Tuesday 14 June 2011

Lanes

I thought I would go down memory lane today, there are many lanes which we traverse each with its own hues.
Memories of childhood, school days, which may or may not be interlinked, memories of college days, your first job, and then others in the course of ones  life. All forming a collage in before your eyes, some fading with time, a mere blur, others refreshed by looking at old photographs. Strange that a memory of a shared event  may be entirely different from that of your sibling or friend. Is that because of a difference in outlook, just mere forgetfulness, or else do we remember only what we want to?

Sorting out papers a few years ago, I came across some letters which I had not seen before, memories of people before my time, their feelings hopes expectations frustrations, sadness,a whole gamut of emotions in those lines before me,a small window opening into a world gone by,overtaken by the today's rapid constructions. Some moved me to tears, others to laughter and still others to a jaw dropping surprise. It shall begin again...... the re-sorting.................. and memories will rebound , more fresh more poignant.Distances of decades within the grasp of a hand.

I thought that I would be walking down my own lanes today. Some sunlit some in the shade the springs of youth flowing into adulthood surging into what? The sea is not visible as yet, the meandering may be slower,  the goal is certain the path unsure and once reached will be a memory once more.
  
Oft I remember those I have known
In other days, to whom my heart was lead
As by a magnet, and who are not dead,
But absent, and their memories overgrown
With other thoughts and troubles of my own,
As graves with grasses are, and at their head
The stone with moss and lichens so o'er spread,
Nothing is legible but the name alone.
And is it so with them? After long years.
Do they remember me in the same way,
And is the memory pleasant as to me?
I fear to ask; yet wherefore are my fears?
Pleasures, like flowers, may wither and decay,
And yet the root perennial may be. 
H.D. Longfellow

                  








1 comment:

austere said...

quite wistful, this post.
will read again in some.