Nostalgia

Nostalgia.

The first thing that comes to mind is June mornings. When it’s raining outside and you want to sleep but your mom is yelling at you to wake up and get ready for school. A children’s magazine (Balarama) that comes in every friday. Afternoon cricket with my brother. All my school friends. Our chitter-chatter during the class hours. Our arguments over who was stronger: Chotta Bheem or Ben 10? My teachers. The feel of their cane on my hands. And yes, her eyes. The most beautiful pair of eyes I have ever seen in my life sounds cliche but I can’t think of a better phrase that fits. Her name was Yaami. She was our class leader in 3rd class. Fierce, strict and responsible. It is probably ironic that the first person I fell in love with in my life was the reason I had to suffer countless punishments at the hands of my teachers. But I couldn’t help it. I liked her so much that I was starting to ignore my other lover: blankets; I actually started looking forward to going to school to see her. I think school love stories are wonderful. Once you grow older, you try to fit love within the accepted societal framework. You propose to the other person, ask for a date, buy them dinner and so on. But school children don’t know what to do with this newfound likeness. They try to express it in whatever way they can; by talking, trying to impress and just being close. They don’t yet know or understand why they like this person. Personality, career goals or priorities don't make sense to them yet. They just like a person simply because they like the person.

If schools were one big part of my childhood, summer vacations were another. The two-month period where everyone forgot about books and classes. I had an uncle who lived in Bangalore that visited us every summer. Me, his son (who is the same age as mine) and my own brother used to stay at our native for the whole two months. There we played cricket everyday like madmen till our legs refused to stand up and we had enough dirt on our clothes to fill dozens of pots. We broke several windows every year, suffered 5-10 minor injuries and that one time, broke the light bulb in the tailoring shop right outside our house. We were told that from that time on, that guy worked in night shifts whenever we were in town. At the rare moments when we were inside the house, like at nights, we used to play Super Mario or watch IPL on TV. It was a simpler time. It was carefree, easy and exciting. And it comes every year. Or so I thought. Until one day suddenly, I moved to hostels and my cousin had classes throughout the summers. When I talked about this to my parents, they said:“You can’t keep playing cricket in the summer for the rest of your life”. 

That hit hard, not then, but everyday afterwards.

One curious thing about nostalgia is that anything can set it off, in a blink of an eye. You don’t need to stare into your class photo for hours to get reminded o f all the laughs, all the fights and all the memories you shared together; a second would do. You don’t need photos to get reminded of how your mom used to dress you or how your dad used to feed you breakfast; some words would do. You don’t need to meet a person to get reminded of how you loved her for 7 long years and still didn’t tell that to her once; one instagram story would do. You don’t need a 1000-word long prose to get reminded of all the beautiful memories and moments of your life; just seeing the word “Nostalgia” would do.

Nostalgia is the vice of the aged, said Angela Carter. A moral weakness. Maybe it is. Psychologists consider nostalgia as a disorder and have accounted for it as occurring due to a phenomenon called rosy retrospection (a kind of a cognitive bias where we tend to judge the past disproportionately more positively than we judge the present) Scientists of course, on the other hand, have reduced it to a bunch of neural excitations in the hippocampus of the brain. There were times when nostalgia was considered a disease. Even today, many consider it a weakness. But for me, anything that differentiates us from animals is what makes us who we are. The fact that we are the only species that can retrospect on the past and feel happy or sad about it makes me think that nostalgia after all is one of our strengths; not a weakness. Like the Hulk said, life is a bunch of memories and the power to look back on them should be cherished. There is a beautiful calmness that comes and settles when we feel nostalgic. A kind of emotional high that makes us want to do that again. But then again, what vice doesn’t give us a high?