Its quiet. Cool wet breeze. The smell of rain in the air. Birds, lots of birds.. chirping, chattering. A scene in a video I'm watching is playing a Morrison song from my yesteryears.. Havent had a me-time like this for sometime and my eyes involuntarily close.. maybe it was the video I was watching or the smells in the air triggered it or something but I got these flashback shots just like in movies..
School time sundays - music blaring from the first floor common room window, sitting snug between the roots of an old tree with a book and that gorgeous cool hill station breeze carrying the smell of wet earth and eucalyptus straight to my head.. rainy wet college days - bunch of friends, sitting on a damp ledge, with tea, cigarettes and laughter, wet tar roads, leaves strewn over it, rickshaw rides in the rain..
Something happened to me in 2012. I generally had a good memory for events and its details. But in 2012 I lost that ability. I no longer remember so many things friends and relatives narrate.. forget the details, even the events are wiped clean.. so this sudden trip back, snapshots in my head, these were solid memories of some of the really good times from my past, coming back to me after a long time. And has made me so nostalgic.
There are so many movies on college days, capturing its friendships and troubles. But each person's experience is unique in its own way. For me, today, as I think of it, its about reliving being a person I no longer am. More than feeling bad about that loss, I think back a lot to the places I've been, the people I've been with, the discovering of a new and endless city.. discovering uncanny company to enjoy it with. One learnt to love, to loose, to move on. To rebel. To fight back. And basically surprise yourself with what you are capable of.. When I look back, it seemed like a time which was anything but mundane. Not the dreams we dreamt for ourselves, not the roads we travelled no matter how ridiculous to others.
And of course, the seasons.. each of the seasons so severe.. when it rained it poured. Winters was all fog. And summers was, well, defined by the pleasure of eating spicy bhel puri at the bus stand and washing it down with 'nimbu banta'! But the rains, more than anything else.. it seems to define my growing up.. to borrow a friend's words, whenever I watch 'the jade turn to emerald' around me, it made me feel light and happy.. like I was looking at a whole new world with a whole new bunch of possibilities.. even today, when life's curve is inversed - not necessarily in a bad way, but as a matter of fact : being committed to a job, a family means focusing on maintaining the life we built as opposed to those days of dreaming and defining the life we want to build - rains make me forget to think and just take a deep long breath.. and feel it around me..
No one is happy about the really crazy untimely rains all through last month and even now. Neither am I for macro reasons like the fact that it has really affected the agricultural economy here very badly. But I cant help my smile when I watch the blue sky give way to the rain filled clouds in a matter of minutes. I can feel myself slowly rise above the day to day rigmarole of fire - fighting, shouting at someone to get something done, dodging some cranky idiots on whose daily call list I figure, blah blah blah... all left behind.. and I am feeling truly at peace..
