Lifetime is brief and memory is fragile

Our car treaded carefully the rough roads to my mom’s ancestral village .The towering mountains; the luscious cashew plantations dotting the coastline beckoned us welcome to my grandmothers home. The fresh ocean breeze whiffed up nostalgia.

Nine  whole years -the period of my transition from adolescence to adulthood -The string holding the beads of memory had just snapped.

I saw my grandmother’s ancestral house from afar and something deep inside shook me. I reminisced on the days when my brother, cousins and I used to meet here and enjoy during our summer vacations. Along the Coastline, “We used to take free steps in a boundless universe”. During my last visit, I, at the peak of adolescence, failed to cherish the event as I had entertained the scientific temper, which ruled my senses. At that time, a visible gap between perception and reality dulled the joy of sojourn to grandma’s house.

Kiran  used to tell me that her happiest moments were when she ran barefoot in her grandfather’s fields in their native place -when she felt the aroma of the wet soil in the green paddy fields. For my best friend Kiran, it was a return to the roots, -to her innocence, -to her identity, the inspiration behind her esteem, -to her relations whom she held above all things.

Resting my head in Grandma’s lap, I realized what I had been missing all these years-innocence. Having been far from my relatives for a long time, I was missing the pure innocence of childhood and the comfort and beauty of relations. In Childhood, I never could be satisfied with gifts if it involved me having to stay somewhere without Mom. I was ready to forego easily all my possessions that I so jealously guarded for something which delighted my heart -like the day when I gave my entire small change to a poor kid whose need was more than the toy  gun for which I saved. All of us are the same when small.

What does a man crave for more than all money? Love, Joy and Happiness. This message was beautifully portrayed by Orson Welles in the all time best movie (for over 6 decades now) ”Citizen Kane”. “Rosebud,” the dying word of the multibillionaire Kane aroused the curiosity of the entire nation -for this was the dying word of a man who had every material possession within his reach.

Thousands of theories later, it is revealed that it’s the name of the sledge which Kane’s father presented to him when he was a small child. Kane’s enormous wealth didn’t provide a comforting hand at his deathbed. He craved for pure affection and unselfish love and while dying remembered the same given to him by his father when he presented him the sledge. It was a return to that innocence which Kane craved for.

Relations both animate and inanimate have preceded our possessions throughout the ages though sometimes we do forget that when infants, we needed others. If while dying, we need others, then why not now?

During our stay in Bihar, our house was neighbored by a abandoned factory, the house to a family of simians. There was one particular monkey who from the 5th day of my parents occupying the house came to our courtyard and called “MA”(Mother). Amused, my mother felt like her deceased mother was calling her. She gave the simian food during Dad’s 3 years of stay in Bihar; this particular simian used to come daily and obediently call my mother and eat and calmly go away. While leaving Bihar, my mother was almost in tears leaving the simian. Even today, she wonders daily about who must be feeding that simian. Some relations do not have names, but do move us a lot. There are no new truths to be discovered. The improvements of age have had little influence on the essential laws of Man’s existence. Man is a social animal and after the basic necessities of food, shelter and clothing are met, he needs companionship more than anything else. Those of you who have seen Tom Hanks “Castaway” I believe I can easily relate to the above.

Every relation, every action, and act of passion by which life is remembered form our memories. Those crowning moments in the relation remain with us forever, to dive into in times of joy and sorrow, to reminisce when sister marries, to weep when grandpa dies. These moments inspire and change our worlds forever.

Memory is fragile, yet is our only hope. Being treated to morsels of food from Grandma’s frail hands, I knew that I can trade in every possession for this moment of pure affection, of pure joy, of invisible tears and whence I make a wish that time stand still