Arin’s mind grew into a veritable museum of memories. Verdant with his vivid longing for the magical span of twelve successive months between the magical years of 1986 and '87, when Piku Mama, Raja, and his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Saha, were staying in a Trishul Park dormitory, not very far from Arin's.
A wistful yearning for the distant past drives him to anthologize every little memory he remembers. Memories that may be faded but never forgotten. As though wanting to revive that particular moment in his personal history that would evoke a beguiling sense of nostalgia for what used to be back in the neon-lit late eighties, he likes orienting himself towards the good old nineteen-eighties era chock-a-block with personal associations, one among them being the charming Saha family, and Piku Mama in particular.
While being a sentimental person, emotionally captive to the faint echoes of what once was, Arin replays those lost moments. As though attuned to an endless, opiate loop of an old saga of songs his heart loved to sing while being firmly rooted in the same home life of the distant, unforgotten yesteryears he wouldn’t forsake for anything—leave alone any suggestion that the fountain of eternal nostalgia had all but dried up. Without pretending, however, that all had faded into a faraway, forgettable oblivion and nothing was left behind, so forget about it. Nope! He still likes to stick to the art of strolling down memory lane, preferring to be a loner in this regard, choosing solitude over any external validation, purely for the reasons of necessary introspection.
Those earliest memories, which now may ring as old and ancient, long-forgotten, left in obscurity or something of that nature, have been encoded in his living cells that formed part of his genetic machinery, so to speak; that is, whenever he took a stroll along this familiar pathway edged by the double-storied dormitories to the remembrances meadows of the 1980s Trishul Park, or even writing about it or relating with someone close now and then, as those boyhood time tales are still raw and has always been relevant to his way of life, he remembers everything at a moment’s notice, recalling every element in photographic detail, as if verbatim, word for word, scene for scene—those absolutely life-changing, simple but magical experiences still count as a throwback as time moved forward becoming his life’s first-loves collected in an imaginary melodious album of Alwal’s ‘greatest hits’ reminiscences, liberally complemented by an inherently deep feeling of nostalgic yearning for that wonderful lone year to come back in Arin’s life.
Arin can still vividly recall a major part of his earliest, seemingly infallible, childhood memories: dates, names, faces, voices, sights, and sounds of that gone world that, every so often, rise in his mind’s eye like the gentle embrace of a warm, golden sunrise. The shape of the chin or the colour of the eyes; the nod of the head or the smile on the face. Every little happening. Nothing malleable or fictional, just purely realistic to the iota.
So could he get on with his life as if those things no longer existed? Nah, he couldn’t; he carried them in his heart and mind through all these years, decades of deep longing. Memories may be lost, but never erased. As far as his personal experiences are concerned, his hippocampal ‘memory retrieval’ has remained strong. Up till now, at least. He hopes it continues, as long as it takes.
But Arin could not, could he, act as if nothing would trouble him anymore if he distanced himself from those slow-paced, good old days that brought so much joy worth a lifetime. What could have happened, really, had he done so? (Maybe nothing, and past the realm of your constantly longing heart, it ceases to remain validly important, perhaps.) Or as if he could stay the same, unchanged and unaffected by the kind of friendship he had cherished and nurtured over the childhood years, somehow learning to finally let go of it when the era of the 1990s came as another promising anchor in his life. Na! He still will not forget and will definitely not. (And nobody is asking him to; he knows). While it must be said that holding on to the comfort of memories of old lost friends, Arin went ahead and made new ones: But yet, his heart was sombrely heavy with an unspoken weight of emotions as though everything had started to fall apart as he felt immensely saddened when Piku Mama’s one-year sojourn had come to an end… A silent weight pressed against his ever-longing heart for the old times and, with the earlier era ending, partly in 1987 when Piku Mama left and partly in 1988 when Raju (Rajveer), on account of his father’s posting, had to leave Trishul Park forever, Arin made new friends, reluctantly. Only in 1990, when the new era (decade) had just settled in, and new friends arrived in the form of Subramanium Strong, Bhale and Satish Gupta, did Arin stumble upon a little solace. That was hopeful enough for this solo rider of nostalgia.
--∞--
That was a really long time ago, and things are not exactly in the nature of memories smudged beyond recall, an imbroglio of sad thoughts that torment night and day, and the hurried deception of touchy-feely what-if scenarios become definite—all these would have to get a silent move on, he supposed to have understood. And Arin finally resolved (with a heavy sigh, not wanting to let go even then: not even a fraction of those nostalgic days) that things would perhaps look after themselves while he went to spend some of the time he got on Earth. Such a thing was enormously difficult to think through and carry on.
Nostalgic thoughts remain, however. No matter where you go, they lurk deep in those corners of your heart. They could strike you in a good way, as those days lift him up every time he pictures Piku Mama, Raja, and Saha uncle and aunty and their collection of animal companions awake and astir in their dormitory back in the late '80s, in the Trishul Park. That’s how it was, beautiful and a heart full of longing.
Arin still remembers that year as the year of life transition, a final reckoning with family and friends as he explored close personal relationships, and quiet realizations that made him see certain things in a clearer light, self-adjusting to soften his presence while navigating the complexities of life, which was about tending to the little things, even if the objects of your admiration and affection disappeared at a distant time in the past. By the end of that year of Piku Mama’s sojourn with the Sahas, tiny mini-waves of grief poured from the heart like a mountain stream; the brain functioned in isolation of itself: a little too much to think normally, as Piku Mama began his departure from Alwal. Arin bore it as an acceptance of destiny, learning there and then the subtle art of letting go, without, of course, fully understanding yet how much it takes to cultivate discernment. If that is too much to deal with, he felt he still had his whole life ahead of him, possibly remaining friendless or having some friends. Just as beloved Rajveer (Raju) made a huge impact during most of Arin’s childhood years in the ‘80s, Piku Mama, for a brief year, had similarly made a lasting impression.
(To be continued…)
(End of part V)
By Arindam Moulick
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