Nostalgia is a very funny thing. It’s a disease that
seems to strike people when they cross 60---- as it did to me.
Lately, I seem to be attending all kinds of reunions
and undertaking nostalgia trips----- school, college, hometown etc etc. All of
these trips had one thing in common; the feeling of how nice the old days were
in comparison to the present.
I grew up in Kolar Gold Fields and this mining town has
almost shut down after the Government brought gold mining activities to a halt.
Time seemed to have come to a standstill and when a group of us school friends
from the Class of ‘65 visited KGF recently, it was almost as if we were
entering a ghost town. The sense of nostalgia was, therefore , more
overwhelming than if it had been a thriving place.
But that’s not the point I wish to make in this
article. If the old days were so good, how come we didn’t feel it at that time?
Why was I complaining about the black and white movies we were seeing when I’m
able to enjoy them now? And why am I so nostalgic about the steam engine trains
when I vividly remember being covered in coal dust after arriving in Bangalore
from Oorgaum?
The truth is that Nature has this wonderful ability to
selectively retain all the good
experiences/emotions etc from our past and hold back the pains/sorrows and
traumas in the deepest recesses of our minds .
If we were given the chance to go back in time, would
we say yes? We want the wide roads, lesser vehicles and fewer people of an
earlier era. Do we also want (only) Doordarshan, Jutkas and trunk calls? I
suspect not. What we’d really like is the wide roads, lesser vehicles and fewer
people but together with the Internet, cable TV, smartphones, Facebook et al.
Nostalgia is a good emotion to have, but it must be
balanced with an appreciation of the conveniences of modern living and, more
importantly, an appreciation of present conveniences likely to disappear in the
near future.
Switch forward to , let’s say, 2040.If you were to look
back at 2014 , what are the things you are likely to miss?
Here is my list:-
1.
The newspaper and milk being delivered at
the door.
2.
The vegetable vendor on his/her bicycle
cart.
3.
The isthri person at the street corner.
4.
The raddiwala collecting old newspapers and
other old stuff.
5.
The maidservant coming in daily.
One can keep
adding to this list. But the important thing is to appreciate the conveniences
we currently have.
