The word nostalgia comes from Greek, nostos meaning returning home and algos meaning pain. At a time in the past, it was used to describe as a medical condition! Nostalgia was one condition which used to cause deaths, especially to soldiers who were posted far away from home. Now it doesn’t exist as a medical category but still is attributed to many psychological conditions, depression and as a possible factor attributed to some suicides.

Age 7 (1987): OK, so back to my nostalgic memories comprising of just boys and girls. It was class 2 and I was like less than 7-8 years old. We were sitting in the classroom, I guess it was a free period though the teacher was there. Suddenly, in between, the boy sitting next to me poked me and went down the benches. Soon I followed, and there I watched with awestruck eyes the vision I will remember for the rest of my life. No, it was not the holy cross appearing on the wall. It was my first sight of the chaddi (slang for underwear) of a girl! and that too a blue chaddi! You can guess how vivid the memory is when I exclaim the color. Some of the girls were sitting on the floor, leaning their backs on the wall facing us, with their legs upright opening the gateways to a new, previously unknown, foreign land. These memories… that is what I call nostalgia

Age 10 (1990): By the time we graduated to class 5, complex, intricate, dynamics ran throughout the class. This we understood only by the end of that year. A smart, dynamic young boy had joined our class in the middle of the year and had shattered all the dynamics in the class. Just after 2-3 weeks of his joining, he captured the smiles of the smartest girl of the lot. This girl was smart in studies and sports and she was pretty as well!! There were too many fans for her in the class, but none shared the secret with others. By the end of the year, the whole world conspired against this smart boy and cornered him. Last day of that year, somehow, from all sides, 4-5 boys “including me” cornered him and started pushing him. We don’t know how we all got together because it was not planned at all. Anyways it didn’t matter to us. We didn’t want a newcomer to take the girl making a fool of all of us. When he was pushed back, he caught my shirt to balance himself. The shirt I was wearing didn’t have one of the buttons and I made that a chance, accusing him for tearing off my shirt. The pandemoneum which followed - dragged him from the classroom - all the way to the basketball court. Poor boy. My autorikshaw back to home was waiting near the basketball court. So, unfortunately or fortunately, I had but to hurry off leaving the job to the others. Those are memories… that is what I should call nostalgia, right?

Age 15 (1995): Then it was class 10. We were no longer at the mercy of external dynamics. We created our own, internal, dynamics. Probably it started off as an accident from our extra scholastic mind. Excessive and vigorous use of pens and pencils used to cause them to fall on the floor, confirming Newton’s gravitational discoveries. Following Newton’s discoveries, we had our own discoveries as well. If a pen or pencil fell down, we competed to go down and search for it. You know, Larry Page was not yet at Stanford, and google was not even in the embryonic stage. So we had to be our own crawlers, and we crawled on the floor, and did our own searches for the pencil. We “stumbled upon” several gorgeous, mind-blowing structures while crawling under these benches. We indexed these crawls in our mind, for later use (?!) and I could still visualize myself under those benches… Now, aren’ t they memories? Don’t they make you nostalgic??

Ok, you may have started saying that these are not typical school memories and those are not typical boys. “It is just 3 or 4 of you guys”, that is what you will say. You won’t even agree to the statistics saying that 95% of the males masturbate (and you will be that 5% who is now busy masturbating thinking on the blue chaddi in the first event).

Age 17 (1997): So let us move on to class 12. By this time, all of those boys had their hormones working at its peak. Especially those who previously sat ON the benches instead of crawling UNDER! This I came to understand through the daily football matches we had. After the school time, we had almost all of the boys in our class moving on to the school playground. This playground was blessed with a stream flowing by its border. So what? Semi clad, young, water nymphs from the neighboring regions used to take bath and wash their clothes in that stream. What other heavenly boon should an adolescent boy ask for?! It always happened that the football matches were one-sided. Or to be technically accurate, the football never touched one side of the ground. It was always rushing to the other side of the ground where the stream touched it; where those nymphs moved around. Blame the dirty football! It doesn’t stop on the other side of the ground, but it always rushed down the stream. About 5-10 of the boys run down the ground and to the stream to fetch one football. About 20 boys (including the goal keeper from the other side) stand at the brink of the ground watching the huge event. “Event” in the sense, retrieving the football; not the young, fresh, round, ripe, water melons waiting to jump out of the wet wraparounds of those water nymphs! When I tell you that this happened every few seconds during the match, and that all the boys in our class participated in it, you will understand the dynamics behind it. If I don’t get nostalgic about those memories, you or at least one of those boys will beat me up!

