Wednesday 31 March 2010

Coloured Reflections

There is a character to sadness that I occasionally enjoy. I suppose enjoy is too strong a word. Its not enjoy, its something else. I revel in it? I like to wrap the sadness around me like a cloak and, well, revel in it for a bit. I don't cry. I used to cry. I still get teary at weddings and movies and such. But I have not sat down and bawled my eyes out in a while now. Wait. I did bawl a teeny bit in Srilanka on my vacation a day or two after the monster's collarbone fracture thing, sort of a mixture of guilt and love and relief and all such things mothers carry like a millstone. Nevertheless, I have been crying a lot less as I grow older. I am glad for it. But it does not mean I don't get sad of course.

But I am also thinking of a more well-settled sadness - not the fresh kind of sadness which evokes emotions and feelings that you have not yet been resolved in your mind. That old sadness, I don't know what you would call that. That old sadness, for want of a better word, that is sort of a pin I like to poke myself with. Sometimes I can bend a few of my toes in a weird way and it gives me a sharp pain. I like to do that anyhow. Not like a billion times or for ever and ever, but I like bending my toes like that sometimes and feeling that pain, somehow that makes me feel better. However strange that might sound.. And some of these memories, yes, thats what they are of course, these sad memories, they have that character.

It feels like this month has been full of such memories. Something happens in real, current life. Not necessarily bad things, although for some reason, many crazy things have happened in 2010, already. But living the current life sets me thinking about these things from my past life. And somehow, there is a tinge of sadness to them. It has been a really full thirty five years, no doubt. It has had its share of wonderful things. And I do remember the wonderful times I have had and wonderful friends and people I have found in my 3.5 decades of living. But I also like to think of those not so wonderful times, and the timing of these feelings and memories is somewhat apt, because from next week on, I am going to be checking that box that says >35 years old. That is a lot of years to reflect upon, a lot of living, for sure.

So in some sense this is a justification for all the talk of death and people that have managed to escape from me (takes some doing, that!) and long ago events in my life that has been going on in my head and therefore on this page here. And yes, current events that have triggered these memories have been plentiful, not all of them bad. I suppose I should talk about them twenty years later! Which seems to be the time it takes for things to settle in my head, so that you get a fully-Kenny-coloured overview of life!

9 comments:

Perakath said...

Kenny budday coming up? Shall I invited?

Preeti Aghalayam aka kbpm said...

Perakath- you want hide inside a blanket with me while the day passes by? Come along then. :-) Its 36 yaar, trying hard to forget its looming up existence.

Sue said...

Happy birthday Kenny and don't get too much icing on that blanket! :)

Choxbox said...

Happy birthday in advance babe.

May your life be full of colour - whichever shade you like at whichever moment.

Diwakar Sinha said...

I guess it is one of those things I am yet to encounter..

Parul said...

Oh but women reach their peak at 36, non? The best of Kenny is yet to come, world.

chestnut said...

One Art -By Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

Sands said...

Happy b'day :)

madraskaari said...

Not too bad this side of the line, I can assure you..