Ripples of my Reflections

I think, therefore I write

Tag: Nostalgia (Page 1 of 3)

Recreating memories

September 15, 2020 /

By this post, you would know that my interest in cooking is fairly recent. It still is a chore for me on most days but I manage to get by knowing that I can cook up a delicious meal, when needed. Anyway, as I made my way through different dishes from amma’s culinary repertoire, trying one at a time, I realized that the newly discovered interest has a backstory after all. One that’s so obvious that I am surprised that I missed it.

I miss my mom and her cooking.

Though this has happened when I first moved out from home to my hostel, then dealing with various cuisines of PG food (ugh!) throughout my spinster life and so on. I have missed amma’s cooking earlier too but that was different. This time, with each of us locked in different cities in the pandemic, it’s been a while since mom got a chance to pamper me and my daughter I got a dose of her pampering. It’s amazing how she never gets bored with cooking and always has the energy to cook up something delicious.

Anyway, this week as I tried my hand at making Vaazhaipoo urundai (A type of falafel made from banana flower), Vaazhaithandu adai (A patty with banana stem – a variant of the first dish), paruppu dosai (My favorite dish with coconut chutney, always ready when I visit home from hostel), Mushroom curry fry, Masala dosa and many more of mom’s signature dishes, the aromas wafting through my kitchen reminded me of my childhood memories, particularly around food that I enjoyed the most as I grew up. I could just close my eyes and see amma working her way around in that dingy kitchen of the monumental house that I grew up in.

Amma in the kitchen was the norm for us. I was a pathetic daughter who didn’t help around much, I did an odd chore here or there but that was it. Yes, I do feel bad that I didn’t do more for her. I would ask her why she keeps at it and how she is not bored day after day, doing the same chore and she would reply, “You enjoy the food, right?” I couldn’t imagine the level of selflessness it took to have that attitude, even if it is for one’s own daughter.

For more than 30 years, she has never tired of the kitchen and cooking. Every time I cook something, my mind automatically compares it with amma’s. The comfort of childhood memories with amma combined with the comfort of food just makes my heart fill with content to the brim. That’s probably what made the experience better for me with time – else I was unhappy that I had to work to develop the interest unlike amma for whom it just came naturally.

Of course, there is a benefactor to all this – my daughter. She is happy that she is getting a variety of dishes as opposed to the mundane routine of rice and sambhar. I don’t think I’ll ever get over amma’s cooking, no matter how old I get. I hope my daughter retains some of these memories as nostalgia when she’s all grown up. I am surprised that she, unlike me, shows an interest in cooking and household chores at such an young age. She loves sitting in the kitchen and watching me cook. And narrating the recipe to her as I cook does make the chore less boring. Sometimes, I put on music and we do a bit of dancing jumping around as well.

So if my daughter looks back at one of these evenings and thinks of it as fondly as I think of my mom in the kitchen, I’d consider it my greatest reward.

Until later 🙂

P.S: Maybe, I should start posting some recipes. Lemme think about it.

Inexplicable

July 11, 2020 /

When it comes to social skills, I am kind of stuck in between an introvert and an extrovert. I would want to be a social person but I cannot be the kind who initiates a conversation or keeps it going for the most part – I would require the other person also to be equally talkative or sometimes, more talkative than me. This may be the reason for me not being able to keep in touch with my school and college friends. In addition to moving through the gears of time and life, the distance between me and my friends robbed me of my comfort zone and I let it slip away. I didn’t feel much of the pang because I got married to my childhood sweetheart – I had him, forever with me, to reminisce. So life just went on.

All this changed, oh so suddenly, when I stumbled upon a couple of my school friends Facebook profiles and messages. I wanted to talk to them but was skeptical if they would feel the same, after all these contact-less years. Nevertheless, I started talking to a couple of them and we started a Whatsapp group – all the while wondering if others will feel comfortable connecting after such a long time. How would everyone react? Will they be as involved and interested?

As for my tingling doubts about people’s reactions, boy, was I wrong! Everyone connected and pulled in more people seamlessly. We could get in touch with almost everyone in 2 days and our group flooded with messages. So much so that all of us were stuck to our mobiles through day and night. The emotions, excitement and joy was almost tangible even though we were only texting. For once, I believed technology and social media has done something useful, in creating as much joy and happiness in a bunch of people, especially during this hopeless time of a pandemic.

In less than a week, we planned and met virtually over a conference call with our families. We had just planned a trial run to see if we can find a suitable time for a real one. But again, almost everyone made it and the reactions on our faces said everything. Amidst talking over each other, talking at the same time, catching up on each other’s lives, managing to get our kids to talk and then be quiet, we enjoyed everything. We didn’t even know how the hour went by. There was so much to talk and so little time.

All of us remembered and reminisced about the joyful memories, our teachers, our daily school lives that we led as naive kids. To me, it felt like something that was frozen in time and memory had been thawed by friendship and brought back to life. Such was the feeling – it was truly inexplicable. It’s true what they say, meeting school friends after a long time and feeling nothing really has changed in the friendship is the best feeling. And especially childhood friends, there’s something about them that you cannot replace.

