Memoirs
Memory Saunters
I went yesterday to my old school to attend an inter school debate. It was more than reliving hoary past, it was as if the past had intruded into the present unobtrusively. The same hall, where we played table tennis, wrote our examinations, ran around and the same stage, where we stood upon to act, sing or recite. Nothing could be more nostalgic than this interplay of past and present, childhood and middle age. Everything was so fresh, it was as if I was there forty years back.
To me the vision of the past, is unceasing, untrammeled wonder, it cannot be simply wished away, or effaced. It cannot be shut. It will open in corridors of mind.
I looked around, it was the same same sensation, a part of belonging, a part of home. The students were a mirror like reflection, where I saw myself dressed in grey green uniform.The debate was nice, so were everyone, the students immaculately behaved. Perhaps they knew I was an ex student, perhaps they did not.
Yes, the past is hiatus. But while traversing it, reducing distances, we evoke personal histories, which are as important to individuals as societal histories are important to the scholar or researcher.
As, I walked on to the stage to address the students, the voice was tremulous. After thirty eight years I was on the same stage, addressing once again an audience, but an audience comprising my little school friends.
There can be no better satisfaction, than paying obeisance to your Alma Mater. One can do this by merging past and present. One can do this by looking at the little ones, as mirror of the past, where you see your infantile self, running across corridors of time and dreams: "...And Memory saunters Takes Wings".
22-Sep-2012
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Ananya S Guha
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