Sunday, May 5, 2002		Life Ties

Living in a time warp does not pay
Taru Bahl

VIVEK was great company. He could regale an audience with anecdotes, jokes, riddles and stories drawn from his childhood and college days. He had an unending repertoire of witticisms which never failed to captivate and entertain. The fact that he was well read and possessed a photographic memory added to his social charm. People sought him out, hung on to every word that he said and enjoyed his animated, at times, theatrical explanations. It was his wife who was fed up and bored with what she felt were her husband’s ‘juvenile journeys’ into the past. She had been married to him for six years and had heard those stories at least 600 times. The incidents that he talked about were from his past and this is something that irked her. Nowhere did she or their children figure in his descriptions. Why did he blot them out ? Surely, there had been funny, endearing and inspiring moments which they had shared. Why didn’t he ever publicly talk about them. It was as if they didn’t exist for him or, at best, were part of the background, something that was there and had to be endured.

She was a simple, small-town girl. Her needs were limited and she didn’t need much to be happy. Forever smiling and helpful, she was the kind of girl who could adjust to any situation. Though she was not the sort to complain, she too could see that her husband at a deeper plane didn’t really connect with her. Maybe she didn’t conform to the image he had of a wife. Or maybe there was someone from his past whom he hadn’t quite forgotten. Occasionally these doubts hounded her, making her analyse his words, actions and behaviour but then she good naturedly dismissed them and reverted to being her normal sunny self.

Her intuitive reasoning was not far from the truth. Vivek had spent some years in a boarding school developing very strong ties with his room mates. Having spent almost ten years in the same school, the boys had a unique bonding. They had metamorphosed from being uncertain awkward little boys to being self-assured men of the world, having shared, loved and fought with each other, more than perhaps they had done with their own family members. In fact their closeness in a quirky sort of a way kept them from establishing intimate ties with their own parents, siblings and cousins. There was a formal distance which crept into their personal interactions. Also since they barely spent two months at home, everyone pampered them silly. It didn’t translate into an informal camaraerie which comes with spending the good and bad times together.

Unwittingly, the chasm between hostel and domestic life widened. The boys felt they could be themselves only in their familiar environment which were the bunk beds, the dormitories and later match-box sized cabins of their boarding school. They could talk the way they wanted to, do what they wanted to and share their dreams and aspirations exactly as they saw them. There was no need to present an image or conform to what others felt would be right for them. Here they were not being sized up or put on a pedestal. But while Vivek’s friends grew up he never really did. He hung on to his boyish Peter Pan image and mentally remained frozen in time. A school kid at heart he was happiest reliving the moments of his childhood and youth, most comfortable going back into time and going over memories repeatedly. In a strange sort of a way he continued to live in the past without really accepting his present.

In the subconscious, he still hadn’t come to terms with some of his school heartbreaks. Shubra was the girl he first dated and gave his heart to. She had not reciprocated his feelings. She liked him as a friend but had no love interest in him. Though they moved away, he often thought that had he pursued harder and been patient, she would finally have relented. He refused to accept that she was not serious about him. Besides so many years had passed, she was now happily married and settled in the US, but that did not stop Vivek from dreaming of a time when she would realise that she loved him.

Another case of missed opportunity which hounded him was when his father insisted he not go along with his best friends’ business plans. The two other boys came from affluent families and could afford to take risks and fritter away their parents’ hard-earned money on hair-brained business projects but Vivek’s father had pinned all his hopes on him. Besides, he still wanted the young man to study and get his professional degrees in place before he started eyeing the proverbial goose that laid the golden eggs. His father’s insistence led to a lot of bad blood and finally Vivek was sent packing to England. He felt so guilty and let down from his parents’ side that he distanced himself from his friends, convinced that they would hate him for chickening out. From what he heard their business idea was well received and in the decade that followed they grew many times over.

Deep down, Vivek never forgave his father for snatching from him not just a business opportunity but the friendship of his friends. The light-hearted banter was actually a cover up that shielded his bruised ego and thwarted desires. He hung on to them and made them larger than life in his mind. He refused to concentrate on his present or plan for his future. He was blind to the beauty and love around him. He never received positive energies from his home and environment which is why he could never learn to give either. No wonder then that the people in his life like his wife and children always felt that he was holding back something. He was there physically with them but not there in body, spirit and soul.

One day he saw an advertisement in the paper announcing his alma mater’s centenary jubilee celebrations. All old students were invited. It was to be a gala event. He went and on impulse decided to take his wife and children along. As they covered the last lap of distance he was filled with a sense of uncertainty, dread, anxiety and nervous tension. He was returning to his school after 20 years. Change was writ large on the school campus. Nothing looked the same. In fact, he went around the premises more than once to find at least one familiar nook but the entire topography had gone through a make over. The school had seen at least half a dozen new principals and each one had left his own stamp on the place. As a result, Vivek could not find any connection with his past except a part of the school’s main façade. He sat alone, trying to make sense of his jumbled thoughts and images which were getting overlapped with the past and the present.

He was grateful that his wife was with him during the celebration dinner. He was already beginning to feel suffocated. Her presence was so comforting. While talking to a group of people when he was introduced to one gentleman he nearly did a double take. It was his closest childhood buddy, the one who had gone into business. He would never have recognised him. Time had been harsh with him. From nowhere did he look the person he had known. His behaviour too was obnoxious. Loud and extremely high, he was talking gibberish. When Vivek asked him how their third pal was, he told him that their partnership had gone bust many years ago and he must be somewhere rotting in hell. Vivek had had enough. He just wanted to get out.

On their drive back home, he was unusually quiet. When his wife put a comforting arm around his shoulder, he broke down. How he wished he hadn’t come back to the school looking for images from the past. Seeing the horrible present had destroyed his memories of a beautiful past. This visit had snatched all his memories from him. Or maybe it had actually jolted him into the present by helping him finally let go of the past. A fresh new set of memories could be created by people who inhabited his world in the present. And may be one day he would be able to go back into time and restore some of his memories from the past too, but ones which would be realistic, giving him strength and direction in his present, not obliterating his vision and obstructing his future.