Curiouser and curiouser!

It’s almost half an hour that I am back from the library. It’s been an experience! Not that it’s the first time I visited one. It’s just that the trip had revealed a treasure.

And since I came back, I felt an urgent need to write. Despite all the promises and resolutions, it’s almost exactly 6 months that I had last updated my blog. Why on earth do I remember it now? Did nothing of interest happened during these months that could have found a mention here in my little corner. Of course – there had been sweet little things, precious little pebbles that I gathered and wanted to share. But nothing like this happened before.

Never in this time, did I had the courage to steal a few minutes from my to do list spread across the day to do useless little things. It was always a run-run-run situation. First few hours in the morning, you have a deliverable at 10 AM. Second, you have to finish a regular writing job. Third, you have to go to work. Fourth, back home, make dinner. Fifth, when are you supposed to finish your daily review jobs? Oh! You had an article to write for a publication. What will be tomorrow’s breakfast and lunch and dinner? It’s someone’s baby shower this weekend – are you doing the shopping? You have to mail everybody about the event. By the time you lost count, you are overwhelmed by peaceful sleep.

Not every time, and certainly not for once in the past 6 months, did I lay my hands on Alice in Wonderland.

That’s what made my trip to the library so special. As I was casually browsing through the bookshelves at the English literature section, I stopped at the two Lewis Carroll creations lying neatly side-by-side. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. It was several seconds before I could collect the courage to pick them up. It was just like when all of a sudden you come across the chocolate flavour you delighted in during your childhood years; the one that was lost all these years. Still you are afraid to take a bite because it is forbidden at this age and health and yet you cannot simply let it go like that. There was a sudden impulse of mixed happiness and chaos – do you want it? No. I have other things to do. I can’t indulge! No time for pampering! No! No!.. and gradually, the wish to enjoy life defeats all reasons.

How would I explain or share how is it to go back years behind today. As if today is a slippery glass surface on which you are trying to cling with all your might. These lines, these poetries, these sweet nothings that I had read and enjoyed and basked in and laughed at so many years back come back to me today with more than what it had given me 20 years back. Not only does it brings back the fun and the happiness that it brought when I was small, it brings a pack of varied emotions on realising that we have grown up beyond all needlessnesses, nonsense reasons, and fairy tales. Almost 20 years later, it makes you blissful again, reminding of the happy times you had with the White Rabbit and the Red Queen, the March Hare and the Cheshire Cat, and the Queen of Hearts and her tarts.

It’s wonderful to forget the clock and the to do lists. For the past hour that I was browsing through the pages, revisiting my wonderland, it seemed this is for what I woke up today. It made my day. Truly, Lay it where Childhood’s dreams are twined, in memory’s mystic band.