Monday Musings - 18

And just like that another Monday rolls in, putting another week in the past, earmarking another time in days gone by. I am, if you must know, feeling terribly nostalgic. A slew of occurrences in the week gone by has left me wistful, and sentimental. Last Tuesday, I met an old friend from college...and her charming little five day-old-son, every bit of his Mum, every bit of adorable. In a room with a window, we sat...talking of our college years, talking of people, places and time gone by.

This Monday, I am sifting through old mail on a rickety Outlook Express software...two years of fun, two years of memos, and downloads, and instructions gone by. It happens to be my last Monday in an organization where I have spent over two years. And last Monday, I was at Bombay Elektrik Projekt's 'Wince,' a fun reading session that dug into diaries, and journals from the past.

I must confess, I was a bit weary. What's a diary to an Indian teenager, I thought? And, how many of us really had one? I was to be surprised. A handful of us old hags turned up at Cafe Goa, our old, worn-out, little lock diaries in tow. And took to stage, and ranted, and giggled, and shared.

We had many stories of teenage crushes. They seem to be a high point in our journal lives. Little tables comparing one cute guy to another not-so-cute-guy; intimate accounts of our girlfriends' and glorious accounts of our college lives. A heart wrenching piece on a grandmother lost, and one man's very very vivid imagination and a beauty-contest turned wild.

All of which of course took me back to my journals...their frayed pages coming apart with time. So I set off onto some terrible discoveries...pages plastered with lyrics of the Backstreet Boys and pictures of Leonardo Di Caprio from the Titanic. Pages scrawled with hearts and crushes addressed with blanks, and lines filled with cheesy, rhyming poetry. Pictures of friends, slogans of cool, newspaper cut-outs of my favourite columnists (some saving grace!) And, depressing pieces picked out from the Chicken Soup from the Teenagers Soul; resonating obviously with my angst-filled, troubled teenage-self. There were few streaks of rebellion too; but truth is I didn't Wince.

I found most of my younger self (and the little bit I discovered of everybody elses') to be pretty endearing. Just like the past ought to be. Somehow this stands me in good stead for the changes to come, the time to turn.

You can look back and laugh, or look back and cringe...and then you can look back and smile, and look back and be just a little bit sentimental.

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