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I am plagued by this wonderful ,yet at times,wasteful disease called nostalgia.You see, everything i grew up with be it the ABBA song "Ring Ring",an R K Narayan book or even an old newspaper cutting from five years has a piece of history and emotion attached to it . If you dig my purse you will find enough memories of my home like an old bus ticket from Saphire to West Mambalam,a train ticket from egmore and so on.Recently when i opened my neatly arranged shirts brought from home, pieces of 'The Hindu', which my dad had tucked in to prevent them from crumpling,fell down.And there i sat for an hour pouring thru the pages and trying to remember what i had been doing that day .
The best part about getting nostalgic is it makes you feel good and for me i can almost smell Chennai in the air(though the air is way cleaner here in Ranchi) when i get nostalgic. Also when i hear an ABBA number,I m reminded of the very first time i heard it(its almost like in the movies,the screen shakes and becomes all 'liquid-y'and reality slowly gives way to the overwhelming nostalgia as you are transported to the past where you find yourself younger and playful).I get thoughts of school , of all those wonderful days which seemed like it will never end,(even when i hear a door creak i m reminded of my eighth class where i d be the first person to come to class and kick open the creaking door) ,of those endless hours we spent in Joy shop sharing a 2 Rs Max Fun Juice,of those futile attempts to shoplift in McRenett ....
Still fonder memories of football in the Gopalapuram ground under the scorching sun,sitting and day dreaming under the cosy shade of the neem tree in the ground while the same sun beats down on others.Have you ever tried this ???Thinking of the emptiness at home during noon time when everybody s off to work and what you d do if magically transported across 1600 kms immediately from this rather boring Surveying class .
Also reminscing about the narrow bylanes of mylapore,trudging my way to Sanskrit college for Mr M K's Maths Tuitions right after school,and later an exhausted me walking past the posh houses in Adyar (where someday i hoped to settle),to attend Physics Classes for IIT....and of Triplicane and its holiness and homeliness and the temple that withstood the test of time for over a thousand years....of all the colonial remains in Mount Road and elsewhere in Chennai.
The list is endless in every sense and what i have mentioned is just what gets me really sentimental and numbs my senses for a while.The other day i was thinking of the beach and standing on the water's edge when i felt stirred by ABBA 's Eagle which itek the liberty to quote here:
"And I dream i m an eagle,
And I dream i can spread my wings,
Flyin high' high
I m a bird in the sky,
I m an eagle that rides on the breeze,
High high what a feeling to fly,
Over the mountains and forests and seas,
and to go anywhere that i please."
I only wished dearly if i was that eagle flying high and dry away from worries....
To end the readers' misery i shall stop rambling about memories and get my feet firmly on the ground .A tribute to all my friends and cousins who are part and parcel of all those fond memories and of course my dad and mom who are wonderful companions to reminsce with and often played guide to me when we visited a new part of the city.Not to forget my brother , who is not so much of a dreamer, but still chips in with great memories . Ending it on Bryan Adams' note"..................those were the best days of my life.........."
P.S:Its clear now why this is called Dreams Inc.
