Lost in the past

 

Earlier this month I was in Mumbai, I cherry-picked and visited places that I had already visited in the past. It was an odd choice, but I felt happy walking among all those cricketers along Azad Maidan, standing among those pigeons in front of the Taj, and visiting a church I fell in love with when I visited it about two decades ago. 

How sacrilegious that a Catholic fell in love with an Anglican church. But the Afghan church or rather the Afghan War memorial church as it is known locally was and is a beautiful church. In 2006 when my family and I visited the church, it was covered in scaffolding, undergoing what at that time seemed like essential repairs.  It looked like a church you would draw if you were asked to. Tiled roof, a spire, stained glass, and gardens all around. A scene transplanted from Scotland perhaps. The spire towered over me, but what I remember fondly was entering through the doors and suddenly feeling everything become tranquil. 

 

This time I went there specifically chasing that feeling of calm and, my God, the church did deliver. The buzz of Colaba slowly faded as I approached the church and as I entered it suddenly the stillness blanketed over me. I gently dragged my feet over the rough floor and planted myself in one of the wooden chairs. I allowed myself to smile.

As I exited the church, I went around the bend and down the straight road into the 200-year-old Navy Nagar. As I walked, I could see every other gate along the way manned by armed soldiers. I didn’t care about what they were protecting. I was only interested in a gate that lay at the end of this road. Beyond that gate was what I in class 8 believed was paradise, a manicured garden and at the far end is a rocky beach where the waves of the Arabian Sea crashed. In the middle of those lawns stood a building where the AC was turned up so high that it made me grin and breathe through my teeth. This is TIFR- Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. 

As a kid, I spent my holidays visiting my uncle at IISc and TIFR. These Science places seemed so posh. I saw things I had never seen in my life until that point: door knobs, blue doors, western commodes, rooms with wood panelling and even artificial ponds with fish. So, growing up I wanted more than anything to be a man of science like him simply to see all these things and more. 

Getting a chance to stay at TIFR over a summer in class 8 was a dream come true. One thing that inadvertently happened was that it made these scientists and their children just human beings. I could see that even my uncle was also just a flawed man. It gave me hope, normal me could maybe make it here someday. Maybe I could study here and walk on those lawns and on that beach even after the summer. 

But I didn’t make it to TIFR as a student. My science dreams remain dreams and so on this visit I could only make it to the gate. As I turned around and walked back, I began to ponder over the question, why do I want to revisit all these places? 

Some of them make me happy, but quite a few of them make me sad. The latter make me yearn for that bygone time and make me wish I had done some things differently. So, isn’t forgetting about the sites of failure better? 

But whether I like it or not these are things that make me who I am. I tried being a science student and it didn’t work out, so what? Being through that gives me the perspective to realise if I am doing something now and if it doesn’t work out, I should have no shame in packing up and going back to zero and starting again. 

Then there is this thing we call memory… My rose-coloured glasses possibly made the spires seem taller, the maidans seem endless. That is the thing with memory, it is always a little fuzzy. A child’s perspective is skewed. Even with adults, our memory is all positive or all negative, never grey. Now when I think about it carefully, that rocky beach at TIFR didn’t always smell very nice. The stench from the garbage and recycling unit sometimes just lingered in the air. 

Nevertheless, personally the past offers me some solace. Of things well done and of things successfully failed. Of adoring people and realising I don’t adore them anymore. Yes, life would have been different if I had done some things differently. But standing on the pinnacle of the present, I can quite happily say, it is okay that things worked out this way.