A few lines taken from in between a conversation I had with a 76 year old lady. She had come from Kerala to stay with her son in Secunderabad for 3 months in 2007. Her own grandson likes staying indoors and rarely ventures out.

She says, ” The contrasts of times”

In memory of her…
Born : 30 Dec 1930
Died : 20 Sept 2007

Most of my precious moments, most of my energy have been spent to quench that inner thirst, but the fire still glows vigorously, more than ever. From my early days itself I had an aspiration, to search for the truth. I also had a dream of traveling along the foothills of the Himalayas, to the abode of Indian philosophy. I never thought it would happen; but it happened. The following is a sort of travelogue; some from the sporadic notes I made, some from my memory, but you can ‘t express it in the real form, you have to experience it yourself. The information given may contain errors, am not intending to give any wonderful geographical info or any philosophic adventures or any literature. I just wrote it down so that it may be inspiring and useful for people of similar dreams; it may good knowing how another person took such a road. This story is not a closed one, and don ‘t expect anything particular.

[If you are looking for geographical info on India, better read Lonely Planet: India; if you are keen on Indian philosophy and the mysticism around it, the best book I would recommend is 'Search in secret India ' by Paul Brunton; you are just interested in some adventures in life or philosophy, read Richard Bach; for simple but revolutionary and stimulating thoughts, read Osho; for tibetan philosphic adventures mixed with logic and some science, acceptable to even those i_dont_understand_so_i_dont_believe people, read T. Lobsang Rampa. If you really wanna know life, read yourself].

am not adorning the costumes of a philosopher or a sannyasin (or a writer ). me give myself to the passions of this world, give myself to my hormones; me don ‘t differentiate what good or bad is (everything is co-existent. your definitions are relative (you say ‘apekshikam ‘ for that in Malayalam)); I live to my heart ’s truth. but I believe that the life you live ought to have some meaning, something other than the routine style of eating, studying, sleeping, having a job, a family, children, dying… something off the usual cycle of events.

My passion for a journey got engraved in my heart and by the time I was doing my masters, I wanted to work it out somehow, I didn ‘t care whether the outcome would be fruitful or not. So our summer holidays were arriving, after our second semester exams and I thought this was the best chance. I went to the cusat library every day to collect some info on the roads I ‘ve to take, went through the maps on those dusty books, searched on google, wrote down some plans…

One day I bluntly told daddy that am going north, that I ‘ve booked the train ticket up to Delhi for 09.06.2001. He was like his mouth going O. He never gave me the consent.

I didn ‘t plan a lavish trip, as it would annihilate the fundamental cause of my journey. I had some sort of money saved from my pocket money; it was a meager amount, less than 3000 Indian rupees which is a small amount for a journey. Priya send me a money order of around 1600/- or something. 2 days before, daddy called from home and gave me 1000/- more. So after taking the to and fro tickets to Delhi (train to delhi and baaki travel by other means) and buying some essentials for the journey, I was left with something like 5000/-

I took the return ticket also so that I don ‘t have to find money for that later, whatever expenses I encounter; also I could plan my days wisely by setting a particular date for departure.

My friends were too much worried, they don ‘t know what to say, whether to encourage me or discourage me. Priya always tried to show a good face (in spite of all the worries she carried, she knew I have to go), she tried to be happy and helping before me in all the possible ways. And there were my seniors, bijoy, manoj, rajesh, sabu and all standing with me.

And you know what, few days before when I left from home to hostel; I wrote a letter saying I loved them (people at home) a lot and bla blah and abt mickey and put it in my cupboard so that they could read if I don ‘t come back.

So on 09.06.2001 at around 6 pm I was at the central railway station, ernakulam. Prem and rajesh was with me, they stood there till my train left. The train whistled at 6.25 pm and I was out to where_the_hell_am_going,_I_donno. As I sat by my window, I felt emotionless then; I think that was better than sitting worried. I don ‘t know where I was going; I don ‘t know what will happen to me. I had a vague idea of where I had to go. I just wanted to go. I knew my legs would lead me where I ought to go.

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Well, what does life mean? At least, what does life mean for us? For me, what does the 25 years I’ve gone through mean?

As you leave the walls of your mother’s womb, as you get cut off the umbilical cord, you think you’re free….oh no… as soon as you set your foot on this place you know you’re in the wrong place; but you’ve no choice!

