Do you ever run your fingers over an old album and unearth yourself on the swings of memories playing on repeat like a sassy radio?
Or Do you ever take a trip down your memory lane only to stumble upon a sudden rendezvous with some expunged bygone memories?
Or do you ever feel the torn out from inside effect when reminiscing them becomes a Herculean task? And aren't these memories the one that paint the blank canvas of your heart with colours your eyes might have forgotten? Yes, the memories then would dog you till you become a mess- a beautiful mess!!
As I seldom perch into the armchair, the sketchy outlines and blurred glimpses of memories dog me and yet there is a grin of surprise calibrated on me as if I am the 'time machine' eloping back to yesterday when those episodes come alive.
I was 8 or 9 and my friend , the only friend and a sister as well, was 6 or 7 and we used to run as if to chase perhaps the fathomless heaven, run till jaded or called off by our mothers. But those endless chases are now my eternal memories.
I was the mousy girl, timorous but with a tomboyish hair that wouldn't match with my bones. My junior friend was the polar part, the elfin girl with greasy hair , Chubby cheeks and dimple chin. Petite and yet like all pampered sisters, stubborn!
With all the grave understandings in my life, I flush every time I remember us- me and my only Junior friend back then. Those memories bash me like waves and they leave me wet, quenched.
The Cravened girl (me) used to plonk in their balcony, espying how the other kids would play, would have a whale of their time. Healthy was I, no abnormalities sorted , yet I was sheepish and I would retire if ever some fleeting desire of friendship came frolicking in back of my mind. Well, there was also this excuse of my allergy to every atom on holy earth- "you can't do this, you can't do that, and yes You can't go out... Can't play... Can't let yourself groped with dirt, can't run... Can't this and can't that... " My already monotonous life was filled with all kinds of 'cant's! 'due to some nefarious allergy I had.
So there is a reason why this was my first friendship and a kido was my friend and a jolly sister. She was a student to my mom and after her classes she would come to stubbornly convince me of entertaining her Barbie-land fiestas. Someday, forgotten now from the haphazard cassette of memories.... I went there, to where she was and where those other kids were- to what we called 'our kingdom' , to what was maybe every child's kingdom that ravages as you grow up.
That day, like some Hollywood movie my life changed. For the first time on earth I stepped out (except school) to play, to feed the rain, to sync with the dancing twilight , to taste the dirt, to embrace the world, to savour the innocence of childhood while as much as I can. I could feel in my heart - the oracles guiding me. There was no going back since that day. Not that my sheepishness vamoosed or my inhalers became unnecessary but I sure became the girl I never was and all because of an outlandish cherubic friendship with a kid.
These nostalgia are contagious perhaps, might you remember your own spring days. As I do and my smiles on my pastel lips do. We used to have fights often over issues so frivolous, and the next moment we were friends never remembering the 'seconds old enmity', as children, forgetting things were easy and the heart of a child bleeds innocence. It becomes so very ironical when we grow up!
Most of the time, it was the two of us- after her classes and then the other kids would escort us. We would delve into our jejune plays under the blue sky every summer that echoed our insane giggles.
We were the pirates of the Caribbean, would go for treasure hunting among the wild unappealing grasses that grew at the back of our quarters. Carrying the hunch of getting caught for going to the 'forbidden forest' as we used to call it, we used to go nevertheless.
The best part of the day was to lie there on our wrecked ships(spared wooden boxes) and trying to fill ourselves with the entire blue sky as long as the naked eyes would go. In that ataraxy we and the sky would have a tacit animated chit-chat.Ohh!! and you have to be there to know the tantrums heaven would throw at us, with it's hubris of it's vastness and would vex us with some scoffing and irking smirks. Yes , we could hear the sky speak to us. Perhaps even the sky would wait fervently for the kids to refill it's yellowed solitude with euphonies of our laughter and indistinct babyish gossips. Chasing each other - us and the sky, was the best part.
Today, years gone, I know not what grown up woman that wonderful kid has grown into. I changed places a long ago - a past tense now, and never have been able to be in touch with my first only junior friend and a good enough sister.
But as these memories run the grand galla in my head, I feel alive more than ever, the fragrance of childhood come swaying me into those pristine days. Escaping there, escaping from this vacate world, escaping into the fairytale , into the childhood kingdom with our jejune plays, living the childhood once more and chasing the blue infinite sky -' ESCAPING' is the only word that dances on my tongue and the only desire that is peeking through my soul ever time I push myself deeper into these memories.
In the end they are but just memories......
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