Wednesday 2 January 2013



I MISSED MY PASTS
Stephan C. Hmar 26/12/2012

One astonishing fact about our life is we always missed our pasts. And, squarely I found this seems to be one of the axioms of our complex life.

Young or old, or the not so old people I come across mostly argue with one common tale: their good times have gone. Oh! How precious is the past? It’s everyone’s tales of pride, comfort, value or meanings. A weak man here used to be a strong gentleman in his past. Wrinkled old grandmas, here and there, used to be mystic beauties of their times. A widow used to be happy when she was with her husband and a widower could not find any lovelier bride than that of his past, however he may try. Oh! Songs and Gospel and drum-beats of bygones were sweeter. How come every tiny thing about the past could have meaning so close to the soul?

We revamp and smarten our present. We fight, kills, unite or divide to redecorate our present. We proclaimed ourselves successful or unsuccessful; happy or unhappy. But in them all, we always found the pasts were way sweeter.

Indeed, the pasts hold our soul.

The sweetest moments are always on those long-gone moments and the fronts are on the present. Why is it that we cannot go back to our pasts than always lingering on the boundary of present and future? Why is it so that we are always confronting something unknown?

One evening, under a fog-covered December, I went to a book-stall to see what they have. I saw books, stacked on the shelves, as well as scattered on tables and floors. I could see books of current affairs, general knowledge, MCA, BCA, fictions, love stories, quicker mathematics and more. I gazed at them with starry feelings. They hurried me back to the departed moments that are unlikely to re-cycle back. My mind eyed back those times when friends and I struggled to memorized GK, and toiled day in and day out to crack confusing arithmetic.  Oh! We found quicker mathematics were too quick to understand then. I wish if we only knew how quicker those math are now. And how less did we knew that only the quickest math is the need of the occasion now. Again, how sweet were lovers and their story and what confusion is love all about now. Knowledge was meaningful and sweet then. Now it is drab. Everything was testier but now, they all taste sourer or duller.  All these Recollections of long-gone moments started to come back and irritated this unchanging soul.

But, surely I could not purchase any of those books of the past. I needed to stick to something of the front, of the present. Hesitatingly, I picked up a copy of Reader’s Digest and checked its contents. I pulled out my purse, paid the seller and went back towards my vehicle.

I kind of felt unsatisfied. But, what more can be done?

Along the drive way back home, I felt an ardent sense of straying too far away from what my soul longed. What I need to purchase has changed; my liking has to change; I have to try to make the ambience around me changed. Aa! What has all these years done of which I barely knew? Why did I not picked up book of my pasts but picked up a different book which I thought always was a book of no help --- costly and small in size, with thick pages of unruly advertisements within them. I accessed its weight and size and complained the high price tag. I felt, maybe, an unyielding sense of foolishness. Or a sense of some sorts of isolation after something inherent has been snatched from you? I sense wave of changes brushing my unchangeable longings and soul.

It is sad that changes bring us further and further from our pasts. Our childhood friends; friend and friends with whom we shared schools and colleges; people with whom we have shared glasses of beer, Chivas Regal, wines and pepsi; people to whom we cried narrating a story and people with whom we shared a hearty laugh are straying further and further. They are gone, like a familiar pitch of voices of near and dear diminishing amongst mountains and valleys. When we think back about them, we often starts by missing someone in particular. Next, we miss another one. And then, at last, we end up missing everyone. 

Once in a life time, we all experienced this sphere of closeness where bad was not that bad and good is not good either. Bad and good were just interesting. Self-respects and prides were not crucial. The innards crave for innocent enjoyments was all that was. It was nothing less than the anticipated paradise. You just cannot ask for more. Everyone, this and that, was just under one umbrella of understanding, no styles or words were required to fit in it. All fit in like a round peg in a round hole.

But sadly these accounts are bygones now. But they die hard. In fact, they will never die. They still flow with the blood stream where the blood longed and seek for freedom and serenity in this era of the know-how, where every sentence from the mouth have to be combed with carefulness; where everyone have the eyes of hawk and the mind of hyenas.

The clock says tick-tock and I will be 35 soon. Structurally I am changing fast. No doubt. I will also see my friends in the near future being changed structurally---- a bit wrinkled, or slightly grayish or fat or thin or more handsome or more ugly and so on. But certainly, more I will see of them as imitating the nature of a character they thought matured, yet unwillingly, due to demands or by the call of surroundings. Sure enough I will also be definitely like them, talking wits and wisdoms. Yet, these changes will be of no contest to contaminate the firm knowledge the soul have had. Soul persist change and longed for lost paradises. Yes, something real of the inside cannot just change, and all the glare of wants and needs that confronts us can change us extravagantly on the surface. Inside is always the same. Changes are of the physical, and the soul is still there, left unchanged.

And my RD book? Alas! Veneer changes that are inflicted on me by this and that of the corridors of life made me need it. I have to act as needing this book than all the other books in that shop. But beneath this, my innermost soul wanders in deprivation much like wild beast wandering for an oasis on a roaring and fuming desert.

I sat on my table and read the contents of my Digest book. 1. Delicious ways to release fat. 2. The riddle of Pandit Nehru. 3. How to have a positive attitude. 4. Gripped by the loop of chances, etc. I also see writings on family, health, pets, money, challenges, kindness, works etc. and etc. In their midst, I felt like an old soldier being summoned back to a chaos-inflicting war zone.

Aa! 35 years of my life is going to make me need to read and think about all these things. I will once again, have to learn to adjust with them. And the back of my head longed for the blissful pasts where I didn’t need any adjustments to fit in. Now, I am governed by the rules of cares, normality, and politeness, right and wrong. I feel meaningless.

I guess I just miss my pasts.