All, that does not matter

Pretty soon, though not very soon, I will be turning thirty. That seems like a lot of years to have lived, certainly a lot of weeks, and a hell of a lot of days. One would imagine I have seen a lot, in this period, and maybe I have. I have seen bits of sunshine and surely too much of moonshine; bits of sublime magic and dollops of crass trickery; some love and a lot, lot more indifference. And yet, most of what I remember, most of what I think about is not a brochure for the past, but a catalog of the present.

I remember less of the magic which was there in my mother’s hands, as she talked to this young boy while also preparing for the evening meal, sitting her plates and pans on the roof as she prepared to decimate a basketful of vegetables, her salt-and-pepper hair made to appear brown by the reddish light of the sun setting beyond her, its light obscured by the palms some distance away sometimes, sometimes crashing upon us like the last flickering light of a bulb about to blow. Yes, I say decimate- she cooked for thirteen people, there was no time for the split-slice-chop-dice-into-rectangles-squares-oblong-and-circular pieces finesse to that, and yet they did come out like that, may be her ferocity of will made their shapes turn, all I remember is the knife moving metronomically in her hand, as I stare, mesmerized at a feat I cannot even now manage. I do not remember what we talked about in that half hour we shared, me sitting there with my bowl-ful of puffed rice and some onions and green chillies which still taste like heaven. Probably it was about me telling her about the anger I carried over from a June day spent playing cricket in the sun and losing matches and she sitting there eloquently explaining her frustrations to the vegetables, while bantering equably with me about life in my boy’s school and what I did on Thursdays which were half days. What I had seen in those days was wide open skies which would glower at us for most part, but which still wrapped themselves around the world like a cool sheet when evening arrived; behaving, for most part, like a father who is unhappy with his child’s examination result. What I had seen those days was nights which, today, I can call as comforting as a lover’s embrace; nights were a place where you took all your exhaustion to, and in the cool breeze it all turned into a joyful, comforting sleep which was the sweetest thing you had had all your life.

Those days are not possible today, which is why this is not a brochure, merely a catalog. Today, I see a morning as a mad scramble to get out of home before the rest of the world does, so that I can avoid the traffic. I get delayed by five minutes, and I face the snarls and sniggers and mockery and frustration of the traffic as it swirls around me like a very angry and very dirty flood. I stop at a signal, and a truck breathes its slow crawl towards death in my face, in a hot and ugly whisper it tells me what there is to know about my life- less than can be written a post-it. The nights no longer are like a lover’s embrace; they are not spent under the stars. Now, the air-conditioner hums and breathes its icy, intermittent cackle down my neck as I write this, as humorless as an angry wife. I have a shelf-ful of books which I intent to read someday, and keep on adding to, and it stares at me as I fritter away my time much as if it were a stern matron, and I, a noisy patient in a hospital dorm.

But I know that what happened was my choice. I chose to grow up the way I am. And lost something. Now I know not what it was.