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| Appu Garh, Jan 2001 |
Memories can sustain us. They can also kill us slowly.
Shillong and Delhi are memories for me now. I lived in both places for a decade and a half each. The first was hell for me and the second was my paradise on earth.
I visited Delhi for the first time in the winter of 2000-2001 along with Maggie. We were on a holiday from Shillong which had become an agony for us both. The very next summer found us both seeking jobs in Delhi. We had given up our jobs in Shillong. We had given up Shillong.
Looking back at any reality two decades later has certain dangers. The past is never a fixed entity in our memories. The past is as much in a state of flux as is the present. The past keeps changing to suit our present. We need that transmogrification for our own survival. How else would certain events of the past become bearable?
More than 20 years after I left Shillong, the place still remains as a festering wound somewhere in my psyche. That is how certain memories are. They haunt you like a vindictive ghost. They have the potential to tear you apart. That is why we need to reshape them. For our own psychological survival.
As the narrator of Julian Barnes's novel, The Sense of an Ending, says, "Remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed." We live in time and time keeps moulding us relentlessly. You are not today what you were yesterday. And you look at yesterday's reality from your today's point of view. You reshape yesterday so that it fits in with your today. You need that consolation. You deserve it. Memory is not an absolute entity with any sanctity. Your memory exists for your own consolation primarily.
One of the places that Maggie and I enjoyed like two little children back in the Delhi of 2000 was an amusement park called Appu Garh. The above picture is from those days. Appu Garh is only a memory now. Thousands of Delhiites and others will certainly remember Appu Garh which added colours to their memories in those days.
Of course it wasn't Appu Garh that lured Maggie and me to Delhi in 2001. But Appu Garh remains as a sweet memory in my mind. As a teacher in Delhi, I took my students to Appu Garh many times until the place became sheer memory in 2008.
No, I don't miss Appu Garh. I miss Delhi in some ways because the place holds some of my most beautiful memories, memories that still regurgitate in my happy dreams. Unlike Shillong which brings only nightmares decades after I said goodbye to it. Memories don't die either way. And the height of irony is that we don't want to let go even the most painful memories, especially them.
This is the most beautiful blog ever written on memories. Very often your blogs give voice and shape to my latest accomplishments. Recently, I was telling my mother in law about my childhood- a nostalgia. After that long narrative, I had exactly the same feelings you have shared in your blog. Now I feel strongly about it - yes, I can script it to comfort me! I deserve it! Thank you for this marvelous piece. Glad to know that you treasure some of the sweet memories of Delhi. Hope those people in that memories are very much aware of it, Matheikal sir :))
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to know that my blog posts have some affinity with your heart :)
DeleteYou are also an integral part of my Delhi memories. Where else would I get such a companionable colleague? Sawan was a unique place. I always feel sorry they killed it so brutally.
You can only see me smiling with great joy now:))
DeleteDelighted to hear that.
ReplyDeleteHari OM
ReplyDeleteIt is true that memory can be a fickle thing! It is why even from the age of seven, I journalled. Not to lose any quality of each day. Though, of course, journals too are written to try to sort out and explain what has happened and its effects upon one. I do know that those journals (and those of my mother) helped settle many a family disagreement of occurences! For it is true too that everyone involved at a place and time will experience it differently and save only that which makes them feel safe(r). It is great to have some memories that only warm the heart and still the mind! YAM xx
I too kept a journal for a couple of years and then discarded it on realising that my life wasn't all that important. Perhaps it would have made the past more vivid if i was more patient with myself.
DeleteIt is so true how we look at our past differently as we grow up. I often forget my thoughts associated with a certain memory and feel surprised when I go through my diary entries of those times. I love the thought of memories existing for our own consolation. Beautiful write up.
ReplyDeleteSometimes our own writing will surprise us years later. That's another proof of how time has changed us, our reality.
DeleteThis was brilliant. It reminded me of one of the short stories from Exhalation [Ted Chiang] where the father insists a memory exists [because it shows him in a better light] while the daughter says it does not.
ReplyDeleteThat story seems to be an ideal illustration of my point!
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