Eventually everything in life merges into one and river runs through. I wonder if this river can be called nostalgia. The future of the past is not uncertain because it rests on the pages of eternity. Last night while reading a sonnet of Shakespeare in the serene silence of the night, I was flooded with emotion. I deeply shared the feeling of the great poet and found myself melted into his words.
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.
It’s wonderful to think how we find peace in pain. The idea of a real life gets nourishment from tears because pain brings us closer to our hearts. A Tagore song, Amar khela jokhon chilo tomar shoney, is another wonderful piece that gives me much pleasure. A beautiful song which fill the heart with distant memories and creates a longing for the lost times without any feeling of stress. To me life is a big book and an Urdu poet explained it like this. I will translate a few lines of an Urdu poem. The poet wrote†The page just now blown away by the wind was a page from the book of my life. Some were written with tears, some were erased with tearsâ€.
Nostalgia is like the sparkling cool sediment settled on the bottom of an ocean, at rest, in peace and in solitude. The term nostalgia describes a yearning for the past, often in idealized form. The word is a learned formation of a Greek compound, meaning "returning home", a Homeric word, meaning "pain, ache". It was described as a medical condition, a form of melancholy, in the early modern period, and came to be an important topic in Romanticism. In common, less clinical usage, nostalgia sometimes includes a general interest in past eras and their personalities and events, especially the "good old days" of a few generations back recast in an idyllic light. Sometimes it is brought on by a sudden image or remembrance of something from one's childhood.
I find nostalgia as a good spring board from where one can recollect some lost moments of life and for many people nostalgia is a source of encouragement to live. In aesthetics and literature it plays a significant role for superb creations. Poet Rabindranath Tagore used his nostalgia to create some of his great poems and songs. One of his songs always pushes me to the brink of emotion, ‘Epothey ami jey gechi bar bar, bhulinitho ekdino, aajki ghuchilo chinho tahar, uthilo bonero trinoâ€. I traveled in this road so many times, has it been lost and covered by the wild grass? ‘. A poem by poet Madhusudhan Dutta deeply touches my heart, ‘Dasherey rekho ma money’. Mother, please remember this servant. What a vivid expression of a wounded feeling and a heart breaking cry and longing to be remembered.
It’s a normal human nature to remember the past with emotion. At a certain stage of life nostalgia becomes the source peace and relaxation mixed with deep pain and tears. A blissful and philosophical life is always rich with good memories.
Poet Jibanananda Das wrote, Sujatakay bhalobastan ami, ekhonoki bhalobashi? Setha obosorey bhabber kotha, oboshor tobu nei’. I used to love Sujata, do I still love her? That’s matter to brood at leisure. But where is leisure? Last year a dear friend of mine died of cancer after suffering for 3 years. After his funeral I was leaving the graveyard but suddenly without any ones knowledge returned to his grave again. I was overwhelmed by the difference between life and death. A tsunami of memories enveloped my entire existence for a man who lived, loved and did so many things but suddenly went to oblivion? An Urdu poet wrote, na udhaio meray khaak thokrsey kabr zalim, ehi eik nishani reh gayee meary payerki. O heartless death do not blow away my ashes, this is the only sign I left of my love.
Life is a tremendous journey by itself. In the span of some years we try to grab the entire creation. We guess, we question, we answer and at will nullify as well. But how much we know of this illusive life? When we stand under a star decked sky on a clear dark night do we remember ourselves? From all these exercise we just create memories and bank them unknowingly in the vaults of the past. When we look back in solitude we float there to smile brood and cry. We become nostalgic and we want them to be alive.
During the summer time on the weekends I occasionally visit cemeteries. I like it because this is a perfect place to meet the past there. I pass through the rows of graves pregnant with rich memories telling the stories of life silently. I stand and read the tomb stones one by one and try to fathom the lives they lived. Once passed a tiny grave of a five years old girl. The heart broken father wrote, God gave us a gift of an angel but He wanted the gift backâ€. In Hollywood saw a grave with a tomb stone read like this’ ‘That’s all folks’.
Finally again the last two lines from the sonnet of William Shakespeare,
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.
Akbar Hussain
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