I was reading a line here , 'They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past.' It made me think of an antidote for nostalgia.What if people are given a chance to re-do or re-experience the moments they recall so sentimentally now.They can replay Mario and realize it wasn't so exciting after all,the rainbow-toy turned boring after a few minutes of tossing,Ainak Wala Jin seemed exciting only because it was the only show for kids back then,having little pocket-money was so uncool,having to wait an entire month for next volume of your fav. mags was so dull,playing the same outdoor games everyday was so colorless,having to spend 12 years of life in school was so frigging unfair.An unbiased visit to good-old-times will break the freeing news that those times weren't as sun-washed and wonder-lit as they appear now.If anything ,it was the attitude that made all mundane things sound so special.As C.S Lewis observed in 'Weight Of Glory' :

"The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them"

Such a deconstructive retrospection can free man of mind-consuming and slightly demotivating practice of wearing a blindfold of nostalgia that prevents us from observing the beauty that's still around us ,which, I feel, is even better than the one we have left behind.

Shaam se leke sehron mein
Dhoop jadi dopehron mein
Naya kuchh naya to zaroor hai
(Geet from Udaan)

I like candies.They are magical.They are quick portals of culinary pleasures..I recall once during maternity duty I bought candies from a khokha in the premises of L.W.H.I gave them to all my batch mates ( that's another thing I like about candies ; they're convenient to share,no body refuses to take them.).I got an apricot flavored candy. Standing right there, in the middle of labor room, amid all the hue and cry of patients and staff,pretending to listen to a doctor explaining the trembling CTG strips,I experienced a heavenly apricot treat ! I could actually feel the leathery touch of apricot skin,feel its juice trickle down my fingers, the slippery cold touch of its sunny pulp, and as i cracked open the center of the candy, a water-fall of sour and sweet apricot juice flowed jauntily down the edge of my tongue.Slllliiiikhhuuuup ! Aaahhh ! Similarly, once I got a falsa. And right now, while typing my love for candies, I'm suckling grapes.I'd love to taste water-melon and Aalu-bukhara sometime.

Few days back, Samia and I bought Halls. It was a fat candy in a tight sky-blue wrapper with snow-storm painted on it.We thought it would keep us thunda during journey back home in the precocious heat of April.Once settled comfortably in our favorite seats ( doublet by the window at the back of the bus ),we put the fat pearl-like candy in our mouths and... screamed ! It was so intense it burnt our palates ! It tasted just like Hoist and smelt like menthol extract that's used therapeutically as decongestant during flu.We sipped cold water over it. Our mouth turned into frozen caves of Siberia, warm wind of Mall Road blew in and out as we panted to release the chillness.

Back in 3rd year I discovered a candy named Kopico in a plastic jar on the counter of Alkareem.It tasted of finest coffee! It remained on top of my shopping-list whenever a friend asked ,' Alkareem se kuch lana hai?' Before that, AamRus used to be the pet of my eye. I loved the taste-bud-tingling sourness in its center....

 

I saw him after a long time.He looked the same as always : smiley faced , salt n pepper haired and just as inquisitive. He was asking a question with concentration ( What are the latest advances in Diabetes Cure ?).His widened eyes gazed at a distant fixed point.My eyes traced the cut of his round face.The shine on his broad forehead.The curling of his thin lips.The sound of his musical voice.The shape of his thoughtful words.The texture of his sweet tone.And how the assemblage of these all replaced him by another person,from another world, and another time.And how this person blinked back at me,his head tilted to one side,his eyes widened in surprise.

'Bus?'

His whisper bounced off the wall and echoed gloomily.

'Bus?' 

I didn't lend a hand to hold his little question.I knew it'd be heavier than it looked.Unsupported,like a blow ball  it floated in mid air and remained thus for what seemed like an eternity.

I must have stopped breathing for I exhaled turbulently.The ghostly tuft of feathers exploded into a thousand pieces like a flock of birds scattered by a bullet.They all dropped down lifeless agitating ripples in a brook that had broken loose out of the crevices of a rugged black mountain.The brook gushed forcefully down the slope and on reaching the plain, abruptly, it ran dry.The dead birds vanished along with it,decomposed by the land, only to reincarnate as flower that on first sight of the fatal drought utters in surprise a question that ricochets in the godless universe for an eternity : ' Bus?'