The path upon the meadows

We never do justice to our memories, do we? I mean every single day is full of eventful moments, and the collection in our human minds is overwhelming indeed. But more importantly, we are so busy adding to these petabytes, there is seldom time to sieve a few of them, dry them out in the sun-kissed warmth of a yesterday, or roll these gems in our fingers, feeling their rich exquisite cuts, iridescent in the last rays of an Autumn sun.

Yes, a stray memory blows with the winds here, a shard glimmers like a mirage in a n’orwester there, but that’s about it. We are too busy accelerating on the F1 circuit of our everyday, that seldom do we sit down and look back at that wildflower-laden path upon the meadows. Yesterday more often than not, looks less exciting, slow and often not worth pondering upon. Add to this the wiseacre corporate gurus who tell you to look ahead, not behind blah-blah-blah… 

But sometimes, maybe sometimes, it is worth sitting with a cup of steaming tea on a ruddy evening, and reconnecting with the dinkum days of your pensive past. And the best part? You are free to leaf through this rich compendium and stop at any chapter you like - Himalaya, Bruges, College Street, the Andaman Sea, anywhere that resonates most with your sweet chai filled moods. You cannot be freer than in this cosmos of your mind - for you can savour the best ones, and happily ignore the dark ones. But do savour them - as in forcefully sit down even for five minutes, and look back, muse, ruminate, pout, shed a tear, smile, and take a deep breath. Share your memories - with yourself. And then, smile some more, for who else will understand that joy of eating ice candy in the first summer rains, who better will cry at the sight of the shimmering Nanda Devi, all aglow at dusk, who better will rasp with nervousness at leaving home, all alone, for the first time? That hidden trail you had discovered, that secret you had never shared, that stranger on your way to school you had fallen in love with - who else will understand but yourself? So sit down, and ruminate - on your best thoughts on a cloudy day, and your melancholic ones on a sunny day. But do sit down and look back. And after your cup of tea is empty, do look back at all the miles you have walked, all the years you have sailed, and be grateful. For as the saying goes, grateful people are the happiest.

These days, with so little travel, so much loneliness, and so much being cooped up indoors, I make it a point to look back. I call it ‘memory-meditation’ and in a complete antithesis to traditional meditation, I don’t bother emptying my mind. Rather I cram it up with any particular idea that fascinates me on that day and time. If it rains outside, I walk back to the emerald hills outside Mumbai, where I had chased the clouds and had drenched to my heart’s content with a bunch of crazy friends. The other day, I was fascinated with snow, so I travelled half the world in a few minutes, first on a huge gondola to toboggan on the Swiss Alps, then to walk in a valley of pink primulas, strewn with snow in Sikkim, and then to just sit and watch the afternoon sun lolling on white snowfields in a small town named Blue Cow in the Great Dividing Range. And it’s not always about travelling - the homesick guy in me takes the first opportunity to go back home. 

To walk through Park Street and visit bookstores, to read books he could never afford. 

To smell the chhatim flowers in autumn because they would herald the start of a carefree festive season

To go for an aimless walk by the lakeside - a jaded paradise in a choked up city - and be enamoured of V shaped flocks flying one above the other, 

To go back to his university that smells like an old precious book even today, to sit under a windmill that never worked, and to dream big, to achieve something, anything that could justify the need to sprout wings to fly somewhere, anywhere…

Life is never short of memories. Nor is there a dearth of time. The busiest man, they say, has the most time. What is amiss then, is the intent, and sometimes, sadly, the want. Who after all, would want to tax the mind after a hard day? Sometimes, we may not want to even look back (yes, there is a plethora of  bad, painful and jarring memories, but you can always choose to ignore them). But the fact is unless we look back, we will never realise how far we have walked. Not just in space, but more importantly in time.  Every day is a baby step, hence we don’t realise the difference between a yesterday and a today. But look back years, and the pilgrimage will start making sense. 

Then, you may emerge from your memory meditations, sometimes exhausted, sometimes relaxed, sometimes melancholic or euphoric, but more often than not, with a sense of profundity in your veins, reminding you that the child who would stare dreamily at blue skies on a hot summer noon, has indeed come a long, long way. Then perhaps, for a fleeting second, you will agree that the F1 circuits may fill up your life today, but life is more truly filled up by the many forgotten paths upon the wildflower meadows...

15th August