I have a great desire to cling on to my past, especially that of my childhood. I fondly remember my days as a young boy in Trivandrum and Ernakulam - the schools I went to, the songs I heard, the houses I grew up in, the joint family in which we were all raised, the black humour of my school mates and so on.
It is not because it was a period of unmixed joy. On the contrary, nearly all of these settings had enough unpleasantness that I would not want to cherish. As an extremely sensitive boy it did not take much to cause me hurt. Not the least of all the sadness of those days is the precipitous and rapid fall from being a nearly invincible academic rival across the entire state to a nearly failed student - if only I had collected my grade at the end of the first year of college, which I never did.
And that makes me wonder why I wish not to let go of much of that past in Kerala.
In sharp contrast, I am quite happy to forget nearly all aspects of my life in Madras, except for the fact that those were the only two years that all five of us lived together as a family. And of a certain fellow passenger on whom I showered mute admiration for the two years that I took a bus to Loyola College. More about that strange affair in another post, where I nearly spoke my mind to her more than two hundred times, but never did.
So it is that I still wear a single dhoti and sleeveless banian, as I did as a young boy in Trivandrum. My idea of religion still consists of going to a Kerala style temple and worshiping in the Malayali tradition. I still watch Malayalam movies from that era. I cannot seem to like any film music better than the songs of Yesudas and Jayachandran from that time. The most memorable monsoons to me are those where the rain water rushed in one torrential sweep down the open sewerage in front of my grandfather's house in Trivandrum, leaving me wondering how long would the water take to find its way into the emaciated and nearly extinct Kili river that I had been told it would eventually flow into.
So it is that every time I go back to Trivandrum, hoping to see vestiges of those days and events that I love to cling on to. And then I realise sadly that every thing I turn to has changed - from the roads to my school classrooms to the British library, the YMCA sports club...Not to mention the people who have all bowed to mortality, even as I hoped that someday I would walk up to them and say, Do you remember I was in your English class? Or, do you remember that incident where you caught me flying paper rockets inside your physics class? Just as much as I wanted so much to say to the late Narendra Prasad, who fought with the Principal that he (the Principal) withdraw my suspension order and be allowed to stay. But I never did speak to Prasad because he suddenly went to sleep forever, with his many unspoken sorrows that gave him an aura of mystery.
Why do I wish to cling on to those memories? Why do so many of us want to cling on to the past - even though we know it is costly to do so? Even though all the examples of worldly successes we see around us tell us that the key to getting ahead in life is to move on?
It is not because it was a period of unmixed joy. On the contrary, nearly all of these settings had enough unpleasantness that I would not want to cherish. As an extremely sensitive boy it did not take much to cause me hurt. Not the least of all the sadness of those days is the precipitous and rapid fall from being a nearly invincible academic rival across the entire state to a nearly failed student - if only I had collected my grade at the end of the first year of college, which I never did.
And that makes me wonder why I wish not to let go of much of that past in Kerala.
In sharp contrast, I am quite happy to forget nearly all aspects of my life in Madras, except for the fact that those were the only two years that all five of us lived together as a family. And of a certain fellow passenger on whom I showered mute admiration for the two years that I took a bus to Loyola College. More about that strange affair in another post, where I nearly spoke my mind to her more than two hundred times, but never did.
So it is that I still wear a single dhoti and sleeveless banian, as I did as a young boy in Trivandrum. My idea of religion still consists of going to a Kerala style temple and worshiping in the Malayali tradition. I still watch Malayalam movies from that era. I cannot seem to like any film music better than the songs of Yesudas and Jayachandran from that time. The most memorable monsoons to me are those where the rain water rushed in one torrential sweep down the open sewerage in front of my grandfather's house in Trivandrum, leaving me wondering how long would the water take to find its way into the emaciated and nearly extinct Kili river that I had been told it would eventually flow into.
So it is that every time I go back to Trivandrum, hoping to see vestiges of those days and events that I love to cling on to. And then I realise sadly that every thing I turn to has changed - from the roads to my school classrooms to the British library, the YMCA sports club...Not to mention the people who have all bowed to mortality, even as I hoped that someday I would walk up to them and say, Do you remember I was in your English class? Or, do you remember that incident where you caught me flying paper rockets inside your physics class? Just as much as I wanted so much to say to the late Narendra Prasad, who fought with the Principal that he (the Principal) withdraw my suspension order and be allowed to stay. But I never did speak to Prasad because he suddenly went to sleep forever, with his many unspoken sorrows that gave him an aura of mystery.
Why do I wish to cling on to those memories? Why do so many of us want to cling on to the past - even though we know it is costly to do so? Even though all the examples of worldly successes we see around us tell us that the key to getting ahead in life is to move on?
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