바카라Find your own nostalgia.바카라 I retrieved the vinyl from my daughter바카라s hands. 바카라And before your mother says so, you should know no one is too young not to nurse a nostalgic memory.바카라
My daughter toddled towards the box we found in our almost-attic. She was between destroying things and making those her own.
If I could play the vinyl, it would croon, 바카라I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, Hey... I oughta leave young thing alone바카라바카라. I pound my chest to the beat, the way I would always do subconsciously바카라my fist went to the space wherefrom our memories send 바카라Dear John바카라 to the person time makes out of us.
I hummed to my daughter, 바카라You know, I stumbled over the stacks of uncle바카라s pop records, and because those were kept away from me, because I was full of pimples, I imagined the most prohibited secrets dwelling in the vinyl. I dusted my uncle바카라s turntable and plugged it in.
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The content surprised me. That was noontime. Alone in my uncle바카라s railway quarter in Dehri-on-Sone, I succumbed to 바카라Ain바카라t no sunshine바카라.
I felt guilty of envisaging grey, when all those songs hid was bright summer pastels. We were spending vacation with my uncle. Everyone was somewhere else.
When my parents returned, I ran towards them, would have loved to hug them, but it was never possible for a teenager to do so. It would be impossible to express that I was weighed down by sunshine, and that heart did not belong to sadness or joy. Sunshine is a dry ground. A whitewashed building. The squirrels no one can capture.바카라
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I turned to my daughter to witness her drop one heavy and round nostalgia made of glass. 바카라Careful,바카라 I shriek, 바카라A piece of memory often makes one bleed.바카라
I sweep the shards and whisper, 바카라Daughter, this is no meteorite and does not ferry the peace codes from the aliens. This is a paperweight. My father바카라s table hosted dozens of paperweights, the vibgyor solid glass spheres of eight balls of dreams.
The one you shattered is the lone survivor. Even I slayed a few so don바카라t feel bad.
If I lift one particular paperweight, memories will swirl in the air like confetti. Sometimes, we forget because we know the perils of the memory. Then smash an object, and the door it guarded opens. You see the empty plot within. Daughter, I am rambling. You need not understand all I say.
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Old wooden cabinet, Korean Hunji papers
I remember lifting a paperweight. I used to love walking, using it as my kaleidoscope-eye. The world became full of innocent 바카라Lucys in the sky with diamonds바카라.
Papers, unconfined, danced to the hum of a DC-current ceiling fan. Oh, that is one breezy memory!
The west-end wall clock chimed three in the afternoon. I roamed around with my paperweight pirate-eye. I must have heard some smothered voices, because next I remember standing in our backyard watching my parents argue.
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My mother growled in a low voice to highlight some sentences, 바카라I should leave you. Stay with your son.바카라 I was young, dear daughter, incapable of understanding a conflict and why a person can leave her most beloved ones.
I dropped the paperweight. It produced sapphires and rubies and rolled out far and wide. My parents slowly turned. Their turning was the most synchronised movement they ever did. Leaving and living birth nostalgia.
The comic books are nostalgic; collecting each issue is; saving money for those definitely draws a U in anyone바카라s face. We had our Indrajaal and Amar Chitra Katha, our Phantom, Magician Mandrake and Rip Kirby, but the white ants were the first things that came to my mind.
I chronicled, 바카라The white ants under a microscope is no sight for a weakling. They have a life made solely of hunger and they feed it wood, brick, sand, mortar and paper.바카라
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I wonder if your nostalgias will be as summer-centric as mine are. One summer, bored, I read through all my novels and comics. I began sneaking into my uncle바카라s showcase of books. Not the uncle who worked with the Railways, baby, this one hangs from the string of my father바카라s DNA.
Anyway, I read his paperbacks and his political books. I had no friend, and although I hated travelling, I was keen to escape. I took the silk route of the words. My uncle caught me one afternoon. His voice startled me, 바카라Bookworms love the taste of the glue Russians used in binding a book.바카라
I fumbled with the Vladimir Ilyich, and it fell apart on the floor.
