Time, Please!

I am at home for an extended period after a long time. It's a great feeling, but also a feeling full of surprises.

Even something as definitive as a family starts to blur out if one stays for far too long outside. Friends and acquaintances blur too, but there is a difference. Difference lies in that even though I didn't like losing touch with some of them, I was prepared and hence better adjusted for the process. When it started happening, I acknowledged it, took efforts in maintaining touch, and eventually settled down in a practical concoction of feelings for them and efforts required to maintain those feelings. So, if the blurring happened, it was a conscious blurring. I was aware.

Family was such a given, that I didn't realise that blurring could ever happen. For me, they had fixed roles of being a parent or a grandparent. They all had such stable roles and personalities in my mind that it absolutely escaped me that they must be responding to the passage of time just as I did, modulating themselves to cope and thrive, and that in the process some of their old selves might have disappeared, and they may have picked up some new habits, too.

So when I see the same old face speaking a new thought, same old body performing a new behaviour, same old person sheltering a new mind, I stare and gape.

The mind is currently vacillating between eager curiosity, missing the older versions and plain indifference.

Lost and Found

Every generation has to bear a curse.

Our generation was fortunate enough to have everything going for us. We had good education, have good work, good money. We are well travelled. We have resources at our fingertips. We have means to get most of the things we want.

The curse is lack of respite. 
--

Even with a fast pace of life, there are some things which have the power to bring everything to a halt. A sudden standstill. Like memories. Memories of childhood. Of Aai and Achcha. Of Akash, Bai and Pitaji. Of Gopuri. Of Shanu and Shweta. Of friends. Of Kerala.

Those memories are not always happy ones, but the sieve of time has filtered out all positive and negative connotations attached to them. Some memories bring smiles. In most cases however, there's absolutely no emotion attached. Just neutrality. As if it the story of someone else's life.
--

We didn't have a television while growing up. I watched movies in theatre or on the office VCR, always in the cosy company of family and friends. Everyone in my family has been a movie buff. Even my grandparents. I remember countless re-runs of Anand, Jaagte Raho, Shree 420, Boot Polish, Jagriti, Disney Cartoons on the office TV. I don't remember much of what I thought of these movies. All I remember is the AV room cum library. The musty smell of the pillows and rajais. The onslaught of mosquitoes. The Good Knight-Kachhuachhaap-smoke of half burnt green neem leaves combo to drive the mosquitoes away.

And the warm glow of the flickering screen in the quiet darkness of the room where the five of us would huddle together. For me that's still the true semblance of a family.
--

The movie 'Anand' was a staple. The highlight of the movie was always the song Kahin Door Jab (despite everyone ridiculing Mukesh's voice). I guess I must have realised even then that there was some magic happening there on screen. Those 5 minutes where Rajesh Khanna (sans his herogiri) reveals himself before us made a lifelong impact. It struck a chord. The song is one of the best examples of revealing your deepest self to the world, done so in privacy and solitude of one's own company. There is no crude, coarse desperation in that sadness. If anything, it comes forth in a simple display of words, melody and acting, that misery can be poised and elegant.
--

My day ends today with this song in the background, my nose pressed against the glass pane of my room looking out on the Paris skyline, and the blue night beam of Eiffel in close grasp. Everything together reminds me once again how important it is to live every single moment, whether happy or sad, and that nothing is worth sacrificing little bits of time for yourself.

Retribution and Forgiveness :)

The path to retribution has been glorified by many in the past. Lot of these DC and Marvel superheroes started out that way, didn’t they? A common man’s journey to being a superhero. But they are right! To feel wronged for thaaat long, you need to be a superhero. To tread the path of vengeance and continue feeling wronged for extended periods of time needs an unending source of energy, an unquestionable belief in others’ wrongdoings, and unadulterated self-pity without feeling stupid about it. Ordinary mortals like yours truly will feel bad maximum for a day or two and even that is stretching it, and then quickly revere in something less tiring, like say forgetfulness and lethargy. Which is not necessarily bad. Laziness and poor cognitive abilities marring the process of retribution is a good thing. It brings you a different kind of peace.

Every time I think about the reason why I would feel wronged in the first place, the answer that crops up is the same. Self-absorption. This need to be the cynosure of everyone’s eyes. That everyone should behave as if it’s a real treat to have me around. Who the hell do I think I am, eh? Obviously very few will give me that kind of importance and I am gonna feel let down eventually. But see that’s the problem, I understand all this on the cerebral level, but it doesn’t bloody penetrate deeper than that. The default doesn’t let me settle for anything less but to be at the top of everyone’s priority (even if they are not on mine). When someone jumps the queue ahead of me which happens quite frequently, it pisses me off. I rave and rant, neurons firing away to glory, and I come up with several solid impeccable parallel plans to avenge the insult (most of these things by the way happen at night coz that’s when my indolence allows me to wallow in all these luxuries). Usually by the time I am done with planning, I am exhausted, so I tend to sleep over it. And feel utterly useless about my plan the next day. One coz everything seems very trivial and manageable the next morning, but also coz I realise it’ll take some serious effort on my part if I want to continue feeling victimised. Better to call bygones be bygones, eh? It may not sound like an ideal combo, this trio of narcissism, bad memory and laze, but works every time.

Plus, in the end I like myself even more for my amazingly forgiving nature!

Decade Long Friendships

Will soon be a decade that I left home for higher studies. Met some of the best people life could have brought me across; they found me agreeable too, and we forged friendships that continue to date. There could have been so many filters ensuring that I would not meet them...but things happened...direct promotion to the second grade, not failing a grade, not taking a year off after 12th, deciding to write the entrance, and then another entrance, getting admissions there...etc etc...Hate the word serendipity (coz of that dud of a movie), but it is that, isn't it? If I hadn't met these guys, would have met some others, but the known scores over the unknown in this case.

If you're reading this you buggers, let's have a get-together! Some of you would have no hair, and some would have saggy boobs, but c'mon no one gives a damn! All I care about is meeting you coz there's no one else quite like you!!!