The Melancholy of a Lost Time

Part II of the short story ‘Sayonara’

Time flew. Especially after the senior academic college years of the 1990s, which seemed to rush by like sand through an hourglass.

After the year 2000, Time inspired disbelief among the four friends. It quietly blurred the nineteen-nineties generation into the brand-new millennial decade, which was literally loaded with the onrush of the information technology (IT) revolution that went on to change the world entirely—even the aspects of a decade-old friendship among the four boys who loved hanging out on the rocks at Trishul Park, later at Subranium Strong’s Lake Park dormitory for a year, and then at his Govind Palace Apartment’s low compound wall adjoining the entryway.

As things stood then, and luckily, the four friends became consciously aware that the coming millennial age of “echo boomers” (which included themselves) would soon take over the supply chain, as it were, the IT world had known until then, forcing them to follow through the fright of the curveballs life was certain to throw their way. The old order changeth. They perhaps knew that life would never be the same again thereafter. It’s already changing. This is the final hangout.

That’s how it was back then, and how it is now, and how it will be. It's all in a lifetime.

--∞--

Their “new normal,” metaphorically speaking, came sooner than they had thought, and the final year of the 20th century felt like a turning point: an endpoint in itself, concluding their growing-up years to a fair degree, even as the sweeping currents of possibilities, disruptive changes of InfoTech, the inevitable highs and lows of humanity, in the wonder-filled world had tested their patience. They too weren’t let go for anything they did or didn’t do in their lives. Taking it one day at a time became a pressing priority, however.

For the first time, this little (but all-important) continuity of time had hastened an inevitable truth the universe had long defined, setting a slow (yet steady) realization within their friendship quartet that nothing would be the same as it once was. The 1990s were too far into the past, beyond recovery. Only worth seeking in their memories of those days. From the new millennium onwards, the chronology of their foursome friendship would also change; a strange newness they have to accept. A quiet shift in perspective was also necessary.

--∞--

At that precise juncture, they understood (on a natural gut feeling, one supposes) that time was on their side too, but compelled by its age-old, long-standing, hypertensive urgency after all. Wheeling endlessly in the universe from day to day, year to year, decade to decade. Ultimately, steering headlong into a millennial economic boom following the turn of the century. The 2000s and ever since saw corporate India rushing in.

Be it what it would, the unfamiliarity of their circumstances in the 21st century, each choosing a different career path, had changed the emotional cornerstones in the lives of the four friends from the late 1990s, as all sought to hit their own stride. Getting a job became paramount as they acquired their educational degrees. Even if they weren’t entirely baffled by its meaning or implications, they definitely felt a touch disenchanted since their ‘90s golden age of great music, movies, and television: the humble and simple pleasures that crafted their identity and self-expression had indeed come to a close. Oh hell, such is life, they said to themselves, letting go of the old: those nostalgic embers to burn bright, and moved on. The emotional baggage of the 1990s was weighing heavily on their minds, despite everything. Arin's is the case in point.

Hotfooting forward with relentless, alarming zeal was not a part of their intimate personality; therefore, the new era seemed too indifferent and crude for the four friends of the old days to value, whose deeply nostalgic, analogue roots kept them from enjoying themselves as they had in the past decade, which had been wonderfully meaningful and personal in a way that was nothing but charming. They knew things would never be the same. The arrival of the 2000s felt rather unwelcome. Now, it doesn’t feel like home. The Alwal of yesteryears has disappeared; it feels alien to live here now. No close friends, only soulless acquaintances. This ongoing 21st-century millennium brings only blinding change and cold indifference; the free-range childhood of Generation X would never be able to give much importance.

Time had had its sway, always did, and always will; however, it was not that brisk in its rhythm and flow, it looked like it, back in the day, except now it is insanely ticking forward… as a demon possessed, totally wrung up dry about anything and everything in its realm that one might refrain from making the cardinal mistake of suggesting…Go slow, constantly ticking-time buddy! But only a feeling of the concussive nature of loss that mourned all through Arin’s growing-up years after the ‘90s, as it crept up in one contiguous haptic memory of wonder days past: of the charming old wind-touched and spacious world—which was once deeply rooted in naturalness and was far, far less dramatic in reality than it has now become—had passed us by. That is all that remains, a sweet old memory, as his heart keeps beating for it, recollecting those bygone days in his lonely moments of tranquillity.

Nostalgia for a lost time: Long gone are the glory days of the tight-knit, slow-growth, and politically unsavvy Socialist era of the 80s and 90s. Old wine was sweeter than the new, in a manner of speaking and speaking fairly. When Kolkata was Calcutta, Chennai was Madras, Puducherry was Pondicherry, and Mumbai was Bombay. People were happier with less, despite the many problems the pre-liberalized era had faced before the 1990s. The nineties were definitely exemplary; they offered stability and peace of mind, not much change yet. Then, after the 2000s, all old-school mechanisms fell apart like a cheap Chinese knock-off, discarded and dumped for the new things to come. With the arrival of the era of economic prosperity, the so-called post-liberalized era that brought such, millennial digital natives took over and made everything look spectacular and effortless, pushing the envelope further and further until, of course, AI (Artificial Intelligence, with no actual intelligence) took over: throwing the cat among the pigeons, and how! At least the old-schoolers ate fruits plucked straight from the trees. Like jungle jalebi, tamarind, and jujube berry.

All around: shreds of incandescent nostalgia hung like a pervasive charm of melancholy in Arin’s heart ever since those sweet, leisurely, educational years he still adores so much, almost psychologically living it every day, have begun to ebb away into the faraway furloughs of memory…

(To be continued…)

(End of part II)

By Arindam Moulick