Skip to main content

A slip and fall down the memory lane

I have just returned from a short trip; a trip long pending. I went to Kundapur and Hallihole, a tiny village at the end of Udupi District, flanked by forest on three sides and a beautiful river on the other. Travelling to Kundapur, I revisited the place where I studied for six years; the school and college on the serene hill in the middle of nowhere and felt like once again walking down the slope with books in one hand and my close friend's hand in the other. We felt like being in the top of the world with our little secrets and lots of laughter. I wonder where those days went. It was in the middle of the night, around 1 or 2 am, when I passed my school. I remembered the ghost stories that we used to frighten each other with, about the school as it was said to be built on a graveyard. The blooming of a life above the dead. Nice. Isn't it?
Coming to ghosts, there was a dilapidated house a few kilometres after the school on the roadside. It had mosses and small plants on its steps and window sills were broken. Sometimes the door would be open. I and my sis were fond of working up ghost stories around the house each time we passed it. We remained fascinated with it for so many years. We both remembered the house this time too and craned our necks to catch a glimpse of it the whole way but couldn't find it. May be it was demolished. So many years have passed since we last saw it.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The next step forward

“ What is the feeling when you're driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? It's the too huge world vaulting us, and it's goodbye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.” -- Jack Kerouac (American Poet and Novelist) From what I have seen and admired in humans, they are eternal optimists. Goodbyes seem to break us, but we straighten up and walk, holding our head high, blinking away our tears. And as regards the specks of people dispersing, when something moves away, something else comes near. Guess that's how laws of nature move. If a time comes when nothing else comes near, it's when we will become really alone; alone to live and love life without any reason, taking the next step forward.

Caterpillar or butterfly?

'Caught in a strange land in a net with other butterflies, I'm a caterpillar yet undecided to remain a caterpillar and perish or turn into a beautiful butterfly and live a life full of joy.' Readers don't laugh. But I came up with this one night recently when I was travelling in a train. I tossed and turned, not being able to sleep, upset over unexplainable things and frustrated over events not in my control. Then it occurred to me that our life and its usefulness depends on our decisions -- whether to remain a crawling caterpillar whose existence otherwise is either ignored by all and sundry or who is cursed for just being there and thrown out with a stick, or to develop wings of life and metamorphose into a beautiful butterfly whom everybody adores for its beauty and colour, for its flitting liveliness, for its service to the flower's pollination... I thought that I should be a butterfly, of service to others, but then again I thought, anyway, who really cares? 

Resilience

You wake up every morning deciding that this day you are going to be happy, care-free and not haunted by memories. It's like being a child. As the day goes by, it seems each and every event, small words or things bring back those memories which you would wish to forget. You just shake it off and move on to the next work at hand. I guess our resilience holds out through everything that seems to be ready to break us. This is the human spirit I have learnt to admire. But when it doesn't?