Cooking for a Decade & More
“If it has passed from the high and beautiful to darkness and ruin, that was of old the fate of Arda Marred; that was of old the fate of Arda Marred…” J.R.R.Tolkien, The Silmarillion
I don’t believe we pass from necessarily from beauty to darkness, but something in that last sentence from The Silmarillion awakes a heartache within me for something I don’t even recall longing for.
It is in our nature to long for the past, not simply because things often appear golden in retrospect, but also because innocence has its own charm. The first time you read a new book is magic. You can return later and discover the things you missed of course, but that first magic is something else. When I read the first Harry Potter book for the very first time at fifteen, when I read The Sandman at thirty, I knew as the pages turned that something wondrous and enchanting and beautiful was drawing to a close, and it would never be the same again.
Others have their own magic. That first time you watch the coastline coming into view, the blues opening into expanse, the first time you see the rising sun kiss the snow… of course the sea is still eternal and changeless and magnificent every single time, and the mountains are glorious, filling you with gratitude just for being alive to see them, but that first overwhelming wonder doesn’t quite come back again.
The sea does not change. You do. You are not as naïve as you were at five, not as carefree as you were at fifteen. How could the joy be the same when you know everything changes? Find a story for the first time, a journey that is just beginning, and you are immersed in that magic. When you return to this world after the inevitable heartbreaks, the laughter makes you ache for what is never going to be the same again.
But these things happen. Years begin with new optimism, ending with weary compromises with a mundane reality. You grow old, gain some and lose some, driven by nostalgia and discontent and the inexplicable desire for something else, somewhere else. And one more page on the calendar is done with. We mourn the passing of the golden age, but we’re always also discovering ourselves anew in newer joys, experiences that changes us in subtle, invisible ways so that even if some miraculous time machine took you back to the past, you wouldn’t experience it the same way as you did before.
Well, congratulations to me. I’ve finally found time to put up my new year’s post at the end of March. You know how it is, stuff got in the way and I was tired but better than never, right? But turns out, it’s also a new decade.
2010. How long back was that? What a stupid question, you’re thinking. Of course it was ten years ago. And how long is ten years, exactly? In 2010 I completed my Masters. In 2020 I might just manage to complete my PhD (fingers crossed). Also, in 2010, I was beginning to expand my social media circles. Blogs were big back then and for a while I followed the #FridayFlash prompts and this little superhero story I wrote back then is actually a good marker of the difference between 2010 Me and 2020 Me. Imagine mixing up DC and Marvel and being so casually dismissive about all these imaginary people that present-day-me will die for? I am so sorry, Iron Man. And I love you 3000.
Jokes apart, I think stories are a good measure of who we are, who we become. The stories we inhabit between one point of time to another in some ways help shape how we think and what we believe. For me at least, this is true. And sometimes, they give us the words to explain this path. Who we have been, who we could be, where we are running to.
For the longest time, I had been looking at 2010 as the end of a road, the end of a cycle of examination and stress and anxiety and disappointment that had begun as early as 2002 with the preparation for my Class 10 boards. I was looking forward to the freedom of not being a student anymore. An unexpected phone call changed all that in 2011, starting me on a new cycle of academic milestones on the road where I find myself proofreading my thesis on the Gormenghast novels today, just as another chance phone call led me to apply to the job I hold today. You know that famous line from Om Shanti Om right? In my case, it’s been more a case of the universe conspiring to push me into paths I hadn’t envisioned.
But the question that was merely an airy fancy back in 2010 has become somewhat more urgent now- what next? And why? I have been running from this question all my life, giving myself external goals- the next exam, the next cricket match, the next world cup, the next Harry Potter book, the next holiday. I ducked behind classroom desks when this question reared its sleepy head- after graduation, masters, an MPhil, a PhD and so on. I thought I had worked out the answer at the onset of the last decade, but I was wrong. So what next? Do the Immortals ask themselves this question as they run, leaving a trail of history behind them? Or do they simply slink away into the corners of time, content to be living?
On certain rainy mornings when the world around seems transformed, when there are stories hidden beneath the everyday and the mundane and you are almost sure that you would be a different person in a different world if you could just find the portal, the longing becomes unbearable. The longing seeps like rainwater through the gap between the door and the threshold, and the grey-lighted sky pours in through all you walls and shut curtains. Where do I go? - You ask yourself. Where can I go so the rain in me can blossom into life? The dewy wind keeps calling.
“We all change, when you think about it. We’re all different people all through our lives.” And the night streams away, far beyond the iridescent mirror of the sky where the sunrise reflects itself. Morning rolls in with its quiet sounds- here a bird chirps, here a voice rings out sharp through the space of silence, snatches of passing ringtones, odd fragments of fleeting conversations, the ringing bell of a bicycle- a spring day awakes into being, the slightest chill of the air still clinging on, or is it me doing the clinging, holding on to light shawls and scarves like little warm pockets of comfort and safety? Summer arrives anyway. And just like that, a year is gone, and then a decade. We bubble, like stone soup, in the cauldron of the universe. Who knows what the end result will be, once the ingredients are all added?
We are all running away, at varying speeds, from who we were, carrying bits and pieces of who we used to be, and running towards who we are going to become. Sometimes when I turn the pages of old diaries I don’t recognize the girl who wrote them. And yet, outwardly, I’m still me. Still asking, still searching. What next? Where next? And why? In the time and space given to me, what can I do that matters? Who am I? That’s a big enough question to ponder for the next decade, I think.
In crazy balance at the edge of Time
Our spent days turn to cloud behind today-
And all tomorrow is a prophet’s dream-
This moment only rages endlessly
And prime
Is always the long moment of decay.
(‘Balance’, by Mervyn Peake, c.1939)
Quick 2019 review before you go. Wrote my first rap. Wrote my first Bengali song. Sure, I could do with better recording equipment, but still, I do what I can! Speaking of which, last month, my second original song got performed at the Vault festival in London. I couldn’t get there to do it myself (because I haven’t got my own TARDIS yet) and I have no receipt that it happened except an email and this poster, but hey, first international proxy gig, yeah?
What else? Wrote a bit of my thesis, completed another napowrimo and my first inktober. A few shocks. Ups and downs. I am grateful for everything anyway.
You can keep up with the stuff I do at the places below:
Happy 2020 to you. I know it’s looking hard at the moment, but we will tide over it.
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