Those were the days!

Those were the days!

Like most others, members in the Whatsapp group of my classmates from school also get into a tizzy merely because it is a Sunday (though most of them have retired), somebody’s birthday, a festival, or they send motivational messages/internet gyan on life, sing praises of their favourite political leaders, with pie charts and graphs try to prove how our country is ahead of or behind other countries, propound on aspects of religion or otherwise, criticise any/all of the above or send forwarded videos.

But there is one special feature of this group, so conspicuously absent in all the rest - recalling and remembering the time we were children or in school.

Those days are always mentioned wistfully as the good old days because these people perhaps forget that others might remember the bad ones while their own memory gets selective.

They dig into their photo albums and post pictures, going nostalgic, remembering things from several decades ago.

The strange feature is that this nostalgia makes them recall with a kind of pride the beating by the teacher for not doing homework or for a mischief or prank, the heartbreak when they saw the girl they liked talking to or choosing to sit beside somebody else in class, the stress of getting good marks to get admission in good college (earlier, in most courses your marks in grade 12 forecast what college you got into), the limited choice of professions they could go in, old friendships and animosities, limited financial resources. They look back with rose-tinted glasses, and remind others with glee, minus the feelings of pain, hurt, shame or irritation that they had experienced in the past.

When they forward videos of songs from old films, I can envision them smiling and humming along.

What a wonderful thing this nostalgia is!

A Swiss doctor made the word ‘nostalgia’ using two Greek words nostos (return) and algos (pain), more than 300 years ago, to give expression to man’s tendency to travel back in time, in thoughts.

I am not considering nostalgia as a neurological disease.

I am talking of our own little happy place when we go through old photos, feeling more connected with the good moments we had with the people or at that place.

Psychiatrist Carl Jung has called this sharing of history and experiences “collective unconscious”.

As one remembers the aroma of food cooking in mother’s kitchen, holidays spent at grandparents’ place with a hoard of cousins, uncles and aunts, those secret afternoon rendezvous in neighbourhood gardens and parks in the childhood, one is filled with a warm, fuzzy feeling. 

You could vividly recall birthdays, weddings, Diwalis, siblings’ behaviour, teachers, even the school staff, the feeling when you met your spouse, a vacation on the beach/in the hills, taste of the first mouthful of a popular dish, first cardigan you knitted or table cloth you cross-stitched on, your days as the university cricket star, getting your first wrist watch/cellphone, those long corridors of the hostel silent at night, ragging on admission in college, your first job- anything. All that hullabaloo when somebody ratted out to your parents about your clandestine meetings with your girl/boyfriend sits back somewhere in your mind for a happy recollection later. 

The stomach upsets, fevers or scratches, wounds and injuries you received as a child do not cause any pain nor does the loud crying you did then, any humiliation. Instead, they bring the memory of a sense of adventure and bravery you most certainly did not feel at that time.

Sometimes nostalgia can just be about weather, recalling the winter in hot, humid summer and the summer in cold, freezing winter. It can even be a comparison between the present vagaries of nature and a few years ago when nature had more regular patterns of seasons and did not vent its fury in the way it does nowadays with extreme temperatures, hurricanes, and floods.

Nostalgia makes the past positive. The simple pleasures which the absence of most physical comforts available with today’s technology, made life tough, are now thought of as good times.

Whatever be our age, we all get lost in the labyrinth of memories when we look over our shoulders at the years slipped by. The days, even if they were hard, boost self-esteem, and give the courage to face the uncertain, unknown future.

Have you never heard from any housewife leading a dull daily life, stories of how she was the apple of her dad’s eye or the darling of her brothers; or a farmer deep in debt about when he owned more land and had enough not only to feed the whole family the year round, but to sell and live a comfortable life; or a businessman whose early hard times with no friends and admirers in a strange city, slowly made him an industrialist in his own right he is today?  Those little memories stay in their hearts forever, bringing them strength to wake up to another day full of demands and challenges.

When a soldier lying alone on his tiny bed in a makeshift shelter in a desolate area reminisces about his home, it brings him hope and a sense of purpose.

We have all listened with awe to stories narrated by our parents, grandparents and old neighbours of their era and even asked questions.

Nostalgia is said to give a sense of direction and perspective to the travelling mind.

Some of you may recollect Boney M’s

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down

Yea we wept; When we remembered Zion...

about the Jewish people held captive in Babylon, mourning the loss of their homeland.

The only times I find somebody else’s voyage into the years before the current one meaningless, is when a woman starts recounting how luxurious life was when her now retired civil servant husband was in service! It goes only in one direction- how big the house was, how many ‘servants/gardeners/drivers they had to do every little job. Oh, how she never had to work!

I would rather listen to a parent talk proudly of their child’s first step/first day in school, a teacher recall a student’s smart witty answer, the excellent/disappointing result in exams/sports/ extra-curricular activities, in fact, how anyone succeeded in fighting disappointments, failures, illnesses and troubles, and sigh at how time flies.

So, go ahead, make yourself chai, slide into an easy chair, pop a cushion behind your back and return to the days when Pluto was still a planet, things were better and you were something else. You can see even with your eyes closed.

And these travels are always safe! 

                                                                                                      -Anupama S Mani