What’s your earliest memory? Is it a good one? Do we
tend to remember the sad ones or do we hold on tighter to the moments when we
were unadulteratedly happy? The potential for tragedy seems to be higher
really, but then that could really be my sunny disposition unfurling. It just
seems that we have so much more to lose than to potentially gain. It is weird
to say that perhaps, a pessimist saying that we have it good but that’s kind of
how I feel – as a species, we have perhaps inhabited a Goldilocks’ zone of some
sort since the great wars and collectively we are set for a great reset of
sorts. And individually, with there are being so many things that can go belly
up, just thinking about all those possibilities can be quite debilitating. For
me, the moments that were squirm inducing are never really away from the
surface of the memory pool – and I do like absently scratching away at my scabs.
But if I put my mind to it, peering deep as it were, there are bright shiny
pieces, gleaming and eager to be found.
I am seven and sick with worry. Dad’s home for the
weekend. He’s promised to take me this time. The sun is merciless – May promising
glamour tans and scraped knees from sliding on concrete sidewalks. I can’t bear
to wait for sundown – I have packed and unpacked and changed the plastic at least
a couple of times. Even the evening routine of prayers and incense fails to
calm me – knees tapping away at the leg-board of the sitting room divan,
waiting for the parents to finish their tea. It’s a long walk, maybe 3km,
beyond the nursery school, across the old D-type flats, along the bachelors’
quarters. I bounce (can you imagine?) all the way, tugging Dad’s hand. I change
by myself (grown up aren’t I) and take a quick shower, taking care to put my
new glasses into their case. The water is a mysterious green with the lights and
the surface heat lending it an otherworldly air. Dad goes in first and then he guides
me in. The water is cool and smells quite strongly of chlorine. Dad tells me to
grab a long breath and then I sink in.
I am seventeen and thereabouts, traveling home for the
weekend. Its December or January. I wake up at around 4, the 5w yellows encased
in absent glass and rusted iron at the end of the corridors providing the only
hint of light in an otherwise suffocating darkness of snores and stale air. I
clamber down the ladder and loop my trusty denim bag over my head as I head to
the nearest end of the coach. It takes a couple of tries before I can wrench
the heavy door open – it opens with a creak morphing into a groan and a whoosh
to end – thankfully, the attendant doesn’t come rushing. I have an hour to go
and I know that the train won’t stop for anything. Villages blink by, lights
twinkling and flirty bamboo groves a-titter. Occasional glimpses of NH-34. The
wind is nippy and alive and I brace my feet against the door jamb and lean back
into the hand rail and close my eyes.
For someone who is not really big on uninitiated
contacts, I am quite haptic I find. I
like the sensation of touch. I thought of learning braille once (didn’t have
the patience) and even used to scrub my fingertips with sandpaper (in a
non-mutilating way). I was/am weird? Memories are triggered by the littlest things.
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Been away for a while. But now I am back, a little
different, no better or worse, but simply different. Met some family and made
some family – though I hesitate to really put labels on things are so new. I
have been comfortable so long in a shell of my own making and I am nothing if
not lazy, so I know I will take my own time to understand about these new
people and even then, I doubt I will really get to know all of them. How am I
different? That I don’t really know yet. Something fundamental has changed,
with full consent and knowledge yes, but still it feels quite invasive. I feel
weird waking up some days, almost convinced before I open my eyes, that nothing
has really changed. But then I get up and it really has. And now I can’t smoke in my own home. But I
have had time to organize my bookshelves after a good long time (since I left
C-101 really, apart from a short time in 1503) – and found out that I have now
gathered about 300 books in Mumbai (over 9 years, so that’s acceptable and
doesn’t really require any intervention I think, right?). Putting up the
current status of my comics shelf (going to be shelves soon I think) here – I love
how they are so uniformly sized, very satisfying to my mildly OCD self.
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I will sign-off here. I really wanted to write. It had
been so long. A couple of songs I must mention here.
1. alt-J - Taro. I discovered the band pretty recently - what can I say - pretty much my loss. Incoherent jabber, lyrics interlaced with history, very different instrumentation and a Brit band to boot. Am linking to the interesting videos/songs here (1, 2, 3) and putting up a more SFW video.
2. Mumford & Sons - Babel. Yes, its mushy and cliched. Why not?
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