My OperaWhen Memory Is Back To Life.
Sunday, April 24, 2011 2:05:53 AM
The longer the life, the bigger the sum total of memories. They keep coming back sometimes to enliven, sometimes to bite you. And most of all, you never know when and where or how they are going to overcome you.
All my life has been a story of failure. I failed to build my career as I wanted. I failed to build a happy family. Poverty defined my charachter. At the fag end of my life I was forced to find some job, small or part-time or whatever, to feed my family.
I found a small job which I would have been in for close to 30 years had I accepted it earlier. The same job would be fetching me three times the salary I will get now, if I had not rejected many such jobs when they literally used to flow in. All this made me almost cry.
I was waiting for my certificates to be verified. I was sitting in the conference hall of the district collectorate alongwith other selected candidates. A feeble man of my age came to take the seat next to me. He was silent, looked poverty-ridden. His face was pale. At first I thought he had also come for certificae verification, but he hadn't. I felt I knew this man. But I could remember no more. After sometime he got up and placed some flowers on the Collector's table and came back to his seat. He used to mumble something. Obviously he was mentally unstable or perhaps completely mad. Intermittently he kept gazing at me. Before I could start a conversation he suddenly left the place with eyes full of tears.
Now it was for me to actually break down. I couldn't keep control of myself. Trying to hide my tears, as I looked through the window to the vast sky beyond, I remembered, this was the boy in the same class with me in school some 35 to 40 years ago. He was a cheerful boy with a mesmerizing smile, always full of joy and fun, always happy to help others. I gethered from others that everyday he comes at the same time, places flowers on the Collector's table and leaves. Now I remembered he used to offer me flowers and say, 'Ashok! You are a very good boy. I want you to be the collector of our district. But never forget me'. This is the boy. He came, sat beside me, reminded me of what is a combination of the pleasant old days and the untold misery of the present, and left. Yet I couldn't recognize him. How to confess that I am guilty?
