Skip to main content

Yesterday



Yesterdays pretend to be sweet. One of the most popular poets of Kerala, ONV Kurup, composed an unforgettable song about the poet persona’s longing to return to the days of his childhood and wander once again in the courtyard where his memories roam, shake the fruit trees, draw water from the well and taste its pristine sweetness…

The past is supposed to be pristine and hence sweet. I have a huge collection of old Malayalam film songs in the pen drive that plays while I drive. Many people who have travelled with me have wondered whether I’m in love with the past. I am not. My past had nothing to make me feel nostalgic about it, let alone romantic. My childhood was a pain and youth was worse. There is nothing sweet or pristine about any of it. Absolutely nothing. My childhood reminds me of the canes wielded by my parents and teachers with Gradgrindian cold brutality. Those canes were replaced by repressive social games played by certain missionaries in my youth.

So why do the Malayalam film songs of 1970s enchant me? They have elegant lyrics, stirring melody, and soothing caresses, much unlike today’s songs which are all sound and fury. They transport me to a world which I would have loved to inhabit, a world that never belonged to me, a world that was snatched from me by many agents who all pretended to be my well-wishers.

Am I an escapist then? I am not. I don’t live in any fantasy world. I don’t lament about my losses. Nor do I run away from my present duties and inevitable pains. I only let the songs soothe my soul. Yesterday is not what is sweet for me but yesterday’s songs.

Even if yesterday was better than today, I wouldn’t have romanticised it as some of our politicians are doing. I don’t believe that Rama Rajya can be recreated now. Humanity has travelled far, too far, from Rama’s quiver, Lakshmana’s fealty, Hanuman’s obsequiousness, and Sita’s fire tests. There is no going back. We need to go forward. There is a whole cosmos with a hundred billion galaxies for us to explore. Why go back by a few thousand years?

I don’t think there is anything great about the old days, however good they may sound to be in our legends and myths. Life expectancy of the average Indian when the country became independent was merely 31 years. Earlier it would have been much worse. A lot of children died at birth or in the first few months. There was misery all around. Who wants to go back to those days?

We need to stop glorifying the past. We need to look at ways and means for creating a happy present here and now. We need to look ahead too.

PS. I am participating in the #BlogchatterA2Z

Previous Post: Xenophobic Delights

Tomorrow: Zeitgeist

Labels:

Comments

  1. Deepti MenonApril 29, 2022 at 10:34 AM

    I too have many old Malayalam songs which I love listening to. However, I agree that we have all moved on and need to keep moving. After all, change is the only constant. Your posts have a piquancy about them that make reading them enjoyable, yet thought-provoking!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anagha YatinApril 29, 2022 at 11:22 AM

    Songs from 70s and 80s in my mother tongue are my favourite too. They mostly were influenced by 'abhanga' by great Saints of Maharashtra.
    As for Rama rajya... i suppose it's a utopian concept where everything was ideal. Even the common man was ideal. It is more of a guiding principle for building a society that brings in peace prosperity and equality.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 29, 2022 at 7:36 PM

      70s and 80s in India were soul-searching decades. That's why we had good music and art in those years.
      Utopia is never practical. That's only meant for delusional consolations. Politicians know it too well. They are cheating people with promises of Rama Rajya. Modi is a big fraud. I am worried about what he's going to do next when he comes to know that India will throw him out in the next election.

      Delete
  3. Afshan ShaikApril 29, 2022 at 2:00 PM

    We listen to music sometimes to feel something which is not real and agree on present music being all blare and sound..rightnow am sitting on a salon and requested them to switch off the horrendous music.....!! Cane treatment in childhood sounds quite severe :( anyhow ya i too wonder about our moving back in time and sticking to old principles when there is so much to be done to progress

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Afshan ShaikApril 29, 2022 at 2:01 PM

      In a saloon*

      Delete
    2. Tomichan MatheikalApril 29, 2022 at 7:37 PM

      Have you ever thought of why present music and other arts are about blare and sound? We have failed to teach the generation that life is more than blare and sound.

      Delete
  4. Yamini MacLeanApril 29, 2022 at 3:04 PM

    Hari OM
    In every age and culture there is a representation of the ideal of that society, a guide by which we might steer our course. To make it a tableau - to attempt to force all around one into that tableau - is to fantisise and even fetishise that ideal, thus immediately loosing any positive quality that could arise from it.

    To compound things, the excessive nostalgia that pervades so many political leaderships the world over now, the "make it great again" mentality, is actually causing a disintegration of the very fabric of each society.

