Recently went to attend the marriage of a friend of mine in a small city in Kerala called Calicut (or Kozhikode ) ... i had decided to travel alone in train (good time to read books/introspect was what i thought) . Anyways i finally landed up in Calicut (as i like to call it) after a journey of 20 hours ... actually i was landing up in Calicut after a journey of 15 years....
When i was a kid ( my parents were getting transferred every 4 yrs to another location at work) i had spent 4 yrs in Calicut ..that was between age 9-13 of my life ...so when i think of childhood .. this is where the rewind lands ... we lived in an apartment complex (rarity in those parts in early 90s) , lots of kids to play/hangout with , tht school , traveling by buses alone for first time in life , playing cricket / football in the play ground we had ... there were lot of memories ...
During the journey , i was reading this book called "Istanbul" by Orhan Pamuk , in which the author reminiscences about his childhood in Istanbul , so promised myself tht maybe i will just go and re-visit these places i last saw 15 yrs back ... a couple of times i had passed through this city , i was always tempted to those parts of the city i grew up in .. but never went ... infact i have never re-visited any place of my childhood or previous years ... thats something people who grew up in same place may not understand .. every time u shift ur base to a new place u leave lots of things behind and start afresh and then again leave it behind and move on .. thts what we did and i actually liked it .. its a bit sad . But again things are never same even if u stayed in same place as my friends tell me ... even if u don't physically move ... things around you will change
Anyways this time i was in Calicut the day before the wedding and i had reached much before even the wedding party had arrived .. so i checked in to the hotel and after debating internally whether to actually make the visit or just stay in the bed watching cricket on tv ... my friends were supposed to join me there in the morning called up to say they wud arrive by afternoon only ! so there u go .. i showered got ready and stepped into the heat ... it felt good to back in this place .. the sun ,the heat , the bustle .. the language ... the shops .. all so familiar ... locked away in a corner of your memory ... occasionally i wud see a building/landmark which i knew from childhood days... the hotel was located in a place i used to visit frequently earlier , so easily located the bus-stop and got into the correct bus which wud have taken me 'home' 15 yrs back ... now its another place, just an address .. took the ticket till last stop as i ddnt know from where i wud start my 'back to past' tour .. how much i wud cover ... there were so many places (2-3km radius tht kids of 10-12 yrs explore ) to see .. so many memories to revist ... before i knew it i was in familiar land .. things had definitely changed ... but heart warmed up whenever a familiar house , building came ... the bus was moving in a cruise mode (there were stops every 500m) finally reached the last stop ... it was bang opposite my School ... the school was located in a house/palace once owned by the erstwhile ruler of the place the Zamorins , the school had expanded with main building being the 'palace' like one , but most of the classrooms were in proper concrete buildings built nearby in same sprawling compound ... whenever i think of my school i always remember the huge building and big wide open space in front of the main building ...we used to play cricket there and scoring a boundary / hitting six then was very tough as it was really huge... So I got out of the bus and headed to the school .. it was a Sunday , so the gates were shut ... the walls which were huge and intimidating then were just my chest height now .. the playground looked pretty normal ... infact school was looking much smaller , cramped as opposed to a spacious sprawling palatial building tht was residing in my memory ... i somehow couldnt go in .. it was looking strange n different in someways unsettling .. anyways no one was around and the gate was closed ... i turned back and decided i shuld probably walk as sometimes i used to from school to home ... i knew a lot of shortcuts ... while walking on the main road .. i cud see a lot of such smaller roads i used to take as a kid , roads leading to some friend's house ... seemed familiar , but cudnt recall ... so i stuck to the main road as i was not sure whether i shud venture down those lanes ... after walking for 5 mins , the heat got better off me ... i hailed a rick and reached the area where i used to live earlier , got down and saw the video library there had become a VCD/DVD shop ! my barber shop was still there , so was the bakery and the grocery store , some things hadn't changed ... i walked to my apartment complex ... there was a security gaurd there ! What do i tell him ? My house address ? i used to know a lot of people there and almost all of them were locals who owned the flats surely there must be people i know over there still ... as i paused outside , the gaurd just got up and went out ... should i go in or not ? ... finally had a good look from outside ... took a walk down the road remembering the good old days .. flood of memories rushed by when i took in familiar sights the house nearby where cricket balls used to disappear if we hit a six from the playground (it was six and out as balls were tough to retrieve !) ... decided to check out the playground on the backside , wall on the other side was pretty low so cud see the apartments more clearly ... they looked different now with a different shade of paint ... i saw the playground of my childhood where we used to play cricket and at times soccer / badminton ... in my memories it is a sufficiently big ground ...but as i looked over the wall at tht ground suddenly things seemed to have changed just like my school .. the ground was so small ... it took a while for it properly sink in .... what had happened here ? what had changed ? How did it reduce in size ? why is it all different i wondered , got back to my hotel room without any further exploration ... then the obvious answer came to me .. nothing had changed .. it was just the perspective ... the boy who was looking at these things had grown... maybe thats how the world changes ... u just grow bigger !
