Visions
Lit Up- May’s Prompt: Nostalgia
I remember everything. I remember any past major minor incident, scene by scene, in HD quality. I reproduce each living as well as a non-living entity with copious details. They engulf my brain without my control. I call them visions, which are common to anyone when the nostalgia hits, but in my case, they are arbitrary, too often and extremely elaborate. I find those fine minute details enticing. My visions aren’t only about the significant moments captured in camera, uploaded on Instagram, but also the trivial things and the uncanny faces with their exact expressions. Being an introvert I have no social circle. Hence I explored myself and discovered that I am the stimulating subject that needs to be looked into.
“Lost in yourself again?” Papa would ask me, “Are you thinking about the past or the future?”
It has always been the past that allured me. I was close to my Papa because he wasn’t worried about me like everyone else. On my fifteenth birthday, he gifted me a pen.
“Put your thoughts on paper. Let the world know what’s going on in there” knocking at my head he said. It was a shining black Parker pen with the glittery golden cap. I’ve kept it all these years at the extreme left in my cupboard where all my Agatha Christie collection is stacked. I followed Papa’s advice later in the life though I never really used the gift pen to write any of my articles. Because it would ruin the back side of the page. Perhaps, I should buy a good quality paper.
“You are fifteen but behave like you’re sixty. Why don’t you go outside and play?” Mama was constantly nagging throughout my childhood. “Play, cheer up,” she would urge.
I remember the oval playground next to our colony where I would be forced to play the game of cricket and apparently cheer up. The ground was spectacular after the rains with all the enhanced greenery and tiny grass floors with white violet petals. My cousin told me those flowers were toxic and spoiled that whole experience for me. While on the ground I would stand with my feet clipped, lost in myself, missing all the ongoing game. Then after my blatant misfield, teammates would march at me aggressively. I get flashbacks of them, furious eyes and sweaty faces shouting my name.
Almost every day I relish reminiscing my first girlfriend. She broke up with me after the seventh date. I won’t lie. I still have feelings for her. She had beautiful long hair with the smell of strawberry conditioner. Her eyes were sharp and cunning just like a cat. I would call her that. I practically begged her to come back but she refused.
Then I texted her, cats, unlike dogs, are brutal.
A few years later I wrote an article on her which got published online and went viral. I knew she would read it and call me. It was chilly winter night. I had just finished a bottle of Daniel’s when my phone rang.
“Loved your article, you are famous,” she complimented.
I was shivering. Enthralled by hearing her voice after so many years. I wanted to tell her that getting fame wasn’t my purpose behind writing that article but I could not utter a word.
“How on earth do you remember everything that happened?” she wondered, “I mean, it was a short relationship and so many damn years have passed.”
“Don’t you?” I managed to say.
“No, I wish I could say yes, but I don’t,” she sighed.
It made me sick and I disconnected.
Nostalgia hits me anytime. I guess the faces are constantly floating around in the air. They appear in front of me while traveling or brushing my teeth, or in the bathroom, or during writing or dining or driving or anything.
Yesterday I saw the man behind the counter at my college canteen while I left college fifteen years ago. I see a beggar with his daughter staring at me, who would sit outside the temple where Mama and I would go. Or my first boss at first ever job who encouraged me to resign. He asked me to pursue my passion. I see the janitor at the bank in his blue uniform, or security guard who waves at me, or a shopkeeper who sells me a pack of Marlboro. I see very remote relatives. I might forget the names yet I see their faces. I waste hours trying to figure out the person’s identity.
“Stop dwelling in the past.” My therapist told me to repeat this line to myself.
He was a psychologist in his fifties with fair skin and huge belly. His body would bounce particularly when he laughed. And he never smiled, he always preferred to laugh. He was pretty loud for a psychology professional and everything about him was extravagant.
He had given me so many slogans to recite. Like “Be present in the present” or “Live in the moment”.
I remember our sessions at his clinic. I remember the silky sofa where I would sit opposite to his wooden red chair. I remember the clock on the wall making a sound every hour. And the grey-brown carpet, the table on which jar of water and two empty glasses were kept though I was never offered a water there. Next to it was the book by Freud and a pencil.
That therapist died two years ago of heart attack. But for me, he is still alive, in my visions. So is my father. And my girlfriend is still my girlfriend. What difference does it make? As I said, I am the stimulating subject that needs to be looked into. Although my close ones want me to stop all this, I really can’t. I continue to indulge in nostalgia to become limitless.
There is a world inside me and I am stuck in it.