    No, I'm with you all the way on this one, TM; look to the future but keep the feet planted very much in the present and knock out the ghosts of the past! YAM xx
    Y=Yamini

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 29, 2022 at 7:40 PM

      First of all, thank you Yamini for understanding me so well.

      I love ideals. What will life be without them? There must be paradises and Rama Rajyas and Jannats in people's imaginations. But making them tableau - ah, you put it so well - is the problem.

      Delete
  5. Harshita NandaApril 29, 2022 at 6:40 PM

    this is so so true Sir, we cannot ,and should not look to the past.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 29, 2022 at 7:41 PM

      The past shapes us, Harshita. But we will shape the future. We should.

      Delete
  6. Pandian RApril 30, 2022 at 12:05 AM

    Pasts can be remembered to improve ourselves. It is not about the Ram or Ravana Rajya - But about the way to realize how we improved ourselves over a period and more importantly, where we failed. As you said, no meaning in mourning or lamenting. BTW, playlists of 80's Malayalam songs cheer me during my walking and jogging :-). Thank you sir, for another thought provoking post.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 30, 2022 at 8:31 AM

      I mention Rama Rajya because of what's happening in the country in its name. My last post Zeigeist will make that clearer, perhaps.

      Delete
  7. Chinmayee Gayatree SahuMay 2, 2022 at 11:08 PM

    I was wondering where this was going when you started with the music . And then , how beautifully you connected the dots . Absolutely, the present times is all about glorifying the past and one sided "Man ki Baats"

    ReplyDelete
  8. Deepa DuraisamyMay 5, 2022 at 7:23 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Deepa DuraisamyMay 5, 2022 at 7:24 PM

    I couldn't agree more. I don't know why we want to recreate the past? I never understand when people reminisce about old days and say 'If only we could go back to those days - school/college whatever' and I had a good childhood and those good old days too, but I don't want to go back. I like my present too and I would like to look ahead to the future as well! Half our problems are because people don't want to move ahead!
    Cheers,
    Deepa from FictionPies

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Don Bosco

Don Bosco (16 Aug 1815 - 31 Jan 1888) In Catholic parlance, which flows through my veins in spite of myself, today is the Feast of Don Bosco. My life was both made and unmade by Don Bosco institutions. Any great person can make or break people because of his followers. Religious institutions are the best examples. I’m presenting below an extract from my forthcoming book titled Autumn Shadows to celebrate the Feast of Don Bosco in my own way which is obviously very different from how it is celebrated in his institutions today. Do I feel nostalgic about the Feast? Not at all. I feel relieved. That’s why this celebration. The extract follows. Don Bosco, as Saint John Bosco was popularly known, had a remarkably good system for the education of youth.   He called it ‘preventive system’.   The educators should be ever vigilant so that wrong actions are prevented before they can be committed.   Reason, religion and loving kindness are the three pillars of that syste...
2 comments
Read more

Coffee can be bitter

The dawns of my childhood were redolent of filtered black coffee. We were woken up before the birds started singing in the lush green village landscape outside home. The sun would split the darkness of the eastern sky with its splinter of white radiance much after we children had our filtered coffee with a small lump of jaggery. Take a bite of the jaggery and then a sip of the coffee. Coffee was a ritual in our home back then. Perhaps our parents believed it would jolt our neurons awake and help us absorb our lessons before we set out on the 4-kilometre walk to school after all the morning rituals at home. After high school, when I left home for further studies at a distant place, the ritual of the morning coffee stopped. It resumed a whole decade later when I completed my graduation and took up a teaching job in Shillong. But I had lost my taste for filtered coffee by then; tea took its place. Plain tea without milk – what is known as red tea in most parts of India. Coffee ret...
18 comments
Read more

Relatives and Antidepressants

One of the scenes that remain indelibly etched in my memory is from a novel of Malayalam writer O V Vijayan. Father and little son are on a walk. Father tells son, “Walk carefully, son, otherwise you may fall down.” Son: “What will happen if I fall?” Father: "Relatives will laugh.” I seldom feel comfortable with my relatives. In fact, I don’t feel comfortable in any society, but relatives make it more uneasy. The reason, as I’ve understood, is that your relatives are the last people to see any goodness in you. On the other hand, they are the first ones to discover all your faults. Whenever certain relatives visit, my knees buckle and the blood pressure shoots up. I behave quite awkwardly. They often describe my behaviour as arising from my ego, which used to be a oversized in yesteryear. I had a few such visitors the other day. The problem was particularly compounded by their informing me that they would be arriving by about 3.30 pm and actually reaching at about 7.30 pm. ...
16 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more