Somewhere in the maze of life just past, came a few moments when I heard a few things that make me feel pretty old. These moments are not always sad, or happy, or poignant even. There's some reflection, there's a little regret, there's even some anger - for what was once, is no longer. The triggers vary - sometimes through a couple of films that I watched over the weekend - one of these a Malayalam film that used the premise of a long-running petty court case to tell a story of a typical story of village life in Kerala (not - ahem - that kind of Kerala story); a story of day to day acts of kindness that outweigh other insecurities and biases - the other a film set in modern Delhi that works its way through a couple of mini-crises in a tight-knit Muslim family that ends up not just as a commentary on the vituperative environment that we find ourselves in modern India, but also acts as a reminder of who we used to be just a couple of decades ago.
At other times, the stimulus is through a piece of news of the passing away of a female newsreader from the Doordarshan days. Who remembers Sarla Maheshwari, or before her Geetanjali Iyer, or Salma Sultan? Erudite, bright-faced, dignified, they delivered the news with a gravitas that seems impossible to conceive or expect from the specimens that regurgitate sensationilism in the name of discourse today. We used to look forward to The World This Week, we used to watch Prannoy Roy and Vinod Dua argue about election trends. Today, we have 19000 news channels, and I have unsubscribed from them all. One loudspeaker blaring the "news" is as good(read bad) as the other.
A recently repetitive utterance from podcasters and radio broadcaster of the phrase - "I'm old enough to remember..." and I found myself nodding along with whatever memory the person was reliving - i remembered those moments as well - reminders of "better times".
I know that every passing generation thinks the one that they experience in the peak of their youth was the best one, and it is natural to wish you could just go back in time and live that age once again. Natural - yes, but also a little disingenuous. Every age has its way, its means of lived experience, and if it "feels" better that the present, that is more a wistful acknowledgment that life maybe didn't turn out exactly as one thought it would. Now maybe 6 of every 10 people reading this disagrees with this - why, the present age is great, and you have done everything you set out to do as you graduated out of school, college, or even later. For the 4 that agree with me maybe this strikes a note that feels similar to what you feel when you look at an old two rupee note, or find a cassette as you clean your old room, or when you walk the lanes around your childhood home, and realise you don't recognise most of the buildings, and then see one that you do.
What I do miss is the calmness of the nights when there seemed to be a promise of more the next morning, more than just the mundanity of school, or the threat of some sort of new embarrassment during the day. Still every new day brought with it a curiosity of hope - of something new. "I'm old enough to remember" starry nights, even from the balcony of my tiny childhood home. We lived opposite a bus depot, and though it should have been loud and noisy and dusty and polluted...i don't remember it as such. And it's definitely not like the "deep excavation" that exists almost every 300 meters in every neighbourhood in Mumbai today.
Did we value the things we miss today? Probably not. In a recent conversation I overheard at a school reunion, someone plaintively asked - "We never thought of anyone's religion in our school days"...that we do now, and its a painful realisation - that we think of our differences instead of what brings us together as we used to. It wasn't anything obvious - I don't remember being invited for a Satyanarayan pooja, or calling my Hindu friends for Christmas parties at home, or being invited for a "jama'ah" - the common meal from a single vessel by my Muslim friends. But I also don't remember noting this as a differentiating factor amongst us. Yes it served as an identity, but when I heard songs that praised the diversity, I remember smirking at them - Yeah, so what? Isn't that what we've always been? Different names, but something intrinsically the same about us all? I look back now, and regret not having appreciated it more. Not celebrating it, or cherishing it. Now I see reels of these old videos -"pyar ki ganga bahe, desh main eka rahe" and think - were these celebrations of who we were, or warnings about who we were in danger of losing touch with?
The film I talked about before about the Muslim family - there's a sequence when the female doyen of the family tries to find something in common with the young Hindu girl looking to join the family. She eventually latches on to the fact that the young woman is a doctor (arre, family main ek doctor hona chahiye!). It's clear though - she's looking for reasons to celebrate the union, despite the obvious misgivings of the rest of the family - of what it could mean, of who could get hurt...there's fear, but there's also hope. Which I guess is what our lives are - even in the best of times, we fear about what awaits us beyond that corner, but we strive to stay positive. Despite the cacophony of the world outside, despite the raging heat from the fires that burn just outside our domain, despite what the apoplectic red-faced ragers on the screen seem to be telling us, a part of us remains hopeful- perhaps because we think back on what feels like just a few heartbeats ago - and know what it could be like. Just for one more starry night.
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