Kumaon nostalgia - day 4

Today to Nainital and it is tinged with more glimpses of the past. In the courts I see the musty registrar’s room where Fredy and I were last present to make our wills. I wonder whether the inkpad used for making thumb impressions is a relic, the same I used before. Then we drive past the gates of Sem and Allsi, now part and parcel of our histories – Fredy’s and mine and Bianca’s and Kartik’s. It strikes me that these are tangible things in a sometimes shadowy past. The metal of the gate and brick walls are solid and will surely last beyond us all.

Later, I clean up the house, arranging all the linen in neatly labeled drawers. I spend hours going through boxes of things long forgotten – pictures, letters, a half done stamp collection, even a colorful parandhi from my ethnic Indian phase. Finally, I sleep for hours and hours (as if stocking up for the sleep drought I know will follow). A certain cocoon-like quality has always been the hallmark of this place. Here, the mundane does not touch one. It is a place to liberate one’s senses, indulge oneself and eschew all form of discipline. Even when I lived here all those years ago, while the day may not have brought anything more significant than a child’s scraped knee – still I was insulated from the soul-killing and the banal. Maybe herein lies the secret to being eternally young, where time and events don’t touch you.