Nostalgia

I can never remember this song beyond its first two lines but I just love it. I often sing its two lines in a loop.

A bunch of my classmates, batchmates and seniors had gone to Rendezvous at IIT-D in 2004. Anika, Nandita and I hung out together. We had an exhilarating three days. I revelled in the freedom. We all slept on mattresses in a large, common hall in one of the IIT girls hostels. I love sleeping like that.Sleeping on a mattress on the floor has festive connotations for me. In my childhood, whenever there was a function at home, or at a relative's home, mattresses would be arranged on the floor of a room and we would all lie down, elders and children, talking till late in the night. Anyways, so we really enjoyed our days at Rendezvous. On the last day of the fest, we kept awake the whole night. We walked on the IIT roads, talking, laughing. I loved the idea of walking so freely at 10 in the night, and feeling not the slightest doubt about the safety of it. Then, we saw something wonderful.

A group of boys, all obviously IITians, were walking on the road as one horizontal line, the arms of each wrapped around his neighbours, dancing together and singing happy, happy songs in loud unison. The song that they were singing at that moment was 'Shirdi waale Saai baba'. Since then, I've loved this song. It is associated with those anonymous guys celebrating the success of Rendezvous. A desire was born in me, to sing like that some day, to sing in wild abandon, in the middle of the night, not caring for the world, just singing and dancing to vent out the exuberance in my heart. I am smiling even as I write this. Really, that is an image I cherish.

Nostalgia- it's such a funny thing, isn't it? It means nothing. It is not real at all. Yet, it is so real. Since yesterday, the theme of nostalgia has been coming up again and again.

Simran's house is at a 10-minute walk from mine. She is one of my best friends from college. Someone who, I say, reflects me. There is a market right behind her street. During college, I've made innumerable to-and-fro trips from her house to the market. She was the topper of our class. I always kept running about for the Magboard, and was quite careless with my notes etc. When the sessionals or the semester exams stared right into my face, I would run to Simran with my half-baked notes and get all the deficient notes photocopied. With time, I realized how foolish that was. So many times, I would find that in the bulk of the material-to-be-photocopied, I had got those notes xeroxed which I had already. So, I told my friends to not get any notes photocopied for me henceforth during the session. It was easier to get them all in one go from Simran in the end.

Whenever I go to that market, I usually take the road in front of her house, 'her' road. Yesterday too I did and saw her Kinetic standing outside her house. For a moment, I could have imagined that I was still in college and I only had to ring her bell and she would come out. "Aslam!" I smiled. We had named her Kinetic 'Aslam', Kaminee's Activa was 'Zeenat', Kanchan's I don't remember and mine, I think wasn't named. I stopped there, gazed at 'Aslam' for a moment, clicked a pic of it, and called up Simran in Australia. "Guess where I am standing right now?" I laughed.

I had thought then, of writing this post on Nostalgia. Silly sentimentality, isn't it?




Later, I tried to remember about how the vehicle had become 'Aslam' but drew a blank. Soon after I returned from the market I went to Jassu's house. Jassu and I met Swedha at Stu C. We had a leisurely time under the white or the orange lights of the Stu C, the roads, the University market and then, the UIET parking. The old UIET, I mean. In the last semester of my engineering, our college had shifted to a grander building. But, for me, UIET remains the beautiful building I spent seven semesters in. We were all feeling so good. The silly sentimentality was at play again.

It was with their group that I had realized my 'Shirdi waale Sai Baba' dream. In early 2006, our college fest Goonj was going on. I was with my seniors' group, of which Jassu and Swedha are a part. We were late for the rock show. So, we stopped at the Stu C, bifurcated ourselves and played Dumb Charades for hours, till the last light went out. I vaguely remembered yesterday that Kaila had stood on a bench and had tried to flap imaginary wings, desperately trying to make us guess his movie but we were all helpless with laughter. Swedha vaguely remembered VJ's turn when he pointed frantically at the Stu C and tried to enact houses made of bricks. After shuffling out of the Stu C, all of us had walked down a footpath, I had suggested that we play Antakshri aloud and the others had readily agreed. That night, I had walked on the roads of PU, singing songs with my friends, caring not a bit about the world.

I go to the University every now and then. I do not feel sentimental about it. But sometimes, I do. Especially, if I am with a friend who is a part of fond memories.

