Nostalgia?

It's fun to look back. I have just been through some of my old posts (another blog) and they make an interseting read - if I can say so myself. There are things you notice second time around. Things that may have been subtle back when you were a naive rookie, jump at you and hold your throat when you look at them in retrospect.

One learns a lot when one looks back. Only, none of that information is useful. I can fully well understand Calculus right now but it's five years too late in the coming. Experience is a comb that life gives to you when you are bald. And it throws in a styling gel as well.

Reading 'Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening' is an illuminating experience. The solitary walk on an untrodden road, the melancholic feel of the whole poem, the simile between the road and life - they never fail to enthral me. And never once does he look back.

You must never let go of your roots, they say. Back to the basics? I don't know. As the song goes,

There's nothing behind me
And nothing that ties me to
Something that might have been true yesterday...

Then why do I feel the pull? Why do I feel a tingling when the bus approaches Salem bus stand? From where did I get the sudden sprint as I round the corner for Indian Bank Colony? Why does my hair stand on end when I walk along Kaliamman Koil Street? Why do I stare starry eyed at my fifth standard Tamil teacher?

No matter how hard we try, our past will catch up on us. Is it a bad thing? I am still ambivalent about it. My aunt used to say that little kids must never grow up. Where is the innocence, she asks me. As I brood over the major mishaps that have been happening in my life for the past two months, I can't help but think what it would have been like had I been still a six-year-old.

Well, fourteen years ago, I was crying over a pencil that I had wanted but my sister had got. I was bitching about this cruel and unfair world. Same difference.