Nostalgia- Unappeased Yearning to Return

For my second post of ProBlogger Challenge I’m going to stick to the theme provided by Write Tribe- Nostalgia. How can I not? I’m an utterly nostalgic person. In fact when I’m down, I think of the happy childhood days to cheer myself up. Almost everybody cherishes their childhood days- those days of no responsibility, when the only thing expected from you was to attend school and score decent marks (of course parents then were not as aggressive about marks as now). But you know what I loved? The summer holidays and the mid-term holidays in October when (unlike now) the school was closed for the entire month of October. I used to love the days when it used to rain so heavily that the schools had to be shut and we got an unexpected holiday. I remember burrowing myself in heaps of blankets with a book in my hand and falling asleep while reading the book.

The holidays were spent in my native place, Padubidri. The house that my father and his brothers built was an old, tiled house. But for us, it was nothing short of a beautiful palace. Surrounded by vast rice fields and huge playgrounds with trees, it was a paradise for us children. I think we used to be inside the house only for breakfast and lunch during daytime. Those days, there was no television at our home. But there was one in the village Panchayat office. So we used to watch all our favorite programs (mine was Chitrahar and Ramayan on Sundays) here. Cable TV came much later so there was only one channel- the great Doordarshan, but I swear, there were so many good programs on that one channel. These days there are thousand channels but not one good thing to catch on TV. I think when I came to higher primary school, my mother finally purchased a television set, and you should have seen the sheer number of people assembled in our house on weekends to watch a movie. And then there were late night movie marathons that we watched on a rented DVD and VCD players.

What I like about those childhood days was the simplicity. No mobile phones to distract you from the endless hours of reading. And internet was completely unheard of. There was the famous landline phone and we cousins used to communicate with each other using letters. When I received a letter in my name, I was so excited. And then to ponder over what to write back, thinking how to cover all the topics within the 3 blue pages of the Inland letters.

I know it’s not unusual for a sight or a visual to trigger off a memory, but for me, what acts as a stimulant is music-old Bollywood songs to be precise. I have always associated songs with a particular moment in my life. Like for example if I listen to Dil To Pagal Hai or Gupt songs, I remember that in the year these 2 movies had released, I had just finished my tenth exams and we had moved to a new house. And the neighbours(our landlords) used to play the songs in a loop, using cassettes and a recorder. We collected tape cassettes and displayed in a row of cases. IN THE HALL. Yes, we were typical middle class ( I can imagine Maya Sarabhai disdainfully commenting on us with her nose turned upwards).

And then there were books. I don’t know if I love books because they are associated with my childhood, or if I love my childhood days because of books. But these both are inextricably linked. We used to borrow books from a small circulating library-but usually my brothers were the ones who used to go for exchanging books. So my reading was initially limited to Archie, Tintin and Asetrix. But I’m not complaining. Later on, I started using my school library, and from then on books and I have been best friends.

I’m a highly nostalgic person. Anything and everything associated to my past is precious. Sometimes I feel that I live in the memories. But these memories are my happy place, my comfort zone. I can go on and on about the olden, golden days but since I want to keep the post short, I’ll leave you with the quote below.

 This post was written for Write Tribe Problogger October 2017 Challenge. #writebravely #writetribeproblogger