Disable text selection

November 15, 2012

Down the memory lane.....

Ah, those same places.... the street I walked as a 2 year old, clasping my mother's finger. That temple on the hill I visited with my father every day after an enthusiastic climb, more of a hop and a skip for me then, a tedious climb now.... 

Hark! That very rock, utterly unchanged, upon which my mother, father and myown little self would sit viewing the town... The government housing board quarters must be there below, besides the Temple pond. Oh, the place has changed a good deal! I touch the rock, and for a fleeting few lovely moments, relive those earliest memories. In a curious piece of time travel, I grope under the rock to see if that little crevice is there. And a child-like joy lights my heart up to find it exactly as it was when I left it, 80 years ago. I had my first sight of a frog hidden in a crevice, there, 8 decades ago, in my father's company. I realize I had been standing still there, caressing that rock for a few minutes now. Like life had, I must move on. I must reach home before dusk. My eyes are not too sharp these days nor my bones too stout to be able to withstand stumble. I rise. 

And the slow descent brings me to where once a small stream ran, where my mother would place me by her side and wash clothes. No sign of water there now. I remember my mother. An epitome of unending love. My source of safe solace. Why did she leave me many years ago? Perhaps to take birth again, so that she would be a young woman fit to receive me in her womb again, in the coming days? I wish. The world seems empty now, without her and my father. The world is cruel. It always has been. It looks to rob you ruthlessly. But my mother and father were a contrast. They gave me their all. And with a smile. It's a pity I realized that after they left this world.

Ha! There comes that Ambaal Temple. That's where I met my wife for the first time. When was that? Hmm.... perhaps 50 years ago. I don't remember. I do not remember much these days, you see. The rush is maddening these days. Every one seems to be in some hurry. Life, as they make it out to be, is apparently difficult. I do not understand their ways. My only son refused to take me to these places, he said he has conference calls for his boss in some town in America.

I felt an urge to visit these places once again. The same places I had visited with my parents. The same relics that had borne witness to our happy times together, once upon a time. Life has taken me to other places for most of my life. But I returned now. Alone. Suddenly, rocks and relics relate to my mother and father to me, now. They smile to me, in them. I am in a sepia toned world of my own. I am slipping into reliving those days, again. I hear my mom washing our clothes, calling out for me. Do not disturb me. I am happier with a relevant past than with an irrelevant present! Amma, I am coming.