Revisiting Times

December... A month when I live mostly in my dreams and thoughts. Perhaps it’s true for everyone. It’s that time of the year when we revisit and introspect the year that’s just gone by and also optimistically think about the year that’s going to arrive in a few days.

Today I was traveling to my field work organization sitting in a corner of a Best bus. The sun was smiling benevolently at me and cold chill morning wind seeping in through the half opened window pane was kissing my face. Unknowingly I started my journey down the memory lane. It soon started throwing up a lot of memoirs just like waves keep lapping up the sands of the beach. I don’t know why, but I thought about my company a lot and more about the people in the organization. Those moments of anxiety that hovered around the delivery date of our projects, those moments of excitement just before attending a party wherein we used to swear that we wont drink to the extend of losing our consciousness and still get drunk to the point that we forget ourselves; those moments of eternal bliss wherein after forgetting everything, we enjoyed the ride back home in a rickshaw(thanks to those n number of rickshaw drivers who safely got us home) where the cold air of the night used to gush in from both the sides making the journey an exhilarating experience.

It was as though a film had started playing. Reels continued to flow in and so were memories.
Those days that we spent at Helen Villa (our house at Thane) where I spent some of the best days of my life, those times when we sued to rush back home and cook food (everyone barring me used to take part in that activity and I used the pretext of going out and getting vegetables for not cooking, the reality being that I hated cutting vegetables) and eat food to our hearts content, those nocturnal visits to the Marine drive wherein we used to sit on the platform facing the sea, spot the ship in the distance and philosophically say “ Sid….tu who jahaaz dekh raha hain…” as though we were the Khans and Khannas of Dil chahta hain musing over our bleak possibility of meeting one another once we leave Bombay.

Well…I could just go on and on…As the main protagonist of Albert Camus Outsider, Meursault who is undergoing a trial says ” Even after a single day’s experience a man could stay in prison for 100 years…” How true, isn’t it? For whiling away time, perhaps one of the best past times could be remembering all those details of the past. The humor of blaming the present and admiring the past is strongly rooted in human nature and has an influence on persons even with the profoundest of judgment. We meet to create memories and we part to preserve them. Well said by Vipul. But here lies the irony. Although these memories could bring a smile on your face quite unconsciously, sometimes they are a pain as you are immediately reminded that those moments can never be recreated. Perhaps, that’s the reason why sometimes I feel that one shouldn’t get attached to any person, place or for that instance to anything and this is what the Eastern philosophy emphasizes on: the principle of non-attachment. But all this is sometimes beyond our control.

I have always been fortunate enough to be with some good people and that legacy continues. Perhaps that’s the reason why all those sweet memories keep lapping up and they do without fail bring a smile unconsciously on your face.

Enjoy the past………Live the present……….Chuck the future….