Saturday, April 27, 2013

Sunday Sentiment: Smelling the past


Since my childhood I am inquisitive  abut the stars and the universe. I still remember vividly, I used to spend hours looking at the stars in dark nights. Like many other things, my father is responsible for this as well. He provided all the ingredients to ignite the imagination in a child’s mind. In this case he provided  few books on space - mostly Russian books translated into Bengali. Anyway I have absolutely no intention to irritate you on sharing my knowledge on space science. Yes it is in true sense rocket science to me and I understand as little as any other common modern day sophisticated clerk- a software engineer does. But I still spend some time in the evening looking at stars mostly during power cut and when no power backup provided in our apartment. I still like the philosophy behind it. Yes the philosophy. When you look at the stars you do a time travel. When you are seeing a star today. Actually you are seeing the stars at the state of it thousand and millions years ago. May be it does not even exist today. These all things excite me.

Let me introduce to the main topic. It is all about time travel. As I have already given you an example of it. But is this the only way?

Lavelle Road in the morning

Now I have to walk through Lavelle road in Bangalore to reach office. It is one of the best roads in Bangalore where for the sake of development everything is not broken and trees are not chopped of.  You can still get a feel of old Bangalore; how it used to be, along with a co-existence of Microsoft office building and High-end ultra luxury ITC hotel. Few days back when I was rambling fast though this road I got to see the pathway surfaced with yellow flowers, Radhachura flower. Just for reference, the English name of the tree is Peltophorum pterocarpum. I am definitely not going to claim this is the best flower I have ever seen and that is the smell I like most. But I have my own childhood memory associated with it. We used to have the same tree infront of my house. I have so many childhood attachments with it. Yes, this summer season is their blossoming season. Post an afternoon nap in hot Bengal summer, I used to find our balcony is completely covered with those yellow flowers. I have seen so many birds building their nest in it. All those memory immediately flashed back with that sight of these yellow fallen flowers even before looking at that tree. So who says you can only travel time looking at the star. Don’t you think this is also a time travel for your mind! Sometime some perfume makes you remember someone special, some smells of room fresheners refreshed back the memory some hotel on vacation. These all are time travel. You just have to pay little attention to observe your mind.

Peltophorum pterocarpum. Picture taken from internet. All copyright  reserve to original source


Anyways today I can't get out of the hangover of Radhachura. All on a sudden, one day that tree fell down during a mild storm. I have seen tree standing strong against so many of those storms before. But there was some vested interest. Our neighbours wanted that trees to be chopped off as it was preventing them from extending their house. I saw my mom crying that day when they were cutting that tree to clear it of. This was pre “One tree one life slogan” era. Now it has just became a slogan and popularity stance. Companies only ask you to think about environment when you are taking print out. In line they are more concerned about the opex cost. Just observe how many unnecessary print out they are taking for the sake of process, not making the process paper free. Anyway, back to the story - I saw my mom crying and I am pretty sure she was not crying thinking about polar bear and how they will suffer with one more tree gone and the increase of global warming. She was crying for that attachment. That we really do have. After so many years, I moved to Kolaghat  Engineer college . Away from home for first time. Somehow I never enjoyed my stay  away from home in Kolaghat and I always used to be little depressed and thinking about home. During my second year, infront of our hostel we used have the same tree. Somehow I think that tree was closest friend of mine during that time. I used to feel that is the lost thing I have from my home. After that I have crossed so many radhchura trees. But that day again walking down Lavelle road refreshed all my memories.  It taught me a great lesson. Sometime just give little attention to small things and you may feel as they say as tag line of add campaign “Life is just awesome”

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