Showing posts with label nostalgia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nostalgia. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
The early morning Jog
Its morning , im jogging ... its taken some time to get adjusted to life here in a new city - Mumbai ... everything about this life/new job is so different ... My interests/activities has also changed a lot over the years , sometimes I wonder if i have changed totally as a person as i hardly feel a connect with the kind of life i was leading a few years back ... earlier i used to read a lot after getting back from work ... these days im always online chatting/reading blogs , watching movies/TV series on laptop ... for sometime i thought there was no connect with the life i used to lead and i had moved into some other dimension altogether like in the plots of some of my favourite Superhero cartoons or like Neo at start of Matrix Revolutions. That was until i started my early morning jog ...
These days i go for a jog in the morning in a park nearby and mostly i am all alone early in the morning and while running alone my thoughts get sucked into a nostalgic whirlpool , my mind wanders off into the past ... My memory jogs back to the days when two young lads in Coimbatore had finished their engineering college and decided that they needed some exercise as months of sitting at home and awaiting for joining letter/job was taking its toll .. the Two of us used to go to a huge ground/stadium in an University near our place ... we used to jog in the athletics track in the stadium which was empty during summer ... i can still vividly remember the cry of peacocks and sights of the hills in the backdrop of the stadium , athletes training in one corner , while we do the rounds cracking occasional jokes , discussing cricket sitting in the shade of a tree after jogging ... i keep running while looking at my watch , there is still no one here in this park today.
Its early morning in Bangalore and 2 super energetic roomies drag their thin roomie out of bed and i reluctantly trudge along and we go for morning jog in the parks of JP Nagar ... the air is so fresh and pure , the place is full of people doing exercise, jogging , oldies out for a walk and catching up with old friends in park benches , laughter therapy sessions ... the place is so full of energy and activity early in the morning as i keep running trying to catch up with my roomies ... Occasionally a sound of Lorry passing by or car honking reminds me that im still jogging alone here in this park , i look at the time just 10 mins up ... i spot an old man wearing t-shirt and formal trousers with sports shoe doing brisk walk ... i keep running
Three of us at office decide to hit the gym and all of us being lazy bones - we call each other early in the morning over phone to ensure we all turn up in the gym and we ensure that the one who misses gym is taunted the whole day . Its morning at Infy Bangalore and three friends are running on the treadmill ... we trade an occasional joke in the middle of it and pass comments on the latest chick to hit the gym , we compare notes on the exercises we are gonna perform that day and how much of 'muscle building' has happened ... i keep running the sun has come up and its getting really sweaty , even mornings in Mumbai are hot ! no wonder there are only a few people in this park ... I keep running its been 20 mins , there is a strange sound somewhere nearby , i stretch my arms ...
The two young lads are again running in Coimbatore in the same picturesque university ground ... they are back jogging together here after 5 long years , but little seems to have changed , the track looks the same , there are athletes practicing in a corner, the peacocks are still abundant , the lads still share the same camaraderie , crack the same old jokes ,talk about the same old stuff and run ... I slow down , the hot Mumbai sun has emerged and is making its presence felt, im sweating a lot , again i hear a strange sound ,look around don't see anything , i stretch my arms .
I start slowing down and shift to brisk walking , the well paved concrete path in the part that im running on seems so familiar , as i walk around the park , my thoughts deposit me somewhere esle , the scenery changes , im wading through the neat concrete pavement however around me there are blocks of similar looking apartments ... its hot and i continue walking the scenery has changed im a road which seems to be placed in Shire and not in this world , its so green and there is grass all around on one side of the road is a slope full of grass leading to dense growth of trees and on the other side and huge and beautiful houses, i half expect to meet hobbits ... im on Canterbury Road in Singapore , i slow down in my walk
Im covered with sweat ... i hear some strange sound near my ears ... did i overdo my workout ? Whats going on ? whats the strange sound , now its getting real louder , its so close by ...
