Nostalgia is good, especially if the person indulging in it is a good raconteur. Many a time, such a gifted and acerbic story-teller can enthrall a group with rib tickling tales from the past, as a part of his nostalgic visits. Nostalgia is a balm too, especially for lonely elders, who physically cannot and do not want to grapple with the complexities of current lives. My take on nostalgia, especially when pining older people are involved, is that people resort to nostalgia not only because life `then' was nicer and they themselves were happier. But also because they just don't want to adapt to less appealing conditions, which they find unseemly. They have consciously erected this mental block of an aversion to make changes in their own attitude towards daily life and cope with simple but new demands. While everyone is entitled to a bit of nostalgia now and then, if people tend to take refuge in it and make it a permanent nest, it only means they would like to ignore reality and live elsewhere, in a space they were comfortable, long back. What such people fail to comprehend is that there is a definite limit to the quantum of their nostalgia others can digest.
Some elders have this compulsive habit of recollecting bits of their own lives about four/five decades ago, given any excuse or opening; this has youngsters around them invariably scurrying to all available exit routes. They disperse like marathon runners when the gunshot is heard - only that they scoot in any direction they can find, with the sole intention of avoiding the elder chewing his cud. Even grandchildren tend to make faces when an old man begins `You know, in our school days.....' and try to decamp. While this kind of recollections are eminently suitable for peer sessions in which all participants are known to each other and they share knowledge of the subject matter, they invariably repel other audiences.
Nostalgia Afflicted Elders (NAEs) have this tendency to screw up their noses at many things contemporary, including current movies. They would rather be watching some 1950s movie, where people stood rooted to one place and delivered long dialogues (actually monologues mostly); that is, when they get tired of singing a few songs at a stretch. Five minutes into the new movie on Netflix which the family sits down to watch together, the NAE would make appropriate noises and detach himself from the group rapidly and recede into nostalgia. Later on he would be kind enough to explain that he found the goings on in the movie too fast, too bizarre (he is probably right, I have no beef with this) and it was all beyond his comprehension. Truth is, the movie was not as slow as the old ones he likes, in which you could miss twenty minutes completely and come back to find that the two characters have just moved sideways about one inch each, while incessantly talking. Even if you take an NAE to a movie in a multiplex, chances are bright that fifteen minutes into the movie, you would receive some input like `you see, in our days we had only touring talkies and they were so much more enjoyable' as a preface before he passionately launches into the merits of old cinema halls, preventing others from enjoying the experience.
If you take an avid NAE to a restaurant, even one which serves all-time favourites which they too enjoy, as soon as a plate of idli and vadai makes its appearance on the table, the nostalgia bomb which had started ticking minutes ago goes `boom'. There will be a painful comparison of the idli and vadai - shape, size, colour, softness and other attributes - to those served in some restaurant which had ceased to exist some five decades back. There will be critical comments about the service, extolling the virtues of the server in that old restaurant which had passed into oblivion. Of course, prices of the dishes would be a constant issue on all such occasions, as if inflation is something irrelevant to life and should be totally ignored to keep prices frozen. Wonder if all NAEs would have accepted salaries paid to people in 1960s, even at their prime or before their retirement in 1990s or 2000s.
Once a friend, who had bought a new BMW too his visiting uncle for a ride. To the mortification of the friend who just wanted to give the old man some good time and also show off a bit, the NAE got hit with a serious bout of nostalgia, as soon as he settled in his seat. He looked at the all the dials, panels and gadgets inside the car and his sensibility rebelled immediately, preventing him from even understanding what is what. He promptly declared that in his days, life was very simple with only Ambassador and Premier Padmini as the cars available. You selected one or the other, if you wanted a car and that was uncomplicated. Nowadays, he lamented, there are fifty cars to select from; as if wider choice of cars is a negative factor. He just ignored the quality of the cars and the technological improvements that have been brought in. I thought this NAE was a classic example of someone who cannot come abreast of developments at least to the extent necessary.
Such an NAE is most likely to say, with an air of dismissiveness (a) Vijay Manjrekar's cover drive was more delightful to watch (when Virat Kholi has just done a majestic cover drive on TV); (b) Rod Laver had a fluidity in his strokes that is unmatched (looking at Roger Federer moving around the court and demonstrating his artistry with the tennis racquet); (c) Ashwin or Nathan Lyon cannot hold a candle to the off spinning abilities of Jim Laker. No doubt all those worthies from the past were brilliant performers in their own right and people have every right to recall their greatness. But, the problem lies in the fact that the NAE would just not recognize the virtues of contemporary sportsmen or life in general. That is the nub.
Don't get me wrong. Nostalgia is good as a release valve and works like one of the restoratives Jeeves makes for Wooster, so long as the time and context is right. But for anyone, nostalgia cannot become life. Surely, there are plenty of old people, who enjoy contemporary life as much as their nostalgic recollections and that is probably a much better state to be in.
When my dear wife finished reading this, with a sarcastic smile she told me `let me look out for the next time when you start ruminating about your school days in Tuticorin', Touche!!
