Hues of Past and the Present
When you reminisce the taste of that cake.
At the onset of any change, I tend to hold on to the totems of Life that I will be leaving behind. I attempt to reminisce every detail to recollect and marvel at it later, once the change has occurred. But when have farewells been easy, and when has Life been uncomplicated?
This time the change for me was moving to a new city after over a decade. I found myself travelling to the new location before I could contemplate the transition. Before I could fathom the vastness of the memories spent in the old city and before I could internalise that I would not return to this city from college anymore.
Certainly, my mind didn’t carve the list of things that would be missed while I was leaving. At the time, the transition seemed minuscule and unproblematic. It appeared that the charms of the new city would shroud the memories of the old. For the first few days, it seemed that there was no alteration at all. Well, that’s what happened until the day I toured a bit in the new city. Until the new city jogged the memories of the old.
While I was gazing at the surrounding concrete structures and nature’s endowments, glimpses and flashes of the old city unexpectedly intervened. They conveyed how the composition of this surrounding was similar to that one corner of the old city. They reminded me how the concrete lines were sharper, neater, and more aesthetic than the new city. They reminded of the spacious confluence of various shades of the mighty sky, the exuberant birds, and the celestial ornaments.
Post the unanticipated intervention, the brain ingressed into a state of automatic comparison. It juxtaposed the visions of the new with the old and installed a melancholic mood throughout the journey. Then, the memories hit like a gigantic wave — gigantic both in magnitude and force.
The pavements were less verdant, the roads more expansive, and the ambience colder, drier and dustier. But less humid. The cakes at bakery shops were less delectable, but options for unknown delicacies were eerily abundant — just too many options for uncertain and strange things. But no paths to return to that familiar path, to that familiar petrichor, to that familiar and intolerable intensity of sunshine, and to relishing that cake from the bakery shop a few kilometres from the old home.
A realisation dawned. A place, a city, a space seemed different from people and worldly things. Distance from loved ones sure is taxing, but it never really pushes people into the bubble of oblivion. There are always chances of information and connection with people. And objects, well, they can always be carried along. But what about places? What about cities? What about the weather I will never experience again? What about the particular ways in which the roads bent in the old town? What about the beautiful beaches and sculpted stony platforms near the shore? What about the fact that after a while, I will not care to learn about the old city anymore until I actually visit?
I will know about the significant events through multiple media, but I will not know about the newly built passages crisscrossing in my neighbourhood. I will not know when my favourite bakery would open an outlet much closer to my old home. I will miss out on the elation the outlet would bring in my Life. I will not know about the number of mango tree branches arching over the terrace with time. I will not know of the cats taking residence nearby, nor will I know about the mesmerising petrichor every season.
Often, amidst the sea of ordinary and mundane days, on some ritually chosen days, Life decides to bestow the cliched wisdom of the mortal journey that it goes on. It reminds of its presence, of the change, and of its quality of spectacular continuity ingeniously. Sometimes it perpetuates like the underlying act of breathing, undeterred, constant, and unostentatious. Other times it marches forward with noisy thumps, announcing the inevitable change and the associated plethora of feelings. And there are times like the one I experienced on the little tour when it takes the form of a beautiful recollection. A mixture of hues of the past and the present.
“To be alive is to be missing” — John Green
John Green said it right, “To be alive is to be missing”. Even in the glorious present, living is to miss the forsaken lands, the people, and the little bakery which sells happiness in the forms of heavenly cakes. It is to savour the symphony of adventure and excitement of the new and nostalgia and familiarity of the old.
