Nostalgia - 2

I still remember my first day at Cambrian Hall, dad came to drop me to school, to show me my classroom 3-D. Embarrassed and shy i was just waiting for him to leave, i don't know why?, aaj agar woh hi alok mere saamne aa jaye toh pata nahi main kaisa react karunga. Strange how we are disconnected to our past, slowly but surely, memories fade, people change and what remains is a faint recollection of past the way we want to remember it. Do i remember that day in april 1990 when i first went to my school, do i remember the ride, the weather, do i remember dad as he was then, do i remember my mother's anxious face, do i remember her giving me my water bottle and tiffin, do i remember my emotions..do i remember me?. Aaj april 2010 hain, 20 years since then, a long time, long enough to change everything. Long enough for a kid watching He-Man in doordarshan on sunday mornings to grow up and worry about searching for jobs on networking sites, long enough for a small girl with white ribbons in her hair and a carefree laugh like no one else to vanish in nostalgia and worry about the vicissitudes of life, long enough to claim that i remember those days.

Classes just went by 3rd, 4th, 5th. I remember my best friend Sandeep Pant, the cutest guy you will ever find, i remember his stammer, remember when he first claimed that he loved Y**** (hope she doesn't mind now), remember the day when one girl, whom incidentally we trusted and told his sad love story to, went straight to Y once the lecture was over and gave her all the details about his doomed liking, The looks that she gave us that day haha...and the way she cried, we were so scared till our class teacher Ms Malini Pandey came to our rescue... the best thing about remembering past is that our memory selectively chooses only the nicest of feelings, incidents, meetings, choti choti baatein ekdum unrelated kahin se bhi..

I remember first time when i saw urmila running in a two piece bikini in tanha tanha on doordarshan, cable not being allowed in our home those days, watching her running in next to nothing on beach i remember the feeling that only a fourteen year boy can have. mom, dad and my sisters were shocked out of their senses to see her and ya i remembered Manisha Koirala in another titillating criminal song haha, prime time television was changing for better or for worse....(to be continued)