Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Such an evening


It's been a long time, getting such an evening to my own. Not the kind after a tired, often wasted day. Then it's, get the hell away from where you are, however you can, specially when it's raining; back to one's own, not merely the familiar, but where one can lay claim on the integral. A part of me.

No, today, this evening, with a mind pleasantly splattered, after imparting enunciation, correcting pronunciation, tut-tutting (sympa-tutting?) appropriately to avoid getting run over by someone's elephantine neurosis, an airconditioned bus transports me to the opposite end of where I have been all day.

It has been awhile since I saw a typically Calcutta tropical sunset. The colours in a monsoon sky match the hues and shades of my mental being. Nothing seems to be what it is. The sunset retrieves dusty memories, a little rubbed over by the sandpaper of time. Nostalgia is a hurtful thing. Not always welcome when it appears without permission.

There's magic in the moment when open fields, fish farms glide past in the darkening east, as the psychedelic sunset paints a surrealistic backdrop to under-construction high-rises in the west. I like the windows on these new buses. Almost panoramic in their utility. Perhaps a bit tinted, a sort of dark violet which may also be distorting the colours of the sunset. Never mind.

A splattered mind needs but a suggestion to colour its world.

In those days of yore when the marijuana stoned you much more, when the colours excited you into verse, when music was tangible, when friendships were naive, when every evening had a differently brilliant sunset, when the future held no promise and was only a distant extension of the here and now, in those days one could not foresee that nostalgia would become a dull ache. Something to be wished away. Medicated, narcotised. Treasured memories were black and white snapshots. Not digitized pixels.

I have no hankering to return to the past, to relive it. Memories and nostalgia occupy too many gigs in my head. I don't need them. History should be just a well written story book. All that's relevant is the now. The present.

Even the future must wait till I get there.

3 comments:

Prerona said...

I dont know what to say ... thats how much this post moved me.

yes 'Nostalgia is a hurtful thing' and sometimes we welcome even that just to remind ourselves we can still feel

where those days slipped away, when we were so young and so alive.

i never once thought even ill grow up

:)

nice post. awesome post. brilliant post.

p@tr!(k said...

Prerona
Sorry about the delay in replying but I lost access to the site for reasons you know well - our stupid government! Thanks too much!

Scarlett said...

"I have no hankering to return to the past, to relive it. Memories and nostalgia occupy too many gigs in my head. I don't need them. History should be just a well written story book. All that's relevant is the now. The present."

Ditto