What's your Proustian madeleine?

Reading an article of Raghu Karnad this morning, I came across the phrase, Proustian madeleine. The phrase led me into the magic hole of nostalgia where I started walking the sweet lane of my growing up years. What were the sweets that I enjoyed while I was living through a time when I didn't realise how precious those years would be in the coming years. 

There was peanut candy where peanuts were soaked in liquid jaggery and hardened to give a fine texture. These candies can be found even today sometimes the taste unaltered. It was eaten mindlessly during different times of the day. It was so commonplace that one attached no value of significance to it. It was called kadalaimittai. It is not much of a nostalgia because one feels this emotion when one misses something. But the simple sweet is much available. Perhaps nostalgia is for the lost days of yore.

Another sweet is the then mittai. I don't have many memories of the sweet except for occasional treats now and then. It isn't nostalgia material for me. But I remember the taste of the sweet and I don't see it anymore. It used to melt in the mouth oozing honey; it was a stark difference to the texture of kadalaimittai which was hard and chewy. 

Another sweet we used to enjoy was the palkhoa or the milk sweet. My grandfather used to treat us with the palkhoa and sev which is known as omapodi. The combination is a deadly one. We were looking forward to eating that combo whenever my grandfather used to return from his daily outings. Now neither my grandfather nor the omapodi is relished by me - the grandfather is no more and the omapodi disappeared after his death. But once a while my sister and I talk about those days. In spite of the omapodi still available in the market, it isn't the same!

I guess I wasn't much of 'sweet' person to remember the delicacies of my growing up years. But nostalgia makes everything sepia tinted and mellow which led me into a sweet trail of Proustian madeline!

What's your Proustian madeline?

The dog with the bell

Today while I was in our car, my thoughts, without any whim or fancy flew to the days I used to know a guy and his dog with the bell. The dog's name was Bobby and it had a bell on its neck. As the dog walked, the bell chimed and it was like a signal - Bobby and X have arrived! Ah! that there was a special connection between the dog's owner and the writer is immaterial here. Aw! Did I just say that! Ah! well, I just did. I would be having dinner, when the rhythmic sound of Bobby's bell would announce their arrival. I would then squirm, try and hurry my dinner, and jump into the road to join the walkers. Our post-dinner rendezvous punctuated by Bobby's bell. Bobby was a smart dog - he knew the places of affection and love and was a silent spectator to the laughs and undercurrents.

He would walk, sometimes run after spotting a nocturnal creature or find his favourite tree and pee. I knew he looked forward to those walks like us. He was the excuse for our walks and we were the reason for his walks - it was a mutual understanding.

I wonder where Bobby is. I suspect he has passed away and would have found many similar companions to walk with while tinkling his wee bell. I also wonder what happened to that bell. Perhaps it was buried with Bobby or it was just discarded now that there is no much use for the same. As for the owner of Bobby, I guess he is out there doing his own thing and probably owning another paw to take care but I guess he won't need the bell because he is now married with children and he does not have the need to alert someone of his presence. Maybe he might be wearing that bell as a talisman or as a signal to alert his family of his arrival from work, gym, church or just the corner shop.

Memories, very funny, aren't they?

Hope you are revelling in the season of fun and joy.

What are your childhood memories of Christmas?

  

Have you smelt fresh bread?

Seeing a picture of freshly baked bread on my friend's page, my first thought was about the smell of fresh bread. It is magic, I say and if you haven't known that smell, then my friend, you haven't been initiated into the fine art of smell and fragrances.

I have always been a sense person with smell dominating the senses. Freshly baked bread is not freshly baked bread alone - It is freshly baked bread and much more if you care to allow the smell to carry you into far away lands where there are dozens of bread episodes which are time-specific. And, no matter how much you have eaten store bought fresh bread, you cannot savour the smell until you have baked a bread and waited till the smell filled the tiny kitchen and then the adjacent room before filling the entire room and finally forces itself into your head through your nose. It lives there for years to come and will come out when you least expect it to raise its head - while having tea with a close friend who remarks on your fine bread or a child who speaks of the bread in passing or a silly song that was playing while baking the bread and is now playing on the radio.

Ah, you will say, the smell still lingers but not time. Those were the days I had time and interest to bake and bask in bread and then you stop. You stop because you have smelt that smell from your memory and you yearn . . . you yearn to smell real fresh bread and you search for dough (the eating kind) and salt and yeast and you work to smell that smell and savour that smell for years to come. Time can never be trusted but memories can sure coerce you to knead and sing along.

Post-script: This post is dedicated to the same friend on whose page I saw the picture of fresh bread. She loves cooking, baking, a hearty conversation and books (smell, feel and everything about books).

When nostalgia gets a tad boring

I often wonder how long can one get nostalgic over and over the same bit that happened some time ago in our lives. Won't the nostalgia stop? Will one nostalgia replace another? Will we stop getting nostalgic after we have exhausted the emotion so much like the cassette that finally wears out due to overuse.

This is a fairly recent happening and I find it pretty amusing. I think about a beautiful memory and find that I keep returning to it every single day and by the time I've thought about it for some time now that I feel tired to think of it anymore. Succeeding that 'boring nostalgia' phase is an aversion to that memory. It is then I realise that overdoing nostalgia also gets boring. But isn't nostalgia something sweet and beautiful. Maybe when it strikes once a while to refresh the bygone years and moments but feelings of longing that strike very often lose their appeal over time. Well, the etymology of nostalgia is from the word, 'nostos' meaning homecoming. Now, I guess that during the time the word was coined, it was meant for someone who was away from home and was longing for home - the physical home and the emotional security that is often associated with the home. But now the word has evolved and comes to mean memory and longing for something that was once part of our lives, not necessarily the home itself. That's what I love about words - they evolve, wrapping in the mood and the times and mould according to the context. They change but still retain their spirit.