Life here is just being: study when you’re young, then have a job, then get married, then have children and worry on them, then let them have the study then let they worry about the job, then…. it goes like a cycle. Everyone tries to keep the cycle, keeping in mind what god once said, go on, reproduce as the sand grains on this earth.. Is it all about life?

This is not against being materialistic, but against being totally materialistic. We’ve to have something out of our life, something at least we could be proud of at the end of our life..

Hey, go and stir the sugar, unless you never gonna get the taste!

Let your thoughts be unprompted, your concepts be spontaneous; Go off the circle a bit, throw off your watches, redraw the boundaries, let the time be no constraint, let the world be no constraint.

Not asking you to sit and meditate all the time; but just be conscious: that there should be some meaning to your life…

greatness of gita (Bhagavat Gita) is that:
Krishna didn’t change the ‘paristhithi’
he changed the ‘manasthithi’

he didn’t change the circumstances
he gave the knowledge how to face it

God won’t come and do whatever for you. He has given you more than enough knowledge and power to pursue life. It’s your road ahead; you’ve to walk alone.

we fail to see what our eyes see, we fail to see life exists beyond ourselves. knowing the life around, taking nature as family n friend, can be rewarding. you’ll come to know it’s about knowing oneself as well..

from I care to who cares? I don’t know, but,, I’ve understood that I’ve been too open myself,, too open about my ideas, my emotions,,,,whatever they are, that it hurt too many people.

I also understood that love could hurt as well, even lead to death.

Life is strange, but that strangeness is my adventure; I take it into my stride.
I’ll get the diamond from the snake’s cranium.

14 Oct, 2002

that strangeness is my adventure,,

wherez my blue fairy?

I shud’ve been roaming with priya these days, after the exams. We’d planned to go to mattancherry, the jew palace and other such places she haven’t yet seen and cherai again. She must be seeing better places now, right? Lucky girl! Enjoying without me. dushta… Did u see AI (“artificial intelligence”)? I wish I had met with the same blue fairy that Pinocchio once met.

Hey, I went for swimming in the nearby river (meenachil aar), after a long time.. it was refreshing. I used to go there and swim a lot, years b4, without any company. The same now. I think I’ll go and swim there whenever I feel like. Want to come with me? sure, u r most welcome! O’ I love playing with water..and ofcourse, playing with u too. When I was young, i.e. when they were in Nigeria and me at my ‘amma veedu’ at chengalam, I used to go to the nearby ‘valari’ (stream) and play and catch ‘meen’ ~ vazhakka varayan, nettiyel ponnan, etc etc, tying one end of the ‘thorth’ on my neck and catching with the other end open. Sometimes there wud be cousins or friends so that we together hold the ends and do the part. Mummy had a lot of angala-penganmar that I always had some company and really I love them a lot for that still. I was there from LKG to class I. I used to go to st.joseph’s kunnumbhagam then. Lalu uncle used to tell me the story of amoeba and her little children when I used to sleep with him. I used to fight with kitty chechi. Once I even pee-peed on her head when she was lying on bed. I will do that on u next time we make kachara. It wud be refreshing.

am a nostalgic person and I love to hold on to those sweet memories. u know, when I remember abt georgy’s childhood, one thing that comes to my memory often is this : he joined at alphonsa, bgm in LKG when I was in class 3 or 4 there. Whenever he got any sweets for bdays of his friends, he used to keep one for me till evening when we met. I still can’t deduce why he didn’t eat them all?! at such a young stage! and I devoured what he gave me without any shame!

So much blunders to keep u bored. Will tell the remaining later or u will start dozing off in front of toshu. bye da.

saw stuart little 2 today. Inspiring! Every cloud has a silver lining! thank you for standing with me in happiness and sorrow. I love you so much. Study well and keep faith. All the breast!

Sept 4, 2002

i am still waiting at the park
i stretch my legs and feel the grass
sun came over
but she didn’t, yet

i am still waiting at the park
i feel nauseated and time, i donno what
someone came over and took me home
but not she

am at bed but still i feel am waiting at the park
i feel lifeless and i pinch my self
i can feel but someone else inside me
not me; not she..

epilogue:

the stonehenge saw seasons pass by
the stone bench saw seasons and life and love pass by

just cuz it rhymes ya maybe
but i feel itz said

Dec, 2000

won’t you come tonight my dear
won’t you come in my dreams
and shower me with your ummas
you are my love, you are my life.

the sea.

2001