Does it ever happen that the mind gets stuck on a past moment for an extended period of time? It happens very often with me now, very often. Sometimes I go back running around in my school, sometimes lazying as the 12 yr old. I am not talking about the physical apparition but my belief, momentarily out of the petri, only the moments are long enough now to savor what I might have missed as the 12 yr old.

The first rain in the morning and then the 15 km run again…I ran 15 kms last on 26th Jan last year. My marathon days ended in 2006 when I decided not to compete any longer (not that I clocked any great times, but I just wanted to run for pleasure, no group targets or trainings). However, I still love running, biking, any endurance that can wring my muscles and I can spend the entire day basking in chemicals that ran as a kid. What fun, mother cooking and I dozing off at 8 pm in the night…only that mother is replaced by wife in kitchen, but the practice is still alive. Happy with all the rain and thunder shower through the day, I must have conveyed umpteen times to my wife that I feel very happy, overwhelmed with life’s bounty and I am finding it difficult to contain myself. My happiness is getting me so excited that I don’t know what to do. It’s same happiness that I feel after my major achievements. For instance after the JEE results were declared in 1998, what do I do? I had nothing to do knowing well that life shall be a smooth flow for the next 4 yrs and I am a privileged fellow. The mind goes numb and for a long period of time nothing really bothers, not the dirt on the street, not the heat in the air, not the gnawing fly, not even a dead ant floating in the milk. Father’s chides no longer seem unpleasant, nor do any malicious memories that sit like an iron casket around the room…Somehow the mind starts noticing colors it has never before, it hears things it has never before, and feelings that never seem to have existed…as a participant and yet a spectator. The colors color me, yet I stay clean with the first wash of rain. Perfumes from the underbelly of the most exotic flowers and grass engage me for what ever attention is left in me.

What a day