Memories

 

Courtesy TheConversation.com

Though my country is obsessed with memories, I am not fond of them. It’s beyond my comprehension why my country loves to dig up the ghosts of Babur and Aurangzeb, people buried centuries ago. It looks like my country is getting tired of digging far into history because of late young girls seem to be the targets. Girls in their early 20s seem to be the most favourite. Middle-aged journalists and activists were the focus some time back. Well, tastes vary as time changes, I guess.

Back to memories which is my concern this morning because an old friend of mine called me “bastard” yesterday when I refused to respond to his seemingly endless messages. This friend – let’s call him Harry as in Tom, Dick, and Harry – has been trying to renew a lost friendship for a while now. We had said goodbye to each other in 2001 standing on shifting sands on a mountaintop. Future looked utterly bleak to me as I descended the mountain and walked away into absolute uncertainty. Because of him and a few others. Him, mainly.

Time is not a bad healer in spite of the scars it inevitably leaves. I learnt to forget him in the due course of time. I decided to forget many others. That’s not an easy job, if you’ve ever lived through hells. They’ll say you created your own hells. You’d rather give them the honour as the architects. The truth, we all know, lies in between: the hells were created by you as well as them. Perhaps, they are inevitable – the hells. Part of life. Part of growing up. For some, it’s growing down. I belong to that latter category. I never understood the ways of the world and so kept shielding me more and more from it. Did I have a choice?

I have wished a zillion times I knew how to live in the world of real people. Every attempt of mine was like the dwarf-clown’s antiques on a trapeze in a circus I watched as a boy. The clown’s antiques are fun for the spectators. Not for him, if you know him.

Finally I accepted my social handicaps and withdrew into my cocoon. And waited for the butterfly to emerge knowing that miracles are not as common as our godmen (where are they now in these bad times, I wonder) make it out to be. There’s a nice warmth in that cocoon, if you want to know. It feels nice there. I didn’t want memories to come poking at my nice cocoon.

But they come. Life never leaves you in peace. Life is strife. Inevitably. If there’s nothing to fight for, they’ll resurrect Babur from his grave and fight with his ghost. Harry resurrected ghosts within my nice cocoon. Ghosts of memories. Through WhatsApp messages which wanted my opinion on whether Hopkins is a Victorian poet or more modern in spirit. Who am I to speak about Hopkins and Hardy to you, Dr Harry?

You didn’t want my answers to those questions, I know. You’re probably trying to bury the ghosts that stir within your cocoon. You’d better do it without me; I’m no exorcist.

In the meanwhile, I don’t mind raising a toast to you within my cocoon and sing with Maroon 5: “Here’s to the ones that we got…”