A moment of nostalgia..

This essay, in many ways is a confession. Perhaps Nostalgia is a better word. And it came upon me last Sunday, as I tuned into Netflix to watch an old Sophia Loren and Cary Grant movie “Houseboat”. It is a film that touches a very deep, sensitive chord within me for a reason very different from what I am used too. It evokes memories of my first, and probably the only episode of puerile infatuation with a girl in my life. It’s a strange feeling; and it has lingered on like a shadow after nearly twenty five years now. A thousand more beautiful, captivating and interesting faces and minds have passed before my eyes, but her’s still remains resplendent in my mind. When I close my eyes, I vividly see her fair skin, dove like eyes, clad in a spotless cream Salwar, walking, smiling, and talking with lissome feminine grace that marks the fresh touch of maturity. It all happened at an age when distinct stirrings of one’s manhood uncoils itself, and the body is infused with an uncomfortable yearning that slowly fragments the mind as well; with its confused craving, battling its own moral and ethical dilemmas . It is a period of adolescence, when the relationship between a boy and a girl takes on a whole different meaning and dimension - a flirting restlessness in the eyes, a casual contact, and word or gesture blossoms into something deeper, richer and overwhelming than what it seems on the surface. The world remains centered on her physical presence, and life seems worth living only to get a glimpse of her each day.

I was a student at NIIT, and she was (not surprisingly!!) my fellow classmate. And from the first day of class, till the end of second semester, we were more or less together for every activity there. Until then, my exposure to feminine company was limited, and the little that was there in my life did not really mean much. Being a cerebral person, girls held a mysterious place in my head; born out of fairy tales, myths and stories that I had imbibed as a child. She then, at the age of eighteen, was my first redemptive touch of reality; helping me break out of my chrysalis to look at the opposite sex in a new light. She was a good looking girl - a smart mind, very outspoken, who had this ability to give someone her undivided attention, if she needed to (which obviously one mistakes as something else!!), and I happened to be a beneficiary of that grace. I had a Kinetic Honda those days; and I regularly picked her from her home - which was quite out of the way from me – dropped her back; no matter what happened. It could be thundering, lashing torrential rains, or peak of summer - I would be there at her doorstep precisely at the same time; and she would gently slip behind on my bike latching on to my shoulders, for what seemed then as a joyous ride to eternity. I am not too sure what I felt at that time. All that I am remember at this distance is that I was strongly attracted to her in strange ways that cannot be pinned down to anything specific. It was a mix of emotions.

And then catastrophe stuck!! One fine morning, on one of our rides to NIIT, she gently announced to me that her family was moving out to a different city. Her father was a medical representative, and he had been promoted as a Manager to take up station in Northern India. They were to travel the very next month. She said all of this with a smile and rising excitement in her voice; little realizing that something fundamental came crashing down within me. I will never forget that twenty minute scooter drive. It was perhaps the most excruciating, painful and confused emotional state that I have ever been in. Having built an edifice of imaginary relationships, her words ripped apart the glass house that I had been inhabiting. I still recollect the utter numbed silence that penetrated me; and her sultry voice knocking at its periphery as jarring tones of intrusion, cracking a closely guarded inner space. The next few weeks were spent in a daze, as I came to grips with this aborted experience. I never allowed my agony to reflect in my behavior with her or others, but I am absolutely certain that she had not realized what her association meant to me, or what was left irredeemably changed within me, as she moved away from my life.

Now, what has all this got to do with the movie “Houseboat”? The answer is that both of us saw the movie together at her place. It was the only movie that we watched together, though I am sure we had made such plans many times in the past as well. Her father had bought a brand new Video cassette player, and I had volunteered to borrow Houseboat from a local Video library my father frequented very often. She loved Sophia Loren. Who would not? And I remember her face as she sat awestruck at the miraculous beauty, grace and finesse of this great Italian actor. She was watching the movie, and I her… Somehow those two hours remain etched in my memory as a special slice of life.

Well, the above paragraphs may give the one impression that I am still head over heels over this girl, as I was then. But that would be a wrong conclusion to draw. Life moves on, and in the deluge of experiences that confronts us, sensations tend to dim and possibly vanish. However, there is no doubting that the first taste of attraction between sexes will linger forever. I would not wish to rationalize it as love or respect or empathy - it was possibly raw biological attraction that draws one initially; and all the rest follows later. Tradition and culture may want to turn that experience into something socially acceptable, but each one knows, deep in one’s heart, that it is not what we have named it to be. It is something pristine and unadulterated until it lasts.

God bless…