Nostalgic!

It turned out to be a long night for me again. How long can you lie, keeping your eyes closed, waiting to be embraced by the daily gift which you conveniently ignore? I felt my focus shifting on a number of things, right from self, to family, to fears and desires, to failures and trivial wins and finally back to self again. Feeling heavy, I walked out of the bedroom, and opened one of the windows in the hall.

This is another rented house and I don't know how long I will be moving from one to another, though I like each of these and found them have one specialty or the other. Be it the night flowering jasmine tree in the previous house where I lived or the bright big windows sending a great square of light that eyes had to shrink and see in one of the erstwhile houses where I lived and many others too, came in no particular order. Its odd to see what we remember and you will be surprised about how you could recollect something that you did not pay so much attention to, earlier. Through the opened window, there was a golden illumination and the street below, seemed to be laid in gold, courtesy the sodium vapor lamps in the street. Against the dull backdrop of the silent witnesses, namely the trees, of various shapes and sizes, the small road seemed to gain an importance which it never had. Immediately something turned inside as I was pulled in, seeing something that I had seen earlier again, as though it was just happening.

My earliest memory of these wonderful sodium vapor lamps have been associated to a tiny misery of course - myself and my brother were returning from a sanskrit class [we went there only once] and it suddenly rained then. I sat in the front of a carrier-less cycle seeing the skies above with disdain. The rain seemed to gain in strength as my brother tried to pedal at the speed of light, which alas he couldn't as I was plumpy then too. He was cajoling me saying, it would stop and was already thinning. He was and still is a master in that - make you believe that things are getting back to normal and you can never be better. I looked at the street lamps above and said, "Look! Its getting heavier!". He patted my head and told me not to look at those lamps then as they were showing a false image. By then we were both drenched, but I still hoped to reach home with some part drier. Then came the days of the small bedroom where five of us slept for several years as kids. This was on the Diwali day where the lights were on at 04:00 AM, and that friendly dull yellow light I liked more as it did not force the sleepy eyes when compared to its stark white contrasting tube-light.

And one of my childhood question of why so much insects seem to cling to the yellow light was just one of those, which I did not want to be answered in a hurry. Now, as I grow up, showing my kid about the rare sodium vapor light, I see his eyes lighting up too. Perhaps we associated a lot of fairy stories with that golden light. I was gazing that light for a long time and could spot a few fireflies elsewhere. How long do they live? Who knows? But as long as they do, don't they live a glorious life? There is a point you reach where you are not sure whether you are asleep or not. What you see, seem to bend and reveal themselves in another fashion, pushing you deeper in to an introspection where fact and myth mean the same. I remembered the stories of the little princes and princesses, guided by angels and fairies to win their fights and fears and realizing that the demons weren't actually a physical existence, today. If you ask me to explain this to any child or even you, I may fail miserably. Yet, somewhere deep within, I know that there is some truth in it.

Suddenly, the one closest to my house turned off, due to over-heating, I suppose, resulting in a darkness so complete for a few yards for a few seconds. I blinked once, twice and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to adjust. When I opened them again, I could spot some rodent darting across, taking me to the days when we were hellbent is looking for a squirrel bit guava. It sure tasted wonderful then and we spent most of the afternoon in the big guava tree then, as kids with the only worry of not finding one. Then the light came back on, but something went dark inside as though it just faded. As I tried looking for it, the yellow light faded. May be, we search for our youth after crossing that stage, forever till we live, though it might not have been happier then. I closed my eyes a bit, and turned to the other side to see that magnificent gray hue slowly lifting and seemingly merging and dissolving in the orange halo of light.

Yes. It was a dazzling day!

 

Well, after that day, I fell sick and took almost a week to recover, Pavithra. That could have been the reason for that short episode.
Besides I was and still am a big fan of those wonderful sodium vapor lamps that you see in the physics labs for spectrometer experiment. When you switch it on, it will start with a rose / pink halo first, which is so lovely to watch in the dark lab room. Once it turned yellow, I preferred seeing its light dispersion as it fell on the prism through the spectrometer. It looked like magic with many colored slits appearing. I linked them to the fairy stories then, telling each door opens you to something that you wished, but choose carefully. Oh! Those days!

You are right about the bonding that we had with lesser space. Today, we have so much privacy that we are tempted to go extreme at times and end up obsessed / distressed more. Thanks for being the first to provide a nice feedback to this post. -rgs

 

My father said that he was paid Rs.45-/- basic with Rs.22-/- as DA when he came to Chennai way back in fifties, Madam.
We lived in rented house for a long time before we could afford our first small flat in the early eighties. But as the children grew up, as you just said, we moved to different parts of the city / country for various reasons and ended up renting again. And its a surprise to hear that those old buckets still remain - indicates their build quality as well as how well you maintain them. Thanks for your feedback Jayasala madam. -rgs