I've
always been a sucker for nostalgia, as more than half of my notes or my (almost
defunct) blog would indicate. I spend so much time stuck in the past, reliving
memories, smiling smiles and laughing laughs that still tickle me the same way
they used to then. I only need to listen to songs or see a couple of photos to
be shoved headlong into nostalgia.
As July
2014 dawns, I'm reminded everyday that it's been ten long years since I left
home to another country, new people, a course in a university both of which I'd
only heard of a few months before, but was confident and arrogant enough to
think I could 'pull it off'.
I just
spent the last 20 minutes going through photos of my first three years in that
city/country. Even as I got over the shock of how ridiculous I looked at 18
(and well, 19 and 20 too), I realise how enormously some things have changed. I
am no longer the crackpot or 'tomboy' of any group, and I've gone through an
entire cycle of being ‘stonehearted’ to becoming an emotionally charged
person. I no longer have the arrogance to jump into issues
heart-first-mind-later, with the last one I think I took being the reasonably
thought-out decision to move back to India. I no longer sing out loud or whirl
around my room ‘dancing’ (unless I’ve downed something that is said to trigger
such behaviour). I don’t know what is happening everyday in the life of my best
friend. I listen to Rahman’s new songs a whole week or two after they’re out. And
heck, I no longer find every other thing fascinating, happy, curious or sad,
such that I want to record it on my blog or diary. The blog is dead, for all
intents and purposes.
Some people
say I’ve grown up. Some say one has to ‘mature’.
I feel
sad to hear all this, and to recognise how much I have changed.
And then
I realise there’s still a lot that hasn’t.
The thick
friends are still there, even if across various borders, and you can pick up a
conversation like there was no gap of months between when you talked or
messaged. The first sip of beer sends me into a happy tizzy that still makes me
grin. I’m still hooked to music all the
time I’m not talking or listening, and I’m still sharing YouTube links with my
best friend. My feminism has only become fiercer, and thankfully, I have kept the
oath I made in my third year of college that I wouldn’t make coffee for my
husband because I don’t drink coffee and he can make it himself (it’s another
thing I found one who doesn’t expect me to make coffee and does make it himself!)
And most of all, I’m happy that I can still get over things quickly enough.
All the
same, being nostalgic, as much as it makes me smile, makes me sad. How does
life move along so quickly? Did we ever realise that the lives we were leading
then were so good, no matter how bad it got – heartaches, fights, nervousness,
job-related panic, tiredness? Well, would we ever remember the times we live in
now, and think we’ll look back on these and go ‘Wow! I don’t believe I used to
live that life’?
Currently,
the ‘now’ seems so placid. I wonder if that’s how the then years seemed as
well. I hope I’m collecting enough memories now – remembering tiny things, making
notes, registering current addictions. For, my goodness, I’m going to need
something to fill my future nostalgia trips.
7 comments:
Same here. Even i spend too much time pondering over the past. But i think it's good to remember good old memories sometimes.
Nice... I can relate to a lot of what u said ... I hope ur present brings more smiles in ur future nostalgia trips :-)
wel, I read jus three of ur blogs, so far, n am smiling :-)
Stumbled upon your blog to find out who chose the domain name that I wanted :) Nice writing!
Discovered your blog as I read through the founding team of Spark.
Age does help us mature and I like the way you put the "entire cycle of being ‘stonehearted’ to becoming an emotionally charged person" . I guess a part of ageing is the tendency to listen to the heart and let it direct the brain. Agree?
I like to visualize our presence in this universe as threads, of a million hues, running from one end to another, each of a length as that of our lives. To picture a person’s lifetime, I see thousands of these multi-colored threads against a white background. For most part, a thread runs straight, unfettered but sometimes another thread crosses this one, defining a point in time when two people meet, sometimes these threads run parallel, maybe these people travelled together, a journey perhaps. Only ever so rarely, two threads intertwine; possibly two people in love. Can you imagine what this would look like, if we saw this way, the lives of seven billion people?
One sticky summer afternoon in 2006, hot, lonely and homesick, I came across your blog. It reminded me of home. It spoke of raw mangoes, Sunday evening movies with family, but most importantly it spoke about your ambitions, triumphs and tribulations in a foreign land, and it resonated within me, my exact experiences at that moment. I consumed your blog voraciously during those wind-swept, forlorn days, each post fluttered like pin-points of bright light, fireflies in the obscurity of my darkest hour.
Sadly, the same year and quite kollywood-like, a few minutes after I checked your blog, one August morning, I lost my job. Strangely and quite inexplicably your writing gave me a much needed anchor. In your writing, I was at home, in my beloved Chennai. If I closed my eyes and thought hard enough, I could smell my mother’s cooking, hear the 8pm news intro and If I squinted, I could have sworn to you that I could see my bicycle, leaning on the verandah wall, the year was ’92 and the holidays were round the corner.
As I inched along my thread, the years passed, I moved countries, crossed continents, fell in love, lost and fell in love again but every now and then, when thoughts of home struck, I couldn’t help but peep into your blog and hope to fall into those trips that take a few seconds of thought but span a decade. Like the wondrous faraway tree, with each post, a new world showed up and let me dream, of days gone by, a unfathomable pleasure in feeling the pain of the moments passed, in realization that they can never be lived again, and in the forlorn realization that the people we cared about, and the places we have spent time, no longer exist. A home empty, is a sad homecoming.
There are some threads you will never know you crossed; please keep writing.
love this blog
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