Childhood

Once, I was completely someone else. I always said what I had to say. Now, I say something else.

The most pressing urge I experience from within me is to go back in time, maybe back to school, maybe even back further, to infancy perhaps. Besides its urgent thrust, the urge is made unbearable by its inherent futility. I am unfortunately aware I am on a one-way. I, like billions of my contemporaries, have to go forward. Don't confuse it with upwards, better-wards or anything. Just plain forward. What makes the urge pressing is the sentiment that the farther back I look in time, the more homogeneous I see myself as. I was one with the people around me, one with nature; one with the Rickshaw wale uncle who took me to school everyday as much as I was one with the Car wale uncle who'd come to my aid on days the former would curiously disappear. The further back we go, the more all of us were similar. The more we were similar, the more we understood each other better. And even when we didn't, it was for the better. Years of unguided, misinformed, intuitive lessons learnt weren't such a profitable education after all. It feels meaningless, like an addict six months into drug abuse, on the point of no return. It also feels restless, like that addict in rehabilitation. The addict at least has to go through them one at a time. And the addict's case at least has hope.

I can be someone else in the future. I can say this because I know I was someone else in the past. The self, well, then, is an unreliable reality. Maybe it is not a reality at all, but unreliable it sure is.