My home town

Any motorcycle ride back in the streets of my hometown hurls me down the memory lane at such a speed that I hardly get time to breathe. How unfair! Why would it be successful even after all these years to make me relive my life 2 decades back? The cycle rides in groups, sudden rains that left us completely drenched, the long conversations about nothing in the street corners and all those forbidden things of those times that make me laugh now, the long rehearsals of a play that was never staged and the love that was not to be mine!

No, I would not say it was a time of no care. It was not. We had too many worries. Sudden tests at the tuition classes and more than that of the low scores that used to be announced in front of the boys one was trying to impress! The intense desire to chat longer with friends and show how one is not scared of the parents at all! And then worrying endlessly about reaching home later than usual and the scolding that awaited one there! Or the questions that I, wanted to ask my father and was not allowed to do so. And the answers that I had for my mother but had no way of mouthing them without causing the third world war in the household. All the restrictions and scolding did not make sense at all! They don’t even now! Therefore, most of my memories ask me not to go back. I love the freedom I have today. And above all I am happy I cleared my 12^th standard exam at one go. I don’t want to try my luck again!!

Then why the streets of my home town makes me want to go back to the friends who are not friends any more, to the houses which are now inhabited by unknown people, to the love that means nothing for me no more. Why the street next to the City library would without fail remind me the lines read and not read on the way to the library and back but not in the library? Why would it make me remember the filmy numbers that I hummed to the star filled sky while riding a motorbike with Baba? While passing through the street next my school, why should I always remember a particular evening when the street lights played along? This time I even remembered a long cycle ride with a few friends to my friend’s street just to get a glimpse. How silly! Yet how memorable! And then that morning when I noticed him on a scooter and he did not and hence came back looking for me. He bumped on to a divider and fell down from his scooter while looking for me. We both laughed a lot! All these and much more which have no relevance now. They are just memories of a distant life. So distant that it seems like another life!

My home town makes me way younger! And it makes me think everything can be started afresh! I feel confident to make mistakes again. Why do I want to relive all those sweet nothings? And arguing as if the issue really mattered! Is it because now-a-days when I forego fighting back even at the cost of feeling terrible about myself and tossing and turning in bed at night, I miss the spirit of that girl who lived in my hometown?

P.S. This was written in May, 2012.