My Manderley

Rebecca by Daphne duMaurier is one of my most favourite books of all time. It is probably the first romantic novel I read as a child, and the more I read it growing up, the more sense it made, naturally. I may have outgrown it now, but the day I read those opening lines, it reminded me straight off of my own house in Dehradun. This trip home I tried to capture the words in photographs.

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter for the way was barred to me.

Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me.

Nature had come into her own again, and little by little had encroached upon the drive with long tenacious fingers...

And finally, there was Manderley - Manderley - secretive and silent. Time could not mar the perfect symmetry of those walls.