Destructive Distillation

This is one of the two days in year where I am not shouted at for receiving calls after midnight. This is MY DAY. Guaranteed happy day every year. Friends and relatives call from all over to wish me. I, like everyone else on their birthdays, get royal treatment, unusual amount of love and affection. It is seen by everyone that I aint unhappy in the remotest way. People overlook my misdemeanour and bear even the stupidest activities. Why would I do that anyway? I get gifts, new clothes, and lots of other goodies. But what tops it all is the quality time I spend with family and friends. Birthdays are an inescapable treat. This one time I want to escape.

I am celebrating my 20^th birthday today. But this is one birthday, (I guess the first) I really did not want to come. I hardly can imagine the non anticipation of birthday I had been through all this month. I wanted to give it a miss and have been wondering how I could skip a day on the Gregorian calendar.

I don’t want to be a 20’s guy. It is painstakingly difficult to digest the fact that around one third (or may be one fourth) of your life is over. Maybe I should feel happy and proud over the fact that I am no longer in the children bracket of any kind and everyone sees me as an adult. Well, one says that when he/she turns 16. 17, 18 or 19 makes no difference. 20 does!

The glorious teens have been the very base of my existence till now considering that all your finest and strong memories have been in those times. Now to reflect on the fact that the phase has gone is depressing. Seeing a 2 in the tens digit place of my age is frightening. It somehow signifies now that I have grown old or rather come of age.

When I first realized this a few months ago, I assessed what was going on in life. The passing turmoil then brought in change and induced zeal. I understood the essence of 20 and the responsibilities and duties that come attached with it. Results now matter to me as they never did before. Maybe because I finished first seldom and now the joy of achievement eludes me. The ecstasy of success was something I was eager for then (and still am). I had made up a list of things I had to do before I turned 20. And the gloom descended now due to the incompletion of the task list. I am not ready yet and it is precisely the reason I am writing this. I am gonna delay it for an year. Why the celebration without success? I will leap from 19 to 21 next year. For once I shall keep the fact of 20 aside. I shall be 19 for another year and make the most of it!!

Must be the family trip to Srisailam when I was three. Well, on thinking over it again I find that what I remember is a memory. This was the memory I had recollected when I was asked the same questions several years ago. But I fail to recollect the exact scenario. Only a snapshot remains. What I have is a memory of a memory.

Memories like the texture of sand, the lyrics and tune of your favourite song, the sound of knocking on the door are can be taken for granted. We know them too well. Memories are fragile objects; some of them are too risky to be trusted for a later use unless you have them noted down unbiased. Some memories do linger a long time. They must have created some intense emotion like love, hatred, joy, misery etc. I find a common man to retain memories of negative emotions like humiliation, misery etc much more efficiently than the positive ones. Maybe it has to do with our psyche like most other things we associate with.

Memories are formed by our senses and thus are invariably affected by our perceptions and impressions of or on various objects and persons. We tend to attach these existing feelings while creating new memories. This is one important reason why it is hard to form new opinions on people we already know. It is like past memories affect the newer ones. And every memory has strong vibes of feeling attached to it. We emphasise more on what we feel than what we see. Again we hardly look at everything we see.

Facts are more relevant than memories. A fact doesn’t change after a period of time or from person to person. There were ten chocolate chip biscuits in the Hide and Seek pack. Period. Where as memory can change the shape of a room, it can change the color of a car, height and build of a person. Memories can be distorted. Sometimes we don't want the truth. We make up our own truth. We tend to fill in the blanks in the memories not complete with what we think ought to be there. What makes them even more dangerous is that memories can be manufactured. This happens when our thoughts in several forms like dreams, criticisms, evaluations etc are converted into memory by our mind or even by someone ‘reminding’ you of something which dint exist or atleast hadn’t happened the way they paint it to be.

Memories are just an interpretation, they're not a record, and they're irrelevant if you have the facts. Facts are the ones we have to work our judgements and thinking on. Cos the never ending quest for humanity is the tenacity of being right.

Now what was the question again.. What was the earliest thing u remember in your life?

Hmmmm……………………