Coming back to nostalgia, I wonder how long will something remain so precious and lovely that each time we are filled with yearning, we feel nostalgia. I guess even nostalgia changes, rather it evolves to something else before going through a few steps: Initially the memory is beautiful and comes to our mind when we yearn for the past. Then we start clinging so much to that specific memory that nostalgia becomes the norm each day. Finally we are done looking at that memory from a trillion angles that we have explored every fine fabric of that particular memory. Then we break forth and no longer relish that memory. The nostalgia of that memory gets boring and we don't feel like returning to that for quite some time. Perhaps after a long time, the cycle will begin again.

Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps.

Dear reader what do you have to say on this?

Image 1: Internet
Image 2: Internet

When the blog anniversary slipped by . . .

The twelfth of October was my fourth blogoversary but as I was in Assam, it slipped away surreptitiously. I remembered the same but just had to suffice with a smile and a thought from the pages of memory. What if I hadn't written a post marking my milestone? What if I didn't celebrate the lovely passage of years with my fellow blogger friends? What if . . . Well, does anything change if I didn't write a post. No, it doesn't. That I had an anniversary is a fact. Isn't it?

Well, many so called important dates slip by without any big celebration or announcement but the importance associated with those days don't change. Now, what happens if we forget those days? Does anything change? If I miss my sister's anniversary, does anything change. My sister might think that I have forgotten in the humdrum of life but does that change anything for her. Minus the emotional feelings, nothing.

Are remembering dates all that important? A tricky question when it comes to women who like when dates are remembered. Remembering takes effort and that effort is caring, I presume. But inspite of all this, I think that remembering varies from person to person.

Now, you might wonder why is she writing so much about dates and memory when the fact is that she has missed her blogoversary :)

Okay, let me stop about dates and memory.

I must thank all of you for the wonderful journey and the experience you have given me during the years. Let's rise a toast for the fourth year! I would also like to leave the link of a few blogs that I have discovered this past year. Hope you enjoy reading them as much as I have:

Peter who blogs at Windgrove - Life on the Edge

Bhumika who blogs at Bhumika's Boudoir

Sandhya who blogs at Maradhi Manni

Dawn Sievers who blogs at Healing Morning

Astha who blogs at Butterflies and Hurricanes

Sumana who blogs at This & That

All said and done, I am happy about the progress of this blog and my readers who make me smile with gratitude.

Image 1: Internet
Image 2: Internet

Laced with degrees of comparison

Ever wondered how most of our conversation  has the mode of comparison laced at the subconscious level. Every time I remark: I like coffee, I am subconsciously saying that I like coffee better than tea or colas or better still vodka! The same applies for clothes, people and situations.

Now I start meandering into thought whether this is a social and cultural conditioning. Do we always look at people, objects and emotions in the comparison mode? When does an individual learn this: as a child or as an early adolescent who has some experience in life?

When babies cry while being fed with milk instead of orange juice, do they react to the taste because they don't find it as appealing or simply because it does not taste good. It's a wonder to observe all these nitty-gritties of life.

Just pause through your thoughts in a given time and observe yourself and think how many times your thoughts are based on comparison. When you decide to read instead of watching television, you compare; when you exclaim, "I love kissing!" you are comparing it with something else, say caressing; when you remark "I love this place," you are doing a fast mental comparison of different places and arriving at a conclusion.

Of course, along with all this, memory plays a pivotal role which aids in comparison and decisions.

And so what are the tales of comparison in your experiences . . .

The wonder of art and memory

Ever wondered that even the silliest, funniest and embarrassing incidents take on a lovely tint when recalled. Failed lives, disastrous mistakes and the like also lose their aggressiveness as time goes by and when we think back, they appear as an experience which has left us rich and sober. The same is with art. Even a trash can overflowing with garbage looks quite artistic when expressed through a painting or a sculpture. This attribute always tends to fill me with a sense of awe and amazement.

The same trash can which overflows with dirt can be a very displeasing sight to behold turns on as a lively expression when seen through the medium of art. Despite the fact that the overflown trash can will never be emptied in the painting, it enables us to gain a different perspective to the everyday aspects of life that never fail to disturb us.

Memories also are pretty similar to trash can in a painting. Now when I look back and think of certain images from my life, I don't feel remorse or pain. I marvel at the ability of the mind to use those same images as weapons of self-embellishment and courage. I always used to have discussions with friends about memories and nostalgia -- most of the times they are only 'good' ones. Its very rare we hear people say 'This sound gives me bad memories.'

Talking of memories, it is strange how different materials become memories of something else. Talking with Barbara, my buddy from Queen's University, Belfast has enabled me to view different objects as extensions of memory which invariably is linked to life and places.

Being a person who has a memory of almost everything, I can be called as someone who 'solidifies events and freezes them in the crevices of memory.' And also looking at different art pieces down the time enables me to look at memory and art as something that preserves the freshness of everyday life albeit in different mediums. Art and memory transforms!

Picture courtesy: Internet