The days of abandonment

Early in August this year, I went to a book exhibition with Shree and we spent a delightful four hours amidst all that treasure trove. That day, I had to let go off a few books including Ruskin Bond's The Writer on the Hill and I regretted it for a while.  Last Saturday, while strolling through the familiar lanes of Fort, I found myself walking towards Strand Book Stall and once inside, lost in its charm. To my delight, I saw a lone copy of Ruskin Bond's anthology of selected fiction and non-fiction nestled among Harry Potter's new shiny editions. Mr Bond shines from anywhere. Before anyone else came to claim it, I pounced on it and held it close. Many of the stories are from his books on Dehra and Mussoorie. I have read them all before, have them memorized since my growing years. His charm never fades away. December reads are always special. 

This year is coming to an end. I can still recollect the first day of 2017 and how I spent it. Every single detail. Yet it doesn't feel like we have spent 300+ days already. Time flies quickly. As the years devour our youth, the feeling of contentment makes a more pronounced presence felt in our lives.  We also start feeling comfortable to be with a few people as our closest allies. There is no longer the need to have a caravan of friends and acquaintances we keep accumulating in our youth. I suppose the trick here is that our longing is altered by keeping rendezvous within a small group. I have Shree and Swati, another reader, a friend who's slowly engulfing herself in the magical world of books and words. It's always such a delight to recommend books as I found out on a Saturday when another friend called up asking recommendations for a Secret Santa book gift. Since she wished to gift it to another reader who is our common friend and with whom I buy and share a lot of books with, it was a great conversation in the middle of something else I was doing. We went for Shashi Tharoor and Gulzar and she chose Gulzar in the end. His Raavi Paar is an exceptional gift to read. I could not stop the flood of tears and emotions that swelled through my heart when I first read the stories.

However, in the midst of all this reading and thinking, there are often days and times when we feel increasingly aloof from our surroundings. It is a cycle of nature wherein we go through black moods and shadows of abandonment, an emotion quite on the rise since our involvement with gadgets and subsequent withdrawal from nature. There are regrets and swirls of euphoria within our dwellings and establishments in every season. We go through highs and lows and rise again. I recently heard Ganesh Devi speak about the origins of language, its existence and role in determining our progress in modernised habitats. Where would we be if not for the colours and rainbows and dour wills of this world?

I always like to believe and dwell on possibilities. Days of glee come with their share of misery in between but they are few and don't coexist for long. I suppose if we look at the constants of change, then we would be content with meandering about the vastness of solitude and loneliness and this subsequent abandonment. To a world full of mysteries and quivering immensities, let us shred the fabric of strangeness to encompass its myriad happenstances.