I return to India eleven months after my last visit. In a decade, that isn't too long a span of time. But, it's still 330 odd days! I come home to steeping familiarity. Nothing seems to have changed.
On the one hand.... Nostalgia re-visits, like the well-known stranger. My surroundings play trigger to dormant memories that seem to have been patiently waiting to spill out in abundance. Even though the time of each occurrence is obscured, the clarity of it all takes me by surprise. I was always considered (by myself too) to have a mind like a sieve. How do I remember so many details? The flood of recollections overwhelm. Too much is bundled up in a single word - childhood.
Running late to catch the school bus. Every day. Playing cricket in the evenings, the lefty vs righty teams we made. Lock-and-key in a space that quickly became too small. The large tree in which our 'favourite' tennis ball would get stuck much too often. The antics and affections of elder brothers. The rush to quickly get to a friend's place on Sunday evenings, only to realise midway that it wasn't such a good idea to sprint right after gulping down a tumbler of milk. Madly sprinting the next Sunday anyway. The sheer terror after falling down my cycle at a hollow in the road. The same depression still exists, at the same spot. The memory of that terror returns with a silly smile, like a lingering aftertaste. Experimenting with gravity-defying (that's a euphemism for stupid) stunts on the cycle even after all the mishaps. Petrichor, and the desires that it brought along. While those desires morphed over the years, it adamantly remained my favourite scent. Be it the mouth-watering craving to eat mud, or the urge to frolic even in downpours, or the need to drink chai and eat hot pakodas that very instant, Petrichor meant happiness. Broken lampshades, and one-too-many shattered vases that would conveniently be blamed on butter-fingered tendencies. The thrill of stealing Bournvita and sugar, hoping we'd never get caught. Sigh, I could go on!
On the other hand..... Events that occurred in the past eleven months suddenly seem oddly distant. Like they aren't my own. Like the experience is someone else's story. The sense of detachment leaves me feeling very unsettled. Why am I unable to bring home with me some of what I had experienced? Why does it seem like the rush of a forthcoming trip, that I had felt so often, was now unknown? Like the joy of adventure, unfamiliar? It's as if I never undertook those journeys in the first place. It feels like all I am left with are a fresh load of memories that I don't belong to. As I sift through photographs taken in the last few months, I feel disconnected from it all. As if I have been photoshopped in them.
Brilliant, isn't it? To coin a term that captures such emotion! Hence the title of my post. Maybe distance does that to you. Brings back some memories while taking away others. Making you feel like time stands still in one world, while it's whizzing past in another. I feel like I am living two separate lives. Like I can't be a part of both at the same time, no matter how much I'd like to. Oh well, it isn't every day that I get to experience such paradoxical emotion! Might as well revel in it as it passes by.
On the one hand.... Nostalgia re-visits, like the well-known stranger. My surroundings play trigger to dormant memories that seem to have been patiently waiting to spill out in abundance. Even though the time of each occurrence is obscured, the clarity of it all takes me by surprise. I was always considered (by myself too) to have a mind like a sieve. How do I remember so many details? The flood of recollections overwhelm. Too much is bundled up in a single word - childhood.
Running late to catch the school bus. Every day. Playing cricket in the evenings, the lefty vs righty teams we made. Lock-and-key in a space that quickly became too small. The large tree in which our 'favourite' tennis ball would get stuck much too often. The antics and affections of elder brothers. The rush to quickly get to a friend's place on Sunday evenings, only to realise midway that it wasn't such a good idea to sprint right after gulping down a tumbler of milk. Madly sprinting the next Sunday anyway. The sheer terror after falling down my cycle at a hollow in the road. The same depression still exists, at the same spot. The memory of that terror returns with a silly smile, like a lingering aftertaste. Experimenting with gravity-defying (that's a euphemism for stupid) stunts on the cycle even after all the mishaps. Petrichor, and the desires that it brought along. While those desires morphed over the years, it adamantly remained my favourite scent. Be it the mouth-watering craving to eat mud, or the urge to frolic even in downpours, or the need to drink chai and eat hot pakodas that very instant, Petrichor meant happiness. Broken lampshades, and one-too-many shattered vases that would conveniently be blamed on butter-fingered tendencies. The thrill of stealing Bournvita and sugar, hoping we'd never get caught. Sigh, I could go on!
On the other hand..... Events that occurred in the past eleven months suddenly seem oddly distant. Like they aren't my own. Like the experience is someone else's story. The sense of detachment leaves me feeling very unsettled. Why am I unable to bring home with me some of what I had experienced? Why does it seem like the rush of a forthcoming trip, that I had felt so often, was now unknown? Like the joy of adventure, unfamiliar? It's as if I never undertook those journeys in the first place. It feels like all I am left with are a fresh load of memories that I don't belong to. As I sift through photographs taken in the last few months, I feel disconnected from it all. As if I have been photoshopped in them.
It takes two days to sink in. Two days of rückkehrunruhe. I came across this empathic post here:
Rückkehrunruhe
n. the feeling of returning home after an immersive trip only to find it fading rapidly from your awareness—to the extent you have to keep reminding yourself that it happened at all, even though it felt so vivid just days ago—which makes you wish you could smoothly cross-dissolve back into everyday life, or just hold the shutter open indefinitely and let one scene become superimposed on the next, so all your days would run together and you’d never have to call cut.
Brilliant, isn't it? To coin a term that captures such emotion! Hence the title of my post. Maybe distance does that to you. Brings back some memories while taking away others. Making you feel like time stands still in one world, while it's whizzing past in another. I feel like I am living two separate lives. Like I can't be a part of both at the same time, no matter how much I'd like to. Oh well, it isn't every day that I get to experience such paradoxical emotion! Might as well revel in it as it passes by.
