatly renowned 9 bells, baptised as they were  with names and the  clocks on the piers ...bells which tolled for many a great event .. all that was something that i missed even though Quasimodo kept intruding into my mind!! Though my sisters and I visited the Cathedral with a small kit of tips and a bunch of information, however, it was Amma who got photographed  in lonely splendour and with loving eyes!!!!                                    

On the 9^th December, 1968, Amma was photographed at the Wonder of the Cathedral of Notre Dame standing near the spire at the top climbing 387 steps to the Viollet-le-Duc’s Chimera gallery, seen here in the company of the goat-shaped Chimera, viewing Paris and another Wonder, the Eiffel  Tower.  

When speaking of Notre Dame de Paris we cannot ignore the fire that spread through the iconic monument destroying most of it. Now what has  the fire  spared?   the rosace exactly !
https://frenchmoments.eu/notre-dame-de-paris/