Excerpt from ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’
“One of the best and most painful things about time travelling has been the opportunity to see my mother alive. I have even spoken to her a few times; little things like “Lousy weather today, isn’t it??” I give her my seat on the El, follow her in the supermarket, and watch her sing. I hang outside the apartment my father still lives in, and watch the two of them, sometimes with my infant self, take walks, eat in restaurants, go to movies. It’s the ‘60s, and they are elegant, young, brilliant musicians with all the world before them. They are happy as larks; they shine with their luck, their joy.
I see how my mother is with me. Now she is pregnant, now they bring me home from the hospital, now she takes me to the park, now she takes me to the park in a baby carriage and sits memorizing scores, singing softly with small hand gestures to me, making faces and shaking toys at me. Now we walk hand in hand and admire the squirrels, the cars, the pigeons, anything that moves. “
Reading this just made me want to go back in time and see what my parents were like when I was this young, what did I use to do when I was young, how did they spend time with me then, what would they be like then? Now it’s not like I haven’t seen the photographs of those times or don’t know what they looked like back then. It’s just that how was life for them back then?? I just think there can't be any other form of love that is as unconditional, chaste, and pious as the love parents have for us. I don’t think anyone is able to experience the level of happiness parents feel when they first set eyes on us, unless he/she becomes a parent himself/herself. If we stop and think it’s unfair for the chid not to be able to comprehend or understand what his parents feel for him at that time but somehow he/she does feel their happiness. And I think comprehending or understanding is rendered useless when we hear our parents’ account of our childhood. The reality couldn’t have been as beautiful as their account, partly because you share their joy of telling these anecdotes in hearing them, partly because parents’ version makes it more soothing than understanding it back then could ever have been. Just try and picture that one moment of your baby self playing or laughing at nothing in particular and no one else to watch, but them. At that moment they are oblivious of everything in the world because at that moment you are their world, nothing is more important to them in that one instant except your smile. Whatever problems they might have in life, becomes secondary to that one moment of your happiness. I remember one of Anupam Kher’s dialogues which he says in response to Ranbir’s question “Why did you stop taking photographs papa when it was your passion?” his reply was “you grew up son and had no more time for pictures and for me photography meant taking just your pics.” I’ve seen my pictures when of my one year old self sitting in my mum’s lap on a boat in Nainital, my dad sitting alongside. I don’t remember myself looking cuter than that ever, don’t remember mum looking more beautiful and dad looking more handsome. Talking of cuteness I remember one or two pictures with Mona. There’s this one where she is shouting at me, one where I have my toy pistol aimed at her. Photographs are the best way to preserve memories, just thinking of them makes you smile but they do bring some poignance with them. You look at them and think that life cannot go back to being that simple, that beautifully ignorant and innocent, but that’s the beauty of childhood memories, the tears they bring are not of sadness but of hope and contentment that true happiness does exist in the world and it's right there inside ourself, we just need to reach for it.
