Monday, September 24, 2007

Past it on

He talked about yesteryears, about a time long ago. When the air was cleaner, the sky was bluer and the birds chirped louder and more melodiously. I remember that time too. As do most other people.

Every weekend I fly and fly back. And the fly back is an amazing two and a half hours for introspection. Especially with a good food for thought. I get incredibly energized during that time, with a rapid train of ideas flashing through my hyperactive brain. I decide to gym, decide to write a book, decide to open a restaurant chain, decide to quit, decide never to quit, decide this and that. Great ideas, often intertwined with long hours of sleep. So I lose most of these ideas.

One such idea was my listing-of-friends idea. I had thought it was absolutely the most fantastic idea I had ever come up with. It involved an excel sheet and 4 columns, 2 of which were name and last contacted. I will let your young infertile minds conjure the remaining part of that sorry excuse for the human condition.

Friends are a window to your memories. They are the only way to get to relive a past that will never be. Never of a present of a future you never saw and a future which for some strange reason seems like a past you had once had. Like the river. (T, that's your cue to smile). Friends, apparently, serve the only purpose of lighting the embers of recollection. Or rather, primarily. Hogwash. Kundera can get it wrong too. A minuscule amount of the time.

How obsessed we are with the past. A constant urge to think and talk about it. To reminisce. We actually signify its importance with a verb. Do parallels exist with the present and future?

Detachment is nirvana. Detachment of everything. Detachment of the past, present and future. The past is difficult to withdraw from, unless. Unless. Unless you get hit by love. Because love is the insatiable glorification of the present, so much so that you lose the concept of the past. The now conquers all. Swallows the future and vanquishes the past. Every other day, especially when we are young, the specter of our beautiful pasts comes a-knocking. Knock, knock, here I am, your life idyll.

Not to worry, T. That's for mortals. Those with a constant need to prove and worry. The insecure and the dissatisfied. Not us. For we know the truth. We know of that and more.

But you know what, we'll always have Bombay. And Modigliani.

Passe,
H