Now and then

I had begun the day, thinking of something entirely different to write but just a few seconds ago, i secretly checked out the photos on somebody's social network and well, they made me feel so...so, so sad. Why? Well, a) because i really, really love that person and wished i was there in those pictures sharing that life or what's left of it, and b) they reminded of my lost forgotten or semi forgotten years with friends who are scattered like pollen seeds at every corner of the country and the globe. They reminded me that i cannot have this person i love so much and then that my friends are no longer with me and what we had is gone forever. Friendships used to be so uncomplicated back where i come from. They were, in my case at least, deep, heartfelt and the Sholay variety. All for one and one for all (though this is The Three Musketeers). We did so much, we enjoyed, we shared and we lost and we laughed and we cried and we pledged joint suicides in case we failed in certain grades while in school or decided to join some banned militant groups instead if the suicides failed. We stopped each other from jumping off bridges or gliding into the river, and held hand while roughing it. When i sit in a rough, rowdy train with no-one else beside me but my loneliness, i remember all those days, i remember those silly pranks, those smuggled booze parties, the lies told to parents for parties at IIT events, i remember the several trips to the tailor to get a 'designer' outfit just right, the proxies and the running over to five star hotel lawns to get a glimpse of cricket players...oh, it really makes me very sad to think of now and then to think of then...(not to mention i loved the movie), its sad when life moves on so cruelly and the things that are left behind are so, so beautiful but also sad. Memories...and photographs, they bring so much, they dig up lost, left behind, dusty thoughts, music, colors, flavors, smells, evocations and emotions and then you get caught in them, you become involved and they put you in a time warp...i cannot seem to get past 2005, i feel the tears on my lashes, i do not seem to be moving beyond. And this time and this space that i occupy, feels like nothing. To me, in my mind when i think behind, last year was 2005. I cannot think that four years, five have passed and i am no longer what i was then, neither are my friends, it's terrible. I do not want to face it.

There is this song, this ghazal pretty well known from this Aamir Khan movie, sung by Jagjit Singh...i love the last stanza, (if i'm right) of this particular ghazal....

hum labo se keh na paye
unse haale dil khabhi

Aur woh samjhe nahi yeh
khamoshi kya cheez hai

Most wonderful, extremely beautiful and i don't know urdu beats French in my opinion as the sweetest and most powerfully poetic language. "Aur woh samjhe nahi yeh khamoshi kya cheez hai" which roughly means, "And he could never understand the meaning of my silence" not nearly poetic and beautiful as the original. I feel this song in my blood right now and in my mood and within me. It's for him that i currently love and adore, worship from afar. He will never know, they will never know too how much their friendship meant to me...(the sound of silence....i love that song too) i do not have words to define my memories. I do not have words to define what i feel. Silence i presume would best suffice.