quidnovis61

SUMMER is long gone and now that it is at its end one feels a strange sense of emptiness, yes, even a kind of “summer-guilt”. This year it is a “New Era” that starts in our life: NO school-bags get packed, NO school clothes get ironed, NO school buses to catch NO hurried breakfasts to down…. It is a lazy sort of autumn that we meet this year… we potter about in the garden in no hurry, we make jams and jellies and squash from the fruits and berries in our garden…

All our summer-memories are put away into jam jars, into shoe boxes, neatly labelled and shelved away in the store room of our souls, things long planned but never completed yet again are wrapped neatly in silken tissues of guilt, summer visitors are said good bye to and lovingly pasted into albums or stored digitally in clearly marked Files. A sense of ” vacuous void” returns as the sky turns empty and blue-grey, the playgrounds are now noisy in their silence and one swallows yet another lump in the throat as one goes about ones daily chores.

They say that it is better to look forward to the joys that are in store than to look back in sorrow at that which is gone but still this feeling washes over me every time summer comes to its end. In Scandinavia it is truly a time for sadness as the long cold winter gnaws at ones heel and it is a full year until more precious summer memories can be gathered and hoarded away in the lockers of our mind.

Memories come flooding back. Of other summers in the hot dusty plains of India, the never ending summers that we always took for granted – paradoxically longing for the winter!!!. Someone called Tommy Hammarsten (Iauthor/Swedish) has said “I saknadens mörkrum framkallas ljusa minnesbilder” which in a quick rough translation is: “Vivid/bright photos are developed in the darkroom of nostalgia” 

I have so often thought of that sentence....bright and happy memories that seem to crop up from nowhere in the mind. A fleeting sight of a dragonfly, a slight whiff of a certain dish cooking, the far away strains of a few bars of music, the taste on the tip of the tongue can conjure up memories long long forgotten.

In dreamlike sequences, sometimes.

In tangible visions, sometimes.

This summer has been a summer of memories. I wonder Why? Is it the signs of the times… Is it a feeling of the transient nature of a Scandinavian summer…. Or is it just the way I am? I find myself going back, back, back in time, travelling in my mind, zipping at unknown mach speeds, re-living, re-tasting the images in my heart.

I am at once a four year old: howling at not been allowed to drink milk with Cadbury’s Drinking Chocolate, gleeful at the prospect of an afternoon walk in the nearby park with grandfather (which always meant a treat of roasted peanuts from the peanut-wallah in the park!)

And I am at once a forty year old: scowling at not being allowed to have the leisure-time to do as I wish, smiling at the prospect of hearing Elizabeth play my favourite music on the piano, revelling in the aroma of my steaming coffee.

And a plethora of memories,

A myriad of sights and sounds that fill the years in between.

I sit by my computer. Thoughts twirl in my head like phantoms of a distant opera. I look out of the window. The birch forest across the road is drenched in late summer sunshine. I open the window and drink in the crystalline air. And listen to the birds, postman-Anders’ yellow car drives- stops-drives at every mailbox. But otherwise it is so quiet and peaceful. And I find myself wandering in that country of the past...! And it is so true. I am lucky to be coming from India because some things haven’t really changed and the past is still there...in some instances. In others it is all gone and exists now only as a figment of ones imaginations and thoughts.                                                            

It is with a heavy heart that I ponder over the passing of time....if these 40+ years have swished past so fast what are the next 40 (or so) years going to be like?

I think of Aunts and Uncles in their 80s now. I remember them as youngish grownups still in their late 30s, strong and in my young eyes, capable of all the heroic deeds I could imagine. My Uncles could throw me in the air and catch me giggling joyfully in their arms. These aunts and uncles of my parents generation who thought nothing of staying up all night partying and having fun are now ready for bed by ten, the numerous dinners at our place where guests stayed on to long after midnight. And as a child , the excitement of watching through a door left slightly ajar (accidentally?) the grown-ups dance and laugh, talk and mingle, eat and drink.

“They were such happy times and not so long ago....”  (Carpenters) and sometimes  when I see them now or think of them it is hard to imagine that I am now what they used to be....what a paradox!

I am here and family/friends in India, meetings are rare and few between. Global hi-tech keeps alive the contacts of yesteryears, bridging the gap of my childhood and adulthood. When I think in terms of Elizabeth, I find that I am a bit sad that she will not be able to share in the same memories of my people and places. The joys of an extended family. The numerous hot afternoons spent under the shady trees in the scorching summer, the lazy afternoons spent sleeping in the sunny balcony in the mild winters. Murmuring and planning the evening to come. Shopping sprees in magical shops that had everything a little girl could dream of. Shopping that always ended in ice cream treats. The shops are still there but are now encased in huge glass windows, emaciated mannequins display the wares, second hand bookshops where I spent many a teenage hour, browsing are now fitted with modern shelves of light wood and alphabetically organised. Smartly dressed youngsters ask politely: Any particular book you are looking for, madam? By the way, when did I become “Madam”? The musty smell of old books now long gone; the piles on the floors where one had to be adept at Callisthenics in order to see the spines of the books are a part of my memories. Now one has to be able to have a “particular” book in mind...the art of browsing is a dying one! The second hand LP shops on the back streets of Calcutta are now replaced by flashy shops selling ready made garments with names like van Heusen belting out MTV music - not ABBA or the Bee Gees or Boney M. Shopping sprees end now at Pizza Hut or milkshake at McDonalds.

Well, in all fairness, I like the new music too and smoothies...let it not be said that I am a hindrance to progress and prosperity!

This summer has been spent meditating and with many flashbacks to feed the hungry soul. I have the luxury of having my laptop with me out in the Sun Lounge or my shady Italian Garden with my afternoon cup of coffee, strawberries..…. it is nice to be able to sit quietly and be a part of the garden. Yet another lazy kind of afternoon. Just me - and the late summer bees and crazy flies buzzing nonstop. My cheeky magpie looks curiously at me through the glass windows as he tugs at an earthworm and has his mid-day meal. The sky is so, so blue! The lavender in the garden smells heavenly. But this morning it was -1°C and all my fragile plants died in the sudden frost. I have to get some heather.... 

 
I read in a Tony Parsons book:

“Plead the fleeting moment to remain.”           

 ....this is one of those moments.....