Oldie By dad

NOSTALGIA OF THE INSIGNIFICANT
Sohan Lal Bansal

“Just like that” does mean something not significant. But this ‘something’ is the flavour of life. It has a lot of meaning, it is the essential of life and this is what makes significant, significant. This something does not let you down, does not cheat you and does not weigh upon you. This something is the content of our daily life or else it should be. A lot of such situations which were just like that leave their imprint on our minds- not because they meant something to us but just like that.

I vividly remember a summer afternoon some thirty years back when I was waiting for a bus in a small town near Sirhind. The quiet of a summer afternoon was speaking too well but for the Rafi song being broadcast on the transistor of a fruit vendor. In between, a crow on the tree behind me informed about its presence by its kan-kan. A mother managed to arrange water for her lap-borne child from a hand-pump nearby. And suddenly a whiff of air calmed my sweating cheeks and neck and reminded me that it was summer. As expected, the bus arrived and I started on my journey.

Way back around 1964-65 during our school days at Khanna, our recess period was obviously our lunch time. Inside the classroom, the teacher would not allow food. Outside, it was too hot in summers. So we would find the shade of trees and try to huddle together up to the line between the sun and the shade. This line would change its position and keep the border boys changing their places. Big sized eagles usually flew over the really big lawns of the AS school during this lunch hour in search of their lunch. To attract these vultures we would not mind sparing half a chapatti from our tiffin. Quite soon innovation took over us and we would tie a thread to the chapatti so that we could enjoy the flight of the vultures as if we were the flight managers. When they took the chapatti and flew away the tension on the thread was the ultimate joy. After all this it was a race up to the water taps. There formed three or four rows of students in front of the taps. It was a real sight when we drank water from the taps by making a reservoir with our hands and half of water would flow down our elbows and we would care no less.
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An evening around 1973 was at Patiala – in fact like any other evening at the fountain chowk down the mall. I was a medical student there. The said evening saw me standing outside a tea-stall and sipping tea and looking purposelessly on the road. Vehicles –not so many in those days- kept moving this way or that way. The fountain was splashing water in its own pre-determined stream. Nearby the Phul theatre had its quota of visitors. Opposite the road was a petrol pump. All this meant nothing because this is anyway the routine stuff of a town. But even now it means a lot to me because I was part of it – not by design but by nature’s intent.

Similar was a late evening at Jagadhri some 15 years back. Around 8.00 pm near jamna talkies when I was standing outside the Indira market, a song “ halwa wala aa gaya” from a Mithun- starrer filled the air pleasantly. The wetness of the road made it shiny at places because of reflection of light. The weather was neither very hot nor very cold. My scooter was beside me. I had gone there to see somebody who was, I found, unavailable. Then it might have pinched me but now it is just memory.

None of these incidents are either unique or special to my existence. But when I remember these, there is a nostalgic feeling. It convinces me that the real nostalgia is of the insignificant. Therein lies no purpose, no plan, no retrospective grievance, nobody to blame for anything and nothing to repent or gloat about. It is as if this alone makes my existence complete. Only if we could find some moments to relive these moments.

endit