m a n u s c r y p t s

…and sometimes you turn back to look at your past, it looks right back at you, there’s a smile of understanding, and you decide to move on…

As i looked around the room, i could see the images flash – hunting for the missing single white uniform sock which was mocking me from somewhere on the stand,  climbing up on multiple stools to nail that Ash poster on to the wall, numbering new cassettes and arranging them on the cupboard shelf,  skeptically viewing the computer when it was brought in, and then spending hours browsing, adjusting the angle of lying down on the bed to watch TV in the other room while pretending to be studying, gazing fondly at those hard earned trophies and remembering the exploits that earned them….an almost endless stream…

There has been at least one occupant since then, but ‘I’ can still be found there, after all i spent close to a decade there… memories buried amongst books, clothes, and all those assorted things that are part of the everyday existence… forgotten heroes… part of a story that once used to be called home…

As i left the room, there was an uneasiness that gnawed at me… it happened during every goodbye, but somehow this time I felt it was different.. and a few hours later, as i opened the door of our current place of residence in Bangalore, and gazed around in affection at the familiar settings, I sensed an understanding of the uneasiness, and remembered the words from ‘Garden State’ that I tend to quote often

You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone
… You’ll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it’s just gone. And you can never get it back. It’s like you get homesick for a place that doesn’t exist. I mean it’s like this rite of passage, you know.
… I miss the idea of it. Maybe that’s all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.

….for even as you smile in understanding, there’s the pain of moving on, of losing touching with the ‘you’ who once were, of acknowledging the paradox of Time – which caused you to change, and the room to remain relatively unchanged..almost frozen in time….perhaps a keeper of memories that you couldn’t find space for…

until next time, a room with a point of view

After a really long time, I chanced to see some college kids in action. Some, would be an understatement since it involved half a dozen colleges and a few hundred students. As part of the program, I got to see them in their natural environment, their college. Did that make them sound like animals? Okay, it wasn’t supposed to. It made me think about youth. Not mine, since my memory isn’t too good these days, but the usage of that word to represent the collective.And i realised it doesn’t really do them justice.

For I saw dreamers, the silent types who sat in the corners of the college quad with either eyes glued firmly to a book, or absorbing the world around in general, sometimes with an amused smile.

I saw the show-offs, displaying everything from the latest in gadgets and fashion, to the latest in body art, and equating that in some way with what and who they are.

I saw the absolute rascals, whose single focus was the other gender, and their attention. From what i saw, I thought it was more hormones than nobler intentions of love.

I saw escapists, who learned very early, that it doesnt matter if the grass is green on the other side, or any damn side, you still gotta have it, the grass that is.

I saw those who were full of life, participating in all the contests that were happening, eager to prove, not to anyone else, but to themselves, that they had what it took to excel.

I saw some who had perhaps given up on all that happened around them, some of them with a quizzical expression and some of them trying hard to populate vacant smiles.

I saw those whose looks had more than a trace of rancour, was it against what they were surrounded by, who they were surrounded by or was it against those who were happy in these surroundings?

Youth, the collective term for a population that consists of individuals who are perhaps still trying to find out who and what they are.

And as i sat watching them,  I saw some of them stare back at me, as though asking me how life goes, years after you’ve left college? Whether the world you are part of now, resembles the world you used to occupy then. And I would’ve liked to tell them that the world outside does change, but for better or worse, the world within can stay exactly the way it is, if you’d let it. And that perhaps is why some of us never grow up, and some of us feel that we grew up a long time back. And both of these have nothing to do with our age.

until next time, growing up…