Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Am I getting older !!

I always had the impression or the belief that myself and others of my age are still quite young. So, more often than not, it is a pleasure to indulge in pranks, make silly, nonsensical jokes and what-nots. No need to behave in a mature manner, that maturity and thoughtfulness (assuming of course that I possess it) preferably lies underneath the facade of childish playfulness. However, I recently have had train of thoughts which led me to think otherwise.

A few days ago, I chanced to look upon an old Maths notebook of 11th standard. To digress a bit, 11th and 12th standard were the only times I really studied and evolved as a person. Credit goes to my school but mainly to my coaching institute – Vidya Mandir Classes who gave me an experience worth a lifetime. Those lectures about life; the amount of intense study, sometimes upto 12-14 hours a day which were accomplished without a grudge or a thought- why am I doing this.. those days really left me with a lot of poignant memories. They were inspirational. Period. I never needed to or had the will to work as hard again, neither during my BE, maybe a bit during 1st semester of Masters. So to speak, I always held 11th and 12th standard as the point in my life from where it all began. Those are the days I always held as the start date to calculate anything...

But now looking at that notebook of 11th standard, I happened to glance at the date of a class. It was 9th Dec 2001. 8 years (7.5 to be precise) ago. That suddenly seemed like a long long time. And yet as I glanced through that notebook, I remembered things as though they had happened yesterday.

In another incident this weekend, a 17-year old kid (notice the way I call a 17-year old person a kid) scored a wonderful match-winning goal for Manchester United. I looked at him, and thought, not so long ago I used to dream to do something like that. Not so long ago, I dreamt of hitting a century (even double would do) in a world cup, scoring a goal or two in football, winning a grand slam ... and so on. I am sure everyone goes through such fantasies as a teenager.

At twenty three and a half, questions like 'am i getting older' shouldn't ideally be going through one's mind. But those reminiscences left me with this feeling. Dreams I had, things I thought happened just yesterday actually happened a long time ago; 8-10 years ago. Those years in between passed away without my realizing it.

Maybe all this is like a moving window. Maybe two-three years down the line, I would have forgotten school, and would remember things starting only from my BE and so on.. I certainly hope not. Yet again here I remember a comment in Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix by Dumbledore : “Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.”

I certainly hope I never I commit that mistake.

Of course, all these are just random senti thoughts; it could just be the case my food didn't agree with me today, or I got up on the wrong side of the bed; which led me to write such stuff. Tomorrow I will get back to my nonsensical normality.


5 comments:

  1. Hey, nice stuff... Nice and morose...

    But seriously, good stuff, liked it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. :-O what has that to do with the post...???

    ReplyDelete
  3. i certainly agree with your observations, being in exactly the same settings as you are, i distinctly remember my 10th, 11th and 12th std, but years after that are just a hazy memory.i too have the same fear as urs, getting old at 23 and half;)

    ReplyDelete