Of places and memories - contd.

 I often think about the houses where we were staying when i was a kid, trying to remember my life as a school going kid. Somehow, like the characters from "Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind", i have either blanked out those memories clean, or considering that i am never a good observer nor great at remembering incidents or for my lack of any appetite for doing new things, might've not had any thing that stands out as memory. At least that was how i used to convince myself, whenever i hear people go ga-ga about their childhood memories. Being an introvert whose world existed only inside the square tiled pages of comics, didn't help either. But after watching "Meiyazhagan" movie. feels like there is hope for cases like me as well!!! Konjam..illa..rombavay too muchaana expectation to imagine me like Arvindsamy, looks la solaleenga..character in that movie wise. I am quite sure there are several characters like Karthi in the movie, who re-live and masticate those memories and are a treasure trove of incidents not just about themselves but may have few to share about us as well. 

When i read reviews about the movie, somehow i felt closer to the story and considering that it was not a thriller or suspense genre, was a definite change from the steady stream of such stories abounding movie space in recent times. The very first shot of the movie was about a lamp getting extinguished, with darkness engulfing. A door being closed and a boy crying silently, lying under a tree. If at all there were any doubts about the kind of beliefs that the director had, it was done and dusted in first few minutes. Most of the background score resembled a oppari setting and for the first 15 minutes, it was mostly dark as the set up was late in the night. The scene turns bright with the introduction of Arvind swamy, the elder age character of that crying boy. He is forced to visit his native, to attend his cousin sister wedding upon her insistence. The story slowly crawls along with him, as he passes by the places he used to frequent in his childhood. In the wedding hall, he happens to meet or rather the other way around, a talkative guy who immediately gets attached to him like a shadow. He even "conspires" to keep Aravind swamy at his place for the night and rest of the whole movie, till the last 15 minutes is about the conversation they both have over the night. Even though it dragged and was yawn inducing at times, it felt a refreshing change from all those fast paced movies with booming sounds of explosions. even though Kathi character reminiscences the entire childhood of his and all his memories of his times with Arvind swami, the latter hardly has any recollection of who Karthi is, even though he does manage to remember the associated incidents. This is where the context of this post begins (finally!!). 

I am currently residing in a hose which is bang opposite to the one where we were staying when i was less than an year old. For close to 6 years we had stayed in this same street till i completed my KG and primary in an near by school. I hardly have any recollection of how it looked at that time, for i rarely came across this street in the last couple of decades, even though we were just a stone's throw away. At times, some of our relatives, used to comment on how this place was couple of decades back and how it has totally changed, i hardly have a reference to recollect or relate to those statements. I don't remember most of my primary school mates, except for one or two whom i comes across very rarely, for i am not even sure if they are even in this country leave alone the surroundings. Most of the houses, including the one we had stayed had undergone changes and several of them are newly built. I am not sure how many Karthi's i would need to introduce me back to my childhood. Unlike the Arvind swamy character, who was half a day away from his native, i was not even half a kilometer away from the places where i spent my childhood. But rarely do i have that sense of connect with those houses for it all seemed to have been blacked out from my memory. Not much pleasant thoughts or happy ones for that matter comes to mind. The only recollection i have is of those "kayalan kadai" or "pazhaya paper" kadais, where they will have old comics for which they would pay back half the rental cost if we surrender it back to them on same condition. Those petty shops where they had the story books hung sideways on their mini doors, which they later began to staple in the middle, for i used to read those books standing behind those doors without removing them from their shelf. I remember my neighbours and school mates houses where i would shamelessly rummage through their cupboards and shelves for story books , much to the embarrassment of my mom. Apart from couple of memories, here and there, i hardly feel like how the characters feel in that movie about their houses and their native. I love my place and my city and would never ever want to leave from here. But felt it would be nice to have a reason as well for that thought!