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바카라Perhaps you should read books you could fathom more.바카라 My uncle바카라s baritone was tobacco stained. It was an old book, mothball, paper dust, disintegrating brilliantly. 바카라When was the last time you went upstairs? Have you ever tried to look into the locked room next to the coal storage unit?바카라
Now, that coal storage unit is another nostalgia. We have it in our vast flat roof. The kitchen was always smokey and it had walls of shoot. Food tasted better, but a little salty with the soul of the cook.
My uncle told me, 바카라A linguist lived there. A professor. He arrived from the same village we originated in, and my father permitted him to stay and break bread with our family until he finished his book on the common threads in Indian languages which he never began, perhaps because he died in our attic바카라that room바카라his head in the cup of his oily pillow, his left index between two sepia pages of a volume of Shakespeare and his left thumb taut on the back cover of the book. We could not remove the book for awhile.
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Go upstairs. He had many books and for every age. Perhaps you will even encounter his spirit.바카라
Paper mesh, water colour and collected objects
I did not go that day or the next, but sure enough eventually I went. We ceased to climb on our roof since the days of coal burnt out. Sometimes I visited, but never found any interesting feature in that dingy room that might have triggered my dust allergy.
One day I took my uncle바카라s key, masked my nostrils in a handkerchief, opened the room and found the dry tunnels of the white ants everywhere. The insects ate the heart and the spleen of the room, everything wooden, the bundles of old clothes and most of the books therein. I discussed with my uncle who bought a pungent solution that I mixed with some kerosene and sprayed to kill any probable insect. After a few days I went again. One book was untouched by all the calamities. Dear daughter, it was the Volume I of The Collected Works of William Shakespeare, printed 1898. It is still with us in your mother바카라s almirah.바카라 We do not know the skulls we keep near us. The hourglasses. The appointment books showing wrong dates for visiting Samarkand.
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바카라What is this?바카라 My daughter had a dip pen in her hand.
바카라Do you know who a dhobi is?바카라 Yes, so you do. They washed our clothes, dried them out, pressed and marked them with these dip pens. Even Camlin had a special ink for this. Then there were China inks. Dip the beak, scribble the secret code akin to that of a librarian바카라s.
Sergo was my childhood dhobi. No one, perhaps not even he himself, could recall his real name. My grandfather called him Sergeant because of his manner of walking. Sergo could not pronounce it properly, and we asked him to say his name just to hear his sweet mispronunciation and see his black teeth.
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We used fountain pens at school. Doctor, Artex, Airmail and for the fortunate ones바카라Pilot or Parker. I chewed the ends of my pens until they bled and left with all the evidence of their murders on my hands and clothes, and sometimes on my tongue.
I had an eye for that dip pen, often hid it if I could find it in his bundles, only to return it when he complained to my mother.
When I passed high school, my father gifted me a Parker Sonnet, the latest arrival, bought through his friend, the frequent traveller.
Sergo came that Saturday and grinned, 바카라Dadababu, this is my gift for you. Grow big. Be a collector.바카라 I took this black and brown ebonite dip pen from his hand. It was calloused like his skin, immortal, sturdy and sharp enough to pierce one바카라s heart.바카라
Sun had passed the windows. Darkness stood holding the threshold. It helloed its worn out comrades.
I said, 바카라If you so desire, we could do this next week. The second season of How I Met My Memories.바카라 Now it was time to be merrily sad. Imagination would dodder down a lane nearby, a bundle of ironed apparels in his arms, scratchy jazz in the milieu contrasting his short kurta and dhoti, a kaput paperweight revolving psychedelic light from the backyard garden, the aroma of lullaby rising from someone바카라s kitchen.
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Kushal Poddar former editor of the Words Surfacing magazine, he has written eight books that have been translated into eleven languages.
