Nostalgia
………………
If it is a
Sunday and it’s raining in the morning, then a certain nerve in my neural
network triggers a reaction by injecting some chemicals which takes me back to
my good old days and my nostalgic trip starts. That exactly happened yesterday
when I woke up it was cloudy and then rain started….and I was transported to
the past moving back and forth in the time capsule guided by the music which
was wafting in from the music system tuned in Mirchi 98.3 playing
Rabindrasangeet at that moment and then I pushed my pen drive containing
collection of old Hindi and English songs….the songs are the best time conduit
for seamless time travel….the mental age keeps on varying with the songs when I
very first heard those. Sometimes it would be like in my school days when
Kishore’s Mana janab ne pukara nahin is playing from the film Paying Guest…I am
sitting in Regal cinema hall in Connaught Place and watching Devanand following
Nutan…like this each of the song reminds of a day or events or some place or
some close relatives,friends….when I hear the song Awaz deke hame na bulana then I remember my first night spent in Digha
sea beach during our first visit there , I cycled down to Digha with my
friends from IIT,Kharagpur in 1963 or so…..behind our place of stay in Digha those days
there was fir forest running along the sea beach and this song was wafting in
from a distance in the night…sometimes I feel that there is a storing area in our
mind where all the words and sounds get recorded and stored….the trick is how
to access those and play it back at will….one may suggest why not self-hypnotize
to access those sweet memories but it is easier said than done…I have read that people during hypnosis go back to their childhood days and start narrating bad
experiences which a psychiatrist helps in deleting from the memory, I must
admit I have not met any such person in my life time who has undergone this experience…during my second visit
to Holland I was sitting with this Dutch gentleman in an outdoor cafe along Rhine where he was telling me that his wife was a hypnotist and told some cases
which she had cured. That is the only time when I had this first hand encounter
with someone who was witness to dredging of subconscious mind.
Back to my
nostalgic trip of 25th June when I was swaying in time pendulum with
the help of my music system where I had put it in “shuffle” mode so the songs were
getting randomly picked and I was mentally getting kicked around in my
nostalgic trip this call from Delhi came from the younger brother of my close
friend who is no more now.....yes Kutu was my closest friend from my school days, we
were staying in the same Chummeries of Gole Market…we had a common running
veranda, we were staying at the two ends of the same veranda, we grew up together
though in different class but in same school…I went out to IIT and then joined
IOC,BHEL etc but whenever I was in Delhi Kutu will make it a point to meet me…my
father retired shifted from Gole Market to Karol Bagh and finally settled in
Pashchim Vihar and Kutu shifted from Gole Market to CR Park but the distance
did not matter to him. He attended all important function of our house…he
helped my parents in shifting house to Pashchim Vihar,he was by my side when I was
grieving my mother’s death in 1994….the ring from his younger brother Jotu transported
me back to the days spent with Kutu and that fateful day in hospital where he
was in his last stages of prostate cancer…..i was in Calcutta when my youngest
brother Budu rang me up to tell that Kutu was in critical stage, me and my wife
Madhuri rushed to Delhi and visited him
in hospital, he was unconscious and lying helplessly there in hospital bed, I cried
and thought of him being such a great footballer lying there so weak…he was
captain of the football team of Delhi College…after 2 days he left us….any death makes me feel guilty that as though i have not spent enough time with that person because of my other priorities but then often most those priorities are wrongly placed ...
Last Sunday I
mostly lived in the past….
