Skip to main content

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…”

Comments

  1. SuchitaFebruary 17, 2021 at 12:08 PM

    I love reading your posts and how seamlessly you combine two apparently disparate things. I let go of a friend too, even though we were the "best" ones because there were too many memories to make it okay.

    ReplyDelete
  2. rupam sarmaFebruary 18, 2021 at 10:10 AM

    Nice to read

    ReplyDelete
  3. magiceyeFebruary 18, 2021 at 6:15 PM

    Ghosts do have a nasty habit of wafting in and out.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 18, 2021 at 7:24 PM

      Indeed. Their very purpose of existence must be just that wafting.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Country where humour died

Humour died a thousand deaths in India after May 2014. The reason – let me put it as someone put it on X.  The stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra called a politician some names like ‘traitor’ which made his audience laugh because they misunderstood it as a joke. Kunal Kamra has to explain the joke now in a court of justice. I hope his judge won’t be caught with crores of rupees of black money in his store room . India itself is the biggest joke now. Our courts of justice are huge jokes. Our universities are. Our temples, our textbooks, even our markets. Let alone our Parliament. I’m studying the Ramayana these days in detail because I’ve joined an A-to-Z blog challenge and my theme is Ramayana, as I wrote already in an earlier post . In order to understand the culture behind Ramayana, I even took the trouble to brush up my little knowledge of Sanskrit by attending a brief course. For proof, here’s part of a lesson in my handwriting.  The last day taught me some subhashit...
10 comments
Read more

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...
4 comments
Read more

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...
10 comments
Read more

56-Inch Self-Image

The cover story of the latest issue of The Caravan [March 2025] is titled The Balakot Misdirection: How the Modi government drew political mileage out of military failure . The essay that runs to over 20 pages is a bold slap on the glowing cheek of India’s Prime Minister. The entire series of military actions taken by Narendra Modi against Pakistan, right from the surgical strike of 2016, turns out to be mere sham in this essay. War was used by all inefficient kings in the past in order to augment the patriotism of the citizens, particularly in times of trouble. For example, the Controller of the Exchequer taxed the citizens as much as he thought they could bear without violent protest and when he was wrong the King declared a war against a neighbouring country. Patriotism, nationalism, and religion – the best thing about these is that a king can use them all very effectively to control the citizens’ sentiments. Nowadays a lot of leaders emulate the ancient kings’ examples enviabl...
6 comments
Read more

Violence and Leaders

The latest issue of India Today magazine studies what it calls India’s Gross Domestic Behaviour (GDB). India is all poised to be an economic superpower. But what about its civic sense? Very poor, that’s what the study has found. Can GDP numbers and infrastructure projects alone determine a country’s development? Obviously, no. Will India be a really ‘developed’ country by 2030 although it may be $7-trillion economy by then? Again, no is the answer. India’s civic behaviour leaves a lot, lot to be desired. Ironically, the brand ambassador state of the country, Uttar Pradesh, is the worst on most parameters: civic behaviour, public safety, gender attitudes, and discrimination of various types. And UP is governed by a monk!  India Today Is there any correlation between the behaviour of a people and the values and principles displayed by their leaders? This is the question that arose in my mind as I read the India Today story. I put the question to ChatGPT. “Yes,” pat came the ...
10 comments
Read more