growing up

Not that I have become wise, I have grown up into a world of my own. Its one of those things which dawn on you over time. It’s not a reflection of what I have done or what I have learnt but purely what the time spent here. I remember the popularization of colour TV, of the fall of the Berlin wall and the Ayodhya Mosque. I grew up through Star trek, Mahabharata, Ramayana, Crystal Maze, re-runs of MASH, Wonder years and the rise of cable television. I no longer watch television.

I remember un-dedicatedly listening to Bappi and Illayraja. I now listen un-dedicatedly to A.R.Rahman and a jumble of western noises. I remember playing around in the gardens and backyards- building dams and canals to irrigate the gardens. ‘New deal’ constructions are no more. I don’t have a garden anymore.

I remember being warmly tucked into bed by mom, and be left alone to read fairy tales, David Copperfield and Treasure Island. I remember imaging a boogeyman running around the house looking for a kid to be awake. I now go to bed, too wasted and tired by the day and by the computer to be lulled to sleep by a book.

I remember vacations and free time was a book, a bicycle ride around a vast campus or a conversation at night with dad along with a movie. Vacations now are free time spent in a million trivial pursuits, riding around on crowded roads on smoke coughing machine- without time from you for your dad or for you from your dad.

I remember that snatched chocolates, shortened play hours were the worst disappointments in life. The disappointments now no longer effect the hour or the evening but the years of work that I have spent and the years of work I will spend undoing the cause of disappointment.

It was all so good. I have never taken time to think about how good it was. It all happened too fast. Life is still running too fast. Childhood was spent exploring the wild places that abounded the places I lived in. The world is moving on. The pursuits, loves and hates of old have sunken deep into a ground left far behind. Ahead is a place wilder than what I imagined, a place of rolling hills and gentle beauty of eye catching wildness, a place where I have been promised to find wholesome wickedness and untempered good. The new world beckons, a new love, old loves strengthened and filled with new music, movies, games and fantasies.