I have no nostalgias

Nostalgia wipes away bad memories and magnifies good ones, says Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his autobiography, Living to Tell the Tale.  [I have modified his words a little and hence no quotation marks.]  Now I know why I have no nostalgias.  It’s very amusing when I come to think about it. 

I lived in quite a few places in South India, and then in Shillong and Delhi.  I lived with all sorts of people in these places, people belonging to different religions, castes, tribes, and cultures.  These places and people have given me a lot of memories but no nostalgia whatever.  

There were so many funny people who provided a whole lot of entertainment to me all along the way.  However, those experiences become entertainment only when I look back from the distance of today.  Standing on “a heap of broken images” of an Eliotean Waste Land, I have little to long for from those days which are lost permanently (and mercifully?) anyway.   

My fears and desires, joys and sorrows were all real.  Did my fears and sorrows outweigh my joys and fulfilments?  I’m not even sure.  I have reached a stage when the answer to the question doesn’t matter at all.  Was it all worthwhile?  That’s a question which arises in the core of my being more frequently than I would like it to.  Could I have helped it anyway whether it was worthwhile or not?

If I could walk the same paths once again, I would do the whole trekking in a different manner.  But the funniest thing about life, I think, is that by the time you learn the lessons that really matter you are too old to need those lessons.  

I have no regrets, however.  Regrets are futile burdens on the soul, quite as futile as nostalgias perhaps. Decisions make the difference.  Decisions belong to the present.  They shape the present.  Where else can we live but in the present?