Nostalgia assails every one …

                                               As a concept 

In general, nostalgia considered as a mood, that, oftentimes takes a person’s mindset into grip. Often  an affinity with the bout of feelings of “homesickness,” surges, too termed as “nostalgia.” But that altogether does not sound discreet. In fact, “homesickness” roughly maintains two types of categories. Firsts one is “instantaneous.” As for instance, You are attending a dinner party, enjoying your moments and meal. Suddenly, a feeling surges you, ” had there been my better half and children along with me here to enjoy all these moments.” Or you are (out of your house) at some distant place, suddenly, got assailed by the tender emotional recalling of your pet dog. Who, very eagerly and anxiously, daily awaits for your comeback to home. Upon your reaching home, he showers all his innocent affectionate feelings on you.

Another category  relates to some heavy weight memoirs. As a paradigm, for so many years, you have been staying at a place afar from your parental abode. In between this lapse of time, you have not been able to visit back the parental place. There, you remember with anguish, all that ambiance connected to that. This “homesickness”, being not an instantaneous one, but a lingering one. Since, this kind of memoirs summon up frequently, whenever you are in your solitude. This certainly is part and parcel of “nostalgic bout.”

  Every person is inclined to form a definition of a concept. This is conceptualization of the theme, quite personal to his only. To me, it sounds a form of “retrospection.” In this process, man travels back into his past filled with sour – sweet memories. Some of them are pleasant to ears, that makes him happy. while others are bitter one, he does not wish to recall. Sweet memories generate a positive energy into him. On the contrast traumatic memories,  he intends to get rid of, but is unable to do that.

These traumatic memoirs make him sad or regretful, generating a negative effect. But in those moments, filled with regrets, he mentally expiates for those wrongs he committed in the past. This forces him in the way, “had I not committed those wrongs!” Indubitably, this kind of nostalgia carries a negative impact. Although it too has some of positive aspects. A man, by going down the memory lane, succeeds to mend up his some faults or weaknesses. This helps him avoid taking some wrong steps, he might be supposed to take in near future.

  Further, in this sequence, a specific category of “Romantic nostalgia” can not be ignored at all. Hardly, we find a person, who in his life time not felt an attraction for some one specific. Pointedly, at the initial stage of his or her youth. The sprouting of love’s feeling are so natural. It pulls on every one. To some lucky people, ‘sprouting of love’ might have turned up into a fully blossomed tree. Whilst, in others’ cases, it got withered away. In our orthodox Indian social ambiance, for a given long considerable period of time, such relations were not acceptable. Despite of all that, the charm of love for opposite gender ever assailed majority of people.

People, defeated in such love stories, under the bout of nostalgia ever wish to revisit the places of their “forlorn love of past” to refresh those days. There, they try to relive those bygone moments. The tender, emotional recalling of defeated love story, even fill them up with a sweet pang. This type of nostalgia generates a unique experience. Again, the nostalgia with the lingering home sickness, is, of main prototype. This lingering impact increases in intensity with the lapse of time. As much as you delay the moments, as much as , deep intense effect it produces. No any such article can be finished without the citation of personal experiences.

                          Personal lingering experience 

In the decade of 1960-70, our India contained 85% of rural population. Myself, in person too have been the part and parcel of the pastoral life. I got introduced to this rural ambiance, when I was a little boy. From the boyhood up to the youth, I was blessed to enjoy that life. The population density in the village were thinner and typically villages happened to be located at some corner as a specific habitation center.

The rest part of the village consisted of arable land, patched in between, with sizable orchards of mangoes, lichee, guava etc. The other kinds of juicy fruits like peach, plum, pear etc were grown in small number in small gardens around the homestead.  Roads were dusty and roughly hewn, no electricity facility and life an arduous one . But a comeliness and beatitude of nature was perennial feature.The childhood life, full of capering in fields and orchards, clamor of primary school life was in abundance.

No sooner, I entered my early youth, the arduous pastoral life began to seem ponderous one. Ever I got infested with a desire to get settled in city after completion of my study, since, that life dazzled me alike.  No doubt, that dream too came true and gradually I totally became engrossed in the city life. Every person is destined to live a life with some categories of age brackets. The age bracket from twenty five to fifty years of age is, when he accepts the artificial, dazzling life of city as the real one. But after the barrier of fifty years of age, he begins to retrospect and travels back in his memory lane. This journey may be voluntarily or involuntarily.  Some takes this past travelling journey lightly. But people with a sensitive mind, take it with a vehemence. They people in real sense are “nostalgic one.”

Salient feature – This nostalgic drive has got a fatal feature as a salient characteristic. In this drive, a man with nostalgic bout always presupposes, when he is to arrive at his “destined spot of the past.”  There, everything still be present with the same construction of the bygone days. In some rare cases, the same location can be spotted as such. These are places, where modernity has not made its road, in the name of development with a rapidity. But the places, hit by the fast speed of development and materialistic metamorphoses, disappoint greatly. Such changes are so disastrous and shocking, he finds nothing original there. This situation is enough to put him into the grip of frustration if not in depression.

The same disastrous situation, I personally encountered. When under the nostalgic bout, I Planned to visit back, my that pastoral location of the bygone days. I found nothing there, rather, no vestiges of the bygone era. The old muddy roads naturally had been replaced by the asphalt roads owing to the introduction of development. Old houses, once made of half mud -half stones, roofed with corrugated tin sheets were nowhere visible. Even, not a single orchard was there to register its presence of old era.  The Junior High School was there but promoted to higher secondary school, with a new building with a modern architecture. Even, the giant Bunyan tree, where entire village population gathered to celebrate, annual summer harvest ceremonial “local deity’ worship too was absent.

I inquired about the destiny of the tree. It was informed, a severe thunderstorm had uprooted that years ago. At that place, a small temple stood lack luster.  As if, to commemorate the solemnity of Banyan tree as a spot of worshiping of my child hood golden days. The old friends of childhood too were not there. Some had migrated with family to other places, others had died untimely. My mental agony hardly could be realized by some one. I was in horrible frustration on my retreat to city. The age long adage sounded into my ears, ” Past always seems golden to us and we remember that with anguish.” Penned by — Vinay Pharasi …..