As the hour went by and our family lives pulled us back into each our lives, we bid adieu, with a promise to stay in touch and do this more often. I know we will, for every one of us had felt the pang of missing our friends. And now we know how great it could be, to stay in touch, to feel and connect with our younger selves. And I hope that I could keep this feeling that I fail to express even with writing, close to my heart, and treasure it for as long as possible.

Until later 🙂

Echo

June 22, 2016 /

A light fragrance in the air, and
A feeling of hands running through my hair,
Reminding me of you and your memory
A time capsule, buried deep in me.

Like a ghost from the past,
Every memory of you is a blast.
But there’s no pain in me
Or my memories, none at all.

When & how did you fade?
From being the voice of my soul
To a mere echo, blighted in existence.
And I wonder, was that all there was to us?

Life teaches a lot of intriguing lessons
The best of which, I think, is to forget.
As I heal with each passing day,
I learn to let your memories fade away.

Like that distant echo that you can’t catch,
Like that missing piece of the puzzle,
Like the rain-washed verses of an estranged poem,
Like the forgotten beauty of a lost voice.

~

Until later 🙂

The art that is communication

November 26, 2014 / / 15 Comments

Remember those days when communication between two persons in different places meant writing letters, waiting for the letters or maybe for the privilege of an occasional telephone call? Yeah, I know that I sound cliched. But today I want to talk about this exact cliche.

I have lived in times when there was no mobile, no phones that are smarter than humans, no internet. I have lived in times when mobiles, smart phones, internet, computers were not so easily available to the common man and I am glad that I was part of a common man’s family then. I have experienced the thrill of writing letters and waiting for a reply. I have had my first rush when I got the first phone call from a friend. It made me feel important in the family to be able to give our land line number to a friend and to have her call it. We didn’t have anything to talk though. But I can still remember how we both giggled into the receiver of having done something grown-up.

And writing letters, ah! The feeling is indescribable, especially if the letter is to a budding crush/romance/love. My hubby and me were childhood sweethearts and were best friends right from the KG classes. So in the early teens, we had a gang of our own and all the usual drama in the class. So we had a code for writing letters among the members of the gang. Though there were other members in our gang, we two really hit it off with the letter writing, sometimes in code and sometimes normally. Starting from the silly “Have you done your homework?” to the then important “How is our enemy gang planning to prepare for the test?”, we have seen it all. The funnier thing here is it was almost always the action of writing and exchanging the letters that piqued our interest than the content itself. After all, what could a couple of school kids write about? 😛

Example of handwriting with gold pen
Anyway, I still have that feeling in me when I sit down and write something. If not physically, the closest feeling is typing up my thoughts. I know such is the case for many bloggers around here. My point in writing about this today is how the ease of communication has actually removed/replaced several prized feelings that still send a thrill coursing through our entire body. Today, we can reach anyone, anywhere at any time. The prerequisites are a smart phone and internet. Maybe even just a mobile phone. While all this has certainly eased our pain points of reaching someone, I feel sad. I feel sad that I cannot show my kid how “that feeling” would be. How the feeling of exchanging letters with your crush would be, how the feeling of waiting beside the telephone for a call that a friend promised you would be, how it feels to exchange coded notes with co-conspiring friends right under the nose of those who are busy trying to figure out what you are talking about, especially when all you would have been talking about is that your mom has packed aloo subji for lunch and that you would be willing to trade some for the delicious omelet that your friend’s mom packed.

Keeping in touch has now become so easy that the pain of farewell is diminished. When it is good that we can keep in touch with our old school friends to this day, we are missing that high which comes when you stumble into an old friend at the supermarket whom you have tried to keep in touch so hard but over time, lost it. Can any of the WhatsApp kind messengers or Facebook kind social media beat that feeling? I don’t think so. Today, the internet has changed the world into one big open book where anyone can peek into my page and read my personal feelings with no consideration whatsoever. Social networking was supposed to re-create the long lost bonds between friends and make them connect. But it went a step ahead and told us stuff about each other that we actually wouldn’t want to know or shouldn’t be knowing anyway.

As all this is taking us ahead, all we can do and are doing is sit back and reminisce about the times when we had more prized possessions in the form of memories and how all those would not be passed on to our next generation. The precious feelings are cursed to stay frozen in time while the human race races faster than ever.

Until later 🙂

You, Me and Rain

July 21, 2014 / / 13 Comments
glavo.netSource:glavo.net

Do you remember that day when there was a blackout and no streetlights as we walked back home amidst the heavy downpour? You held my hands all the while, saving me from the infamous potholes on the Indian roads, always placing a step before me. It was too dark and late for a couple of 15 year olds to wander about alone, but we had no choice then. I knew you were afraid too but your grip on my hand told that you weren’t so afraid that you can’t protect me. That day I knew that it’s you and here I am today holding your hands in the downpour and darkness after 50 years, tottering towards our home being each other’s walk sticks.

This piece is an inspiration from a true incident in my life. The first half is true and the next half will become true in another 40 years, I know! 🙂

Also linking this post to ‘Rain‘ at Lillie McFerrin Writes.

By the way, I came across this pic when I was searching one for the prompt and I totally loved it 🙂

themetapicture

Until later 🙂

« Older posts

No plagiarism, please!

Please link back when you refer/use any media/content that I own, in your website. Let’s not encourage plagiarism, there’s enough trouble in the world as it is.

© 2024 Ripples of my Reflections

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