I don’t remember specific events and I hardly remember anything when I try too hard. But I have something called nostalgia about certain phases of time and I depend on these nostalgia to tell me how to feel about certain parts of my life.
For example, that excitement when it was time to get going to play cricket in those hot summer afternoons. Or the threat posed by a next day exam. Or more recently, the solitude offered by lonely walks on South Goan beaches with nothing more than a pint of Kings beer in my mind. Or the warm comfort of my woman on dark nights on the same beaches and the same old Kings in my mind.
Or back in greener days, that beautiful girl who waited to get on the bus with me, and then stood on the ladies side, ah well. I don’t remember the stories that well which is a shame because my stories tend to be very happening.
But I remember this one time when I came back from the city I worked in, to hometown to visit my parents uninformed. My brother and I took a video of my mom’s reaction. Priceless. The joy in her eyes and voice was only equalled by the pain she endured a few years back when that young son ventured out into an unknown world. A world she did not trust to keep her son safe, to feed him well and take care of him.
But for me, it was adventure time back then. Again, I don’t remember the specific stories of the first time I moved out into the new city because I visited family every couple of months without fail. But everytime I had to go back after a visit, there were tear drops in mom’s eyes. Fighting hard to stay in and failing everytime, even after a couple of years of coming and goings. My brother who is a rock has never been spotted with anything close to an emotion, but my dad and myself have had our vulnerable moments in those sad departure times moved by mom’s intolerable sorrow.
We got used to all that in sometime but there were times when we argued. Mom and me, we are polar opposites. We fight over everything from my collarless tees to her Gods. And if one of our departures came between an unresolved bitter argument, that was disaster of the worst kind. That was me turning my back when she needed me to stay and work out a compromise. That was abondonment for a moment there. The pain was too much. I felt like a murderer stabbing a heart and there was no end to the suffering it seemed.
But that was short term really. All the arguments in the world were rendered trivial with first signs of those magical tears and all that was left was to get done with our suffering and abondoning together.