Tears of Melancholy

Anecdotes from The Past - IX

Trishul Park is the song of my heart.

After Raju left Trishul Park, during those long and lonely afternoons, I'd often find myself searching for memories of our childhood: The roads we used to cycle on and the cricket grounds where we used to play under an enormous bowl of blue sky hung overhead, the songs we'd listen to that came drifting upon the wonderful cosmos of our neighbourhood from across the main road, would flood my heart with a feeling of the unexpected surge of nostalgia.

Wave after wave of memories would overwhelm me and sometimes even lift me off my feet in deep feeling, my heart achy for a bygone time I knew would never come again, but go on yearning. Tears of melancholy would blur my eyes as I silently longed to relive those lost days, longing to relive the memories again, remembering all the times of the golden age of our childhood. Dil dhoonta hai fir wahi fursat ke raat din…

**

Meena's beauty was truly remarkable, and my pre-teen self couldn't believe that such great beauty is not something anyone can possess; perhaps only someone exceptional in destiny, time, and place could, and Meena had all of those fine God-gifted elements in full measure. That someone could be that mesmerizingly attractive and draw attention to herself astounds me, and you can't look away from her. It amazes me even today to think about Raju's cousin, a radiant beauty from the majestic mountains of Jammu. Her breathtakingly beautiful looks with fair complexion and liquid black eyes, crowned with perfect lines of her eyebrows and finely aquiline roman nose, left a lasting impression on everyone who saw her, and her bottle-green Kashmiri gown only heightened her undeniable charisma as a young girl of extraordinary beauty. Meena was a sight to behold. When we played cricket outside, she'd come to the window of her first-floor dormitory, framing it like a perfect work of art with her elegance and grace; her spellbinding beauty lent a touch of magic to every moment that came into existence at No. 6 Trishul Park. Her looks were truly beyond words.

**

Great friendships enrich your life forever. Meena returned to her native sometime in the mid-'80s after graduating from St. John's school—if memory serves—in the seventh grade. Around that time, Murari and his sister Anita came into our midst. However, with Meena's departure, which we didn't expect she would until at least in the year she finished her school final examination, which was still three years away, an old chapter was abruptly closed.

Certain friendships last a lifetime. Growing up, Meena, Sunita (also called Choti), Raju, Mintu, and I (along with my sibling) shaped our relationship into a foster brother-sister dynamic. Since we all grew up in comparable environments of similar experiences and shared history, developing that relationship was subconsciously more valuable than everything else. Even after they went away, Meena and Choti continued to send us exquisite Rakhis by mail for many years, and we'd be delighted to wear them on Rakhi Day without fail. But alas, that heartfelt tradition had stopped in the mid-'90s before giving us great memories of our formative years of the unforgettable No. 6 Trishul Park. Meena, Choti, Raju, and Mintu were a blessing — friends for life.

Murari, a teenager with an adventurous spirit, knew how to spend his papa's money to live life to the fullest, often going AWOL by taking off on his father's bicycle to Sagar Hotel situated at Loth Lake, a good kilometre away from Alwal, for a sumptuous lunch of steamed rice and chicken curry. After satiating his craving for dining alfresco, he'd play some enjoyable cricket matches with us waiting for him on the ample playground facing our dormitories, using a yellow Tennis ball which he already would have bought on his own from Nagender Stores, and a free-size, makeshift wooden bat, used originally for traditional hand-washing clothes on the floor of his slippery bathroom or in the much-bleached white courtyard of his ground-floor dormitory where he famously lived with his gentle sister, polite mother, and virtuous father, who was a very decent Army man.

Murari, a fun-loving person, loved to have a good time. As a team, he, Raju, and I would play cricket nonstop on Sundays and holidays, stopping only for lunch. He once hid in the “slippery bathroom” where none of us could dare to approach to call him out when we played hide and seek in his spacious ground floor dormitory. You are supposed to have a required amount of balancing skill to tread on the floor and look-see in the bathroom if anyone went there to hide. The floor leading to it was so slippery that anyone would surely fall with a thud if not stepped on it slowly and carefully. Murari used to scrub the grease off with an avidity that has to be seen to be believed, but funnily, the slipperiness came back quickly on the toilet floor like it never really went off in the first place. Our hide-and-seek game that we routinely played within Murari's home with the lights switched off was such a spectacular frivolity that it is hard to believe the things we used to do to hide from one another when the game was in full swing. Our sense of contest was delightfully amusing as we laughed and hooted and cat-called to one another while safely hidden away in the bedrooms, drawing room, bathrooms, behind the doors, curtains, in the kitchen, and behind the bicycle covered with a canvas in the veranda: One of us even went so far as to hide within the dark recesses of the wardrobe in the family bedroom! I, on the other hand, almost always hid under one of their long charpoy beds—(where, surprisingly, I’d run into Raju chuckling loudly on seeing me joining him there, pushing ourselves deeper and deeper against the side wall so that no one could see us and call us out!)—that we fearfully assumed was teeming with a ravenous army of reddish-brown bed bugs (khatmal), ever ready to bite, roving around the rectangular shape of the longish cot tightly webbed with scruffy jute cords, under which we hid like frightened bunnies. Yet, it was only a temporary inconvenience... haha... to get unduly worried about while we were in the thick of the game, trying to deflect undue attention.

