Santosh Bakaya |
And Memory Persists
What should I write? An
elegy on the passing of an era?
An ode to the ephemerality of time? About those precious moments in the book of
childhood, and one’s boisterous presence on those sepia- tinted pages? Did you
say, they were trivialities? Inanities? Senseless vacuity?
No way can those nocturnal exploits, escapades, pranks, juvenile debates, and picnics
in shaded corners be termed as trifles.
But, where was the
shade now?
With a flick of my fingers, I escaped into the idyllic past. Ah, there were the
shades of the evening. The long shadows of dusk were creeping in a relentless
advance towards our house in the University Campus, Jaipur. I saw Nipper
chasing a spunky squirrel. Then, I was thoroughly amused, when I saw him
bounding towards me, charging right, pouncing left, and licking me all over.
.The Guava tree was still there in the backyard of the neighbouring house, but
the branches were lacklustre. We had spent many joyous moments among the
branches, almost snatching guavas from the beaks of the rapacious parakeets.
Years melt, days melt,
time moves on. Memories remain, erupting either in the form of evocative poetry,
splashes of colour or descriptive prose.
Today again, I looked out of my window to witness the interplay of the shades of the evening ; streaks of orange
splashed all across the blue sky just some time back, appeared to be slowly disappearing,
to be replaced by ominous clouds. Soon, it started raining. The versatility of
the invisible painter intrigued me. Was it the surrealism of Dali, or the
impressionism of Monet and Claude that had mesmerised me so?
Did one of the clouds look like a melting watch?
Time stood still. The present melted
away; the past took over. I was enchanted by the ‘persistence of memory’ always nestling in a cranny; a sound, a
smell, and a word, enough to trigger it.
The rain again transported
me to a long forgotten past spent laughing ,enjoying, jeering, playing, joking away
our childhood years in a warm cocoon of love, affection, banter, and
compassion, where Dad ruled like a benevolent, crown-less king, and mom his
better half !
With my mind’s eye, I
could see a bunch of naughty kids pirouetting and traipsing in the rain,
shrieking and singing in untrammelled glee.
Ah, the thrilling, ephemerality of cherished moments! One of the shrieks
yanked me from my reverie, and I was back to the present.
I saw a tiny, ill-
clad boy rummaging in a heap of garbage.
With a happy gleam in his eyes, he picked up something. Then shooting a look in
my direction, dashed away with the booty clutched firmly in a tiny hand, making
me realise that all of us are hunting for some elusive treasure in order to lend
some sparkle to our lives, irradiating our mundane existence.
All those treasures of
the past swam into view. The neem tree planted by dad had grown along with us
from a droopy, diffident sapling into a huge, shady canopy. It appeared to be
throwing a rollicking rustle my way, happy at my sudden appearance. A magpie
robin sedately perched on one of its branches, went into a litany of chirps. I
stood behind the tree to eavesdrop on my idyllic past. Did it really exist?
Who was that figure in
white, smiling in my direction, a hand raised in benediction? My granny! I
still have a picture from those wonderful days standing out in all its dental
glory! I, a mere toddler sitting in granny’s lap,
smiling for the camera, with my two front teeth shining, trying to compete with
granny’s three teeth! Dental dearth
evoking mental mirth!
I also saw sprint
champions running all around the garden. Who were they?
Just moments frozen in time. Etched in
memory. Moments long gone, but still existing in subterranean depths.
Just a few days back, I heard the rumblings of a
thunderstorm, and I am sure I saw Mom, in the whirlwind, standing forlornly
under a vigorously shaking tree.
“Is it you Mom?” I asked.
‘Om Om Om,’ echoed the storm.
“Hadn’t I requested you to record my
voice, so that you could listen to it when I was not around? “I heard her.
I recalled the scene. Mom sitting on the bed, near her small temple, in
Jammu, making that request. But before she could complete the sentence, I
changed the topic, talking about myriad incongruities- apple pies and
pastries, biscuits and buns, and the ever-smiling bread man who would get them
on his bike in a box. Ah, those giddy times of childhood spent in Jaipur!
Mom forgot the Kashmiri bhajan that
she wanted me to record, and started talking in hushed, reverential tones of the
blissful times when Papa, with his loving baritone, infectious laughter, and
his unique witticisms was still around.
And alas, having succeeded in distracting her, her voice couldn’t be recorded!
The wanton wind chimed, mixing its breezy notes with the
merry cry of the ice cream vendor.
"Okay, let me sing this bhajan,
and you record it. Please do." I again heard the persistent voice.
She sang, and I listened, eyes glistening. But this was only after she was no
more.
Why didn’t I record her voice when she was still around?
The storm was growing turbulent.
She still stood under the tree. I ran
towards her trying to catch her fluttering saree, without any
success.
But her voice rang in my ears. “Never
live only for yourself. Never be envious of others’ success. When you help
someone, never let your right hand know what your left hand is doing.”
“Yes Mom”, I spluttered, furtively wiping a tear with my right hand, which went
unnoticed by my left.
Dizzying chunks of
nostalgia merged, submerging me. Were those moments,
speckled with slivers of a wistful infinitude, gone forever?
What were they? Hallucinations? Flights of imagination?
Or ephemeral slices trying to gain a strong foothold on my dizzyingly
palpitating heart?
***
Bio: Internationally acclaimed for her poetic
biography of Bapu, Ballad of Bapu, and biography of Martin Luther King Jr.
[Vitasta] Santosh Bakaya, PhD, poet,
essayist, novelist, biographer, Tedx speaker, has written twenty-nine well-
received books across different genres.
Morning Meanderings is her popular
column in learning and creativity.com.
Sunset in a Cup her latest book of poetry.
Her Tedx talk, The Myth of Writer’s
Block is popular in creative writing circles.
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