Nostalgia is often beautiful like love. It creeps on us like a stream when society calls for the drone adult life to which we all answer by displacing the mind and heart from its birth place. Impressions of memories begin to picture themselves before me like a slide-show. The first pang of nostalgia which engulfs me often were of my childhood days during vacation. Running home on the last day of school, flinging the bag to a corner never to be bothered with for the next 2 months and eager to begin the extremely long 3 mile journey to my relative’s house where I would devote myself to the ardent task of pure pandemonium. Energy spent, we return to our humble abodes on empty stomachs and hearts full. And just after we flop down on the mattress to the awaiting arms of the blankets of darkness and unconsciousness, she visits me again - Nostalgia.
Then at times, the nostalgia conceived from my irresponsible teenage juncture tend to rise within me at moments of rushed adrenalin and testosterone. The training camps, exhibitions, study tours, long drives till the fuel gauges reads empty are a few of these instances when Nostalgia chases me down like a love-lorn woman. These days friends and acquaintances are but a few finger-presses away unlike the older days when you had to put everything in writing and at the postal service’s whims and fancies.
After my brief stint of doing the act of an immature teenage boy, I unknowingly descended myself into a much more appreciated and acceptable member of society where I was asked to live the life of a worker ant scurrying about to gather food. This time signifies the bird-leaving-the-nest routine when you were anxious to try out your new wings and fend for yourself. A time to fly away from all physical tie-ups and relations; making your own mark in the books and silently hoping to chance upon a butterfly to invite on the trip. Its funny on how hard you try leaving the home when in the end you actually end up looking for it harder. Home-made pickles from mother and the torn currency notes from the father are the last possessions we agree to come into possession of before we leave home. Albeit, there is never a last time for such a process. Try as hard we may, we can never get a 1UP above our architects. There is a tendency to shove away these memories to the dark back-corners of our mind for fear of bashfulness. Nevertheless, they rain upon us as sure as the monsoon rains at the utterance of villages, paddy fields, mangoes, and midnight rains which bathe the landscape in silver.