**

1988 marked a turning point in my life, a watershed year. I lost a dear friend and his good friendship. Now and then, ever since Raju's family moved out of Trishul Park, memories of our years together as friends would come haunting back. Before another family used his dorm on the first floor for their stay, it had been vacant for a long time, and it brought tears to my eyes when I saw that they weren't Raju; they were some other people.

Trishul Park no longer felt the same; it became bereft of liveliness and seemed anguished. Since those days, heaven knows, the surge of tears has emptied my days, tears of melancholy.

(To be continued…)

By Arindam Moulick

Trishul Park: A Lost Childhood Eden

Anecdotes from The Past - VIII

Sitting by myself, a strong feeling of nostalgia overwhelms my senses.

Often without my even realizing it, nostalgia wraps around me like a warm auric embrace, bringing back mystical memories—of my early years spent living in one of Trishul Park's residential dormitories that, in those days, were nestled in pure and untouched greenery you won't find anywhere today, of songs I recognize irresistibly, of cap pistols, kite flying, and water guns, of long-forgotten melodies returning to my mind like a spellbinding revelation, of heart-melting smiles, of laughing that was met with laughter in return, binding us together as we clutched our tummies and heaved for breath, and of all childhood friends I've been close with for a long time.

Though it may seem strange, I while away long hours picturing the familiar faces of my earlier friends and enduring loves—as well as places, experiences, and events, especially Army ‘Court Day’, Parade Day, Bada Khana (Big feast), Parachute Jump, or watching countless movies at the Open Air Theatre—beholding it all in my mind like a string of words of a poem I haven't penned yet, rendering me unable to work or allow anything for me to do, leaving me feeling empty and heart-achingly lonely at times when the realization hits that we cannot meet ever. The fragrant memories of that wondrous place, Trishul Park, remain an integral part of who I am today, deeply rooted as the gravitational centre of all my vivid remembrances of those innocent days of the early '80s.

Despite their melancholy undertone—as sometimes stories and memories are wont to have—I cherish them dearly. I hold them in the highest regard and admire them to bits, often finding myself quietly easing into expressing words of longing for the past, those innocent times that will perhaps never come again. Having fond memories of boyhood and youth, and as you grow older, I've realized that you'll have even more to reflect on, and that's why this aching piece of nostalgia. Memories tumble down on you as you grow a little older, year after year.

[One of the most significant experiences in my life was my friendship with Rajveer, aka Raju, from Jammu in the 1980s. Raju wasn't just an ordinary friend; he was more of a kindred spirit who left a profound impression on all my childhood memories. After the early 1980s, he became my precious soulmate and close friend, without whom none of my boyhood days would have been bright or pleasant, and there'd be no memories at all. If it weren't for his company, I wouldn't have known the value of friendship: I don't know where I'd be without him in my daily life. I will forever cherish the times we spent together at Trishul Park; those were unforgettable times, precious memories fading to a golden tinge with age.]

The core of my nostalgia for the long-gone Edenic childhood at Trishul Park, where Raju and I grew up, is our profound friendship of many years. Those days, life was a force of nature, old world charm, heaven on earth, heartfelt, home-cooked meals, and uncluttered by things people fill their lives with these days, sacrificing space and mental peace. Life in the earlier eras played the tune of our lives like a lovely song, and there were lots to feast on that wafted from the music stall, kite shop, and grocery store to where we rushed to buy cork balls on the Alwal main road.

[I never stopped thinking about Raju, his siblings, their cousin Meena, my former early 1980s pals Poonam, Ruby, Susheela, and Sugna, and of the mid-'80s Murari and his sister Anita. They were always on my mind. Throughout the '90s, I was hot on the trail of early memories in my mind, and I still am, even today, cannot make room for anything other than nostalgic wonderings of the distant past.]

Both happiness and a little sadness would come flooding back to me as I thought about them, if not more so. I loved them more than life itself and cherished our warm friendship just as much as they did mine. We were the children of Trishul Park.

Poonam, Ruby, and the others had moved on to postings their fathers had proceeded to: Poonam went to Aligarh, Ruby probably to Bareilly, and Meena returned to her native Jammu. With Raju, however, the continuity of friendship turned out differently because he and I stayed at Trishul Park the longest from the mid to late 1980s, and, therefore, we became close pals on account of staying in the same dormitory: I stayed on the ground floor diagonally beneath to his first-floor dorm. Raju stayed till 1988, and I a little longer till 1995, often remembering about our old-time friends who had gone away a long time ago: sadly, never seen or heard from again.

And then, it was time for my dear Raju to move on. How can I forget the day when the sun shone brightly when Raju and his family came down the stairs to bid us farewell? He said goodbye in the summer of 1988 after finishing his school year: the year marked a turning point in our lives that left us both feeling helpless and a sense of loss for each other's altered lives brought on by circumstances beyond our control. With his parents, his brother Mintu, and his sister Sunita, aka Choti, Raju boarded the canvassed-topped 3-ton Army truck that came to pick them up and drop them off at the train station. Everybody came to see them off. Just as their pickup made its way out of Trishul Park through the main gate, Raju raised his hand and waved at me, and I waved back almost simultaneously, a downcast smile on my face, feeling uncertain if we'd ever see one other again in this lifetime. He left a void that just could not be filled or replaced. Trishul Park was never the same again.

With his going, simply an era had come to an end. It was an era that was the most wonderful of all eras that came later.

(To be continued…)

By Arindam Moulick