THE GOOD OLD DAYS

(I return to these pages after a month,but rest assured..... my vacation has started......it feels good to be back!)

It's a wonderful experience to rediscover the neighbourhood you grew up in....and sometimes a painful one,too.Those well-beloved lanes ,secret hideouts....."addas" where you endlessly plotted and planned future escapades with your gang.....

Everything seemed so right then,there was something in those places that was reassuring. You wouldn't give them a second thought.And yet,when you see them changed beyond recognition,it seems a part of your past has been cruelly snatched away from you....like the passing of an old friend.

In the past 3 years,I seldom had time to check on my neighbourhood........indeed the last one year I had been away to college,and before that.....way too busy with the endless cycle of books,studies,school and tuitions.

So when I took a nice long stroll on my first day of vacation....I was in for a rude shock.

Gone was the sleepy old bunch of houses that used to greet me.....in its place was a conglomerate of cramped,soulless high-rise buildings eating up every nook and cranny that we,as kids,had endlessly explored.

Gone were the maidans in which we spent hours and hours.....playing every imaginable sport(and then inventing some of our own! )

The faces seemed familiar,yet alien to me. Kids I had seen playing with tennis balls now sported highlighted locks,leather jackets and tons of attitude.The carefree chatter of children had been replaced by the annoyingrumble of screaming motorcycles,most of them driven by kids barely into their teens(and by the look of it,already inspired by Lewis Hamilton).

I don't know if I am getting too paranoid about the inevitable passage of time,but their was something undeniably sad about this sudden "end to innocence",so to speak.There was nothing to be done,so I quietly walked back home,to think about the good old days.......

Here's to a golden summer for all of you......
Aditya