Haunting Remembrances - Chapter I

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Whenever I have the leisure and the luxury to repose a few minutes in reflection, I find that my mind flies back instantly to the place and time where it all started for me. The mind does not pause in transit, nor dwells for even that minuscule moment on that great domain that lies between my present and that hazy realm, that rough-shod expanse which now forms the greater part of my life. It is as if the days and years spent out of my birthplace, momentous as they have been, are now like a great parenthesis in my life's narrative: a vacuous wilderness that I wandered into by mistake; something that matters not to my heart and mind a fraction as much as the moments I spent in Shillong - the Shillong I knew as a child and right upto boyhood - which is now almost a dominion of fancy for me, so many times have I visited it in my visions of remembrance. It now feels surreal that the Shillong of my growing-up years was actually a place of soil and plant; soul and heart; gentle air and sunshine and rain; a place I have actually breathed in and befriended for eternity. Sometimes I feel I must have been a very good human being in my past life that God chose to prepare me for the rigors of life in His very own sanctum, a virtual garden of Eden, which would serve for ever as my only succor and solace in desperate times; an oasis in a hot and arid desert; an escape from everything in life that provided a stark contrast to it.

To be continued....

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