Look Back with Pleasure

I started my day with a dismal bump in my heart and soul. I felt lost, dejected and an abjected piece of nothing. Then i made my usual routine drive in through the chlorophyllic environs of my cantonment town and into a tin box that took me to my dear university, where i heard Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak speak, her paper being "Rethinking Comparitivism" or somewhats like that. I was mesmerized and completely awed and inspired by the absolutely brilliant and supremely cool lady. Brilliant and cool because she oozed with a natural poise, gumption, elan and above all power over most mortal beings present in the room, with a no-nonsense attitude and a f off you numskulls attitude. I loved her, i wish i could be like her, yes I have that kind of ambition. Anyway, what i loved most about what she spoke was her utter contempt of the word "mother-tongue", what she said or what i thought she said, was that language cannot be put into such genderized compartments because (now Priyanka Chakravarty Chakravarty will take over) what i feel is that language is something, like sexuality, individual and highly complex form of expression and i believe that this whole idea of a mother tongue and basing a nationalism on it is really something ridiculous because, you may like some other language that might not be your own and be better at it, love it and like it more than the one you accidentally inherit. Choice of expression should not i think be held in within such constraints as mother tongue choice etc. I love Assamese, i would rather speak in that language than in my "mother tongue", i love Assam, though people should hold a grudge against me for it. I lived there for the better part of my life, my best memories are connected with that place, i love the sound of its language, i would rather choose to be Assamese...Joi Aai Ahom! Assam rocks. I love its green mossy hills and its sparkling trembling river, i love the roads that lead so singularly to the places where you can visit your friends and be welcomed without ulterior motives, or be alone without anyone. I love the timeless feeling when you walk around Riverside, or Kharguli (in Guwahati). I wish to take everyone i like there, especially certain people and maybe they will experience just a little of what i had felt. They will take the same leafy climb to Nabagraha and feel that exhileration in seeing things never seen before and feeling the charm never felt before. They will see the glimmering serenity of a pink sky over cloudy cliffs, sleeping in the background. I have left a part of me there, perhaps things have changed fundamentally, maybe the river dolphins do not come and play so near the park at Riverside, maybe the tin roofs of North Guwahati don't shimmer in the summer sun as they used to, maybe children do not have the utter morbid innocence which we harbored, maybe Lamb road is no longer a cozy nook in the corner with pretty Assam-type houses and old memories lingering in the air, my old school certainly isn't the same, the older buildings with the red sloping roofs are gone, they've built something ugly and modern in its place, the bougainvillea creeping and the smell of wax and fear, something dark and Gothic (in my child's mind it was a haunted castle full of secrets)...and friends. Most importantly friends. I see people here, they do not have the same concept like we used to have...i feel like my dadaji already, jeez... but i feel the rift, the ravine that separates me from the rest of this city that busily moves on...i feel it and by bestest (my coinage) best buddy roughing it in Delhi feels the same rootlessness and alienation. The tears don't fall...they crash around me...and around her and around us all...i can barely forget, the memory theatre holds a play and i sit and watch various shows on various days, unendingly on infinity loop. They crash around me.