Today morning, I was back to UIET again. It was the center for the TISS entrance exam. My seat was in the hall which used to be our Biotech lab. I was happy to be there, I liked looking out of the window, onto the PU stadium looking lush green in the bright sunlight. After the paper, I walked for sometime on the terrace. This was where we all used to stand, I thought about a spot. That was where we used to sit studying before the sessionals and the vivas, I thought about another. I was happy to be there. Yet, this was a subtle happiness. 'Happiness' is probably too strong a word; it would be more apt to say that I was pleased to be there. Pleased, that's all. All the while, I was fully conscious that the building was mine no longer. I did not regret that the least bit. I smiled as my imagination conjured a scene- I am being offered the chance to relive my college life, and my eyes pop out in shock and I say, "No! Thank you! I do not have the energy to do it all again!"

The past is the past. Firmly behind. Nothing more than vague memories that bring pleasure.

Aha! As I wrote '...that bring pleasure,' I remembered another thought that I had recorded a few days back. The thought was that memory is so malleable. We can see what we want to see and forget that other things, which do not fit the story we want, ever happened. I, as I am today, am the end-product of all the experiences of my life so far. But, do I remember those experiences? No, not many, and even those that I do remember, I remember them the way I want to, not the way they really were. I know the end-product, I know the broad things that happened, and I can script the story the way I want. "I turned out this way because this thing happened to me." "This characteristic of mine is because of that thing," so on and so forth. In the beginning of this post, when I had written about 'Shirdi waale Saai Baba', I had asked myself whether the IIT Rendezvous was indeed the first time I had heard that song. I thought for a moment but could not remember any previous memory. So, I decided that yes, it was the first time I had heard of the song. You see my point? Such a definite statement made on the basis of such an arbitrary memory. The fact that I cannot remember something is no guarantee that it did not actually happen. And equally, the fact that I can remember something is no guarantee that it actually happened.

Ever since childhood, I have had this notion that my life is a novel in progress and one day, when I am at the end of the life, I will compile all the chapters and a book will be ready. A narrative voice always keeps talking in my mind. It is as if a writer is writing down every moment of my life on the book of my brain and he speaks out each word that he writes. What I am realizing is that the words written on the brain are evanescent. The brain can simply forget.

That is why, I think no autobiographical tale is truly autobiographical. Mine certainly won't be, if I set to write it today. I will try to be fully honest but my memory will limit my honesty. I won't remember everything, and my imagination will quietly fill in the gaps. I will not even realize that it is not my memory, but my imagination, that is speaking.

This is also why, I think, that Nostalgia always seems so golden. The present is a hard fact, a reality. It is unalterable. The past is a fiction. We can take the events that make the past, throw spotlight on some, leave out others and weave any story about ourselves that we like. The only condition is that that story should offer a plausible link to the person that we are today. But, on second thoughts, even that is not necessary. Because, it is only the people who were there with me in my past and are still with me who will be able to object that what I say about my past is not what actually happened. But, I think, that if I insisted that the story was true, they would get doubtful about their memories and finally shrug their shoulders and accept my version. "After all, she would remember about herself better than we do," they would think. The truth is that I do not remember much about myself. My friends don't remember much about me. I don't remember much about my friends. We vaguely remember a few of the countless things that we did together or talked about. We vaguely remember the overall story. The fine details are for the imagination to conjure and fill up. And, nobody will be able to dispute anybody's version of those fine details.

Nostalgia is really a funny, stupid thing. It is my constant companion. I am always getting nostalgic about one thing or the other and feeling good about it. When I was in Bangalore, I had written a poem titled 'Nostalgia.' The road between the Infosys main campus and my office building used to remind me of the road behind UIET and that lingering image had inspired that poem. A month back, I imagined that I was back in Bangalore, travelling in a Volvo over the Silkboard bridge, then passing the Singasandra bus stop on the Hosur Road and finally getting off at the E-City bus stop. I find that the crowds on the stop are still the same. I walk down to my office, past it, on that road, feeling so good to be back again, then I walk back to the green building of my office, and call my friends. I watch them come down the stairs, get their bags checked...etc. When I was actually in Bangalore, yes, I enjoyed it, but at the back of the mind, a reel of restless thoughts would always keep droning about which I've already blogged enough. My mind was certainly not as unclouded as it appeared to be in that nostalgic vision which left me, predictably, feeling good and missing Bangalore.

Really, I have the bad habit of telling 'once upon a time...' fairy tales about my life.