the path of memory

Its been 13 days of absolute insanity. At work. And in my head. I am feeling a little lighter today. Light enough to make good friends with the local winds. Just so they don't desert me mid-air. My absence from this space has been irritating me. But tired, sleepless shoulders are not very good executioners of thought. I have been drained the last couple of weeks. Most of the time it was unnecessary fatigue. Going back and forth. Some days even picking up the lukewarm cup of coffee was a strain. But I am better equipped today. The shelves of the mind have been dusted and re-arranged to meet acceptable standards that allow societal communication.

There's something that I have been obsessed with. It's about the patterns in my head. The residual images of the past. Archived by date, time and emotional appeal. And I have been going over them. Like the celluloid obsessed owner of an old forgotten cinema. And the more I go over them, the clearer things become. I have a very bad memory of everyday life. Entire conversations mean nothing to me. Maybe I am never paying attention. Maybe I am never even there. Which is why its curious. The fact that I can recall with precise detail things that have happened to me. The laughter, the sadness, the exact angle of her head when she scolded me. The aroma of the tea that I had to gulp down every morning for two years claiming its the best thing I have ever tasted. The exact temperature of her skin, early in the morning as she cuddled close, in half-slumber. The smell of the still summer afternoons, now lost forever. The feeling of doom before an examination. The first taste of the rain in Poona. Little details lost in the clumsy, detailed nothingness of urban life.

And as these images and words rushed back, I felt a volley of emotions. Happy, sad, anger, fear. All mixed together to create an alternate world where I infrequently found myself in. And it kept me going. Through the mundane jobs. Through the meaningless conversations. Through the nine to nine existence that we have labeled life. And so powerful were the emotions that I am trying to unearth more such vaults. I don't know if this is living in the past. Or whether this is an attempt to escape. To fortify my already rock-solid defense mechanism. But I like the fact that I am discovering a lot more about myself. One fragment at a time.

Strange that I had the time to mull over things like these with deadlines dangling like rusty swords just over the head. But standing in the middle of the freeway can bring a lot of clarity.

If you have made your peace with death i.e.

That's Groo The Wanderer. A comic character created by the legendary (and one of my childhood heroes) Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier. If anyone has read Mad Magazine and remember the Marginal Thinking Dept, you know what I am talking about.