I wake up in a pool of sweat , the power seems to have gone for quite a while . Its so hot inside the room ... i realize my cellphone alarm had been snoozed a couple of times ... damn i didn't get up early to go for a run in the park like i have been planning to ... i again slowly drift into sleep , before finally getting up when the never tiring alarm tries yet again to wake me up !
PS: I finally managed to defeat the tendency to press the snooze button and keep on sleeping and im actually going for morning jogs (atleast i did it 3 times last couple of weeks ! )
These days i go for a jog in the morning in a park nearby and mostly i am all alone early in the morning and while running alone my thoughts get sucked into a nostalgic whirlpool , my mind wanders off into the past ... My memory jogs back to the days when two young lads in Coimbatore had finished their engineering college and decided that they needed some exercise as months of sitting at home and awaiting for joining letter/job was taking its toll .. the Two of us used to go to a huge ground/stadium in an University near our place ... we used to jog in the athletics track in the stadium which was empty during summer ... i can still vividly remember the cry of peacocks and sights of the hills in the backdrop of the stadium , athletes training in one corner , while we do the rounds cracking occasional jokes , discussing cricket sitting in the shade of a tree after jogging ... i keep running while looking at my watch , there is still no one here in this park today.
Its early morning in Bangalore and 2 super energetic roomies drag their thin roomie out of bed and i reluctantly trudge along and we go for morning jog in the parks of JP Nagar ... the air is so fresh and pure , the place is full of people doing exercise, jogging , oldies out for a walk and catching up with old friends in park benches , laughter therapy sessions ... the place is so full of energy and activity early in the morning as i keep running trying to catch up with my roomies ... Occasionally a sound of Lorry passing by or car honking reminds me that im still jogging alone here in this park , i look at the time just 10 mins up ... i spot an old man wearing t-shirt and formal trousers with sports shoe doing brisk walk ... i keep running
Three of us at office decide to hit the gym and all of us being lazy bones - we call each other early in the morning over phone to ensure we all turn up in the gym and we ensure that the one who misses gym is taunted the whole day . Its morning at Infy Bangalore and three friends are running on the treadmill ... we trade an occasional joke in the middle of it and pass comments on the latest chick to hit the gym , we compare notes on the exercises we are gonna perform that day and how much of 'muscle building' has happened ... i keep running the sun has come up and its getting really sweaty , even mornings in Mumbai are hot ! no wonder there are only a few people in this park ... I keep running its been 20 mins , there is a strange sound somewhere nearby , i stretch my arms ...
The two young lads are again running in Coimbatore in the same picturesque university ground ... they are back jogging together here after 5 long years , but little seems to have changed , the track looks the same , there are athletes practicing in a corner, the peacocks are still abundant , the lads still share the same camaraderie , crack the same old jokes ,talk about the same old stuff and run ... I slow down , the hot Mumbai sun has emerged and is making its presence felt, im sweating a lot , again i hear a strange sound ,look around don't see anything , i stretch my arms .
I start slowing down and shift to brisk walking , the well paved concrete path in the part that im running on seems so familiar , as i walk around the park , my thoughts deposit me somewhere esle , the scenery changes , im wading through the neat concrete pavement however around me there are blocks of similar looking apartments ... its hot and i continue walking the scenery has changed im a road which seems to be placed in Shire and not in this world , its so green and there is grass all around on one side of the road is a slope full of grass leading to dense growth of trees and on the other side and huge and beautiful houses, i half expect to meet hobbits ... im on Canterbury Road in Singapore , i slow down in my walk
Im covered with sweat ... i hear some strange sound near my ears ... did i overdo my workout ? Whats going on ? whats the strange sound , now its getting real louder , its so close by ...
I wake up in a pool of sweat , the power seems to have gone for quite a while . Its so hot inside the room ... i realize my cellphone alarm had been snoozed a couple of times ... damn i didn't get up early to go for a run in the park like i have been planning to ... i again slowly drift into sleep , before finally getting up when the never tiring alarm tries yet again to wake me up !
PS: I finally managed to defeat the tendency to press the snooze button and keep on sleeping and im actually going for morning jogs (atleast i did it 3 times last couple of weeks ! )
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