meenu mehrotra

15 day of may 1992- the day i got engaged to be married . its been 16 years since that day when my life turned a new leaf and like all changes, altered its face forever. a slow metamorphosis of a 23 year old girl to a woman and a mother.

time has an intriguing character.the reality seems to skim over the tides of struggle and joy with an almost eerie ease.what was is now the indelible past and what will be is the unknown future and we seem tied to our present by these fragile threads of consciousness however militant we are in escaping from its entangles

they say we are primarily what we are conditioned to be since our childhood. most part of us is our memories and i feel thats true to a great extent.of course we change as we grow and we grow as we change but somewhere our basic core remains untouched; a part of our soul remains unsullied and still inspite of life’s experiences.

the past entwines with our present clumsily and colours our present distinctly. Doesn’t it?

 just to give you a crude example- if your short temper has caused you embarassing moments in the past, you do consciously try to eliminate it in the present. the memory of the past is a cruel reminder which compels you- to be careful.

similarly there are so many bitter and sweet memories which influence us in our present. and then there are feelings which we have experienced in the past , which considerably affect our dealing of the present situation.  our minds are programmed in such a way as to store our experiences and make use of them when the present demands it. just think how does a child know that  touching a cup of hot tea might scald him? the memory of burning his hand in the past is enough to make him careful in the future.

life winds its way through the  terrain of pleasure and pain irrespective of our responses to them but its what we are ( our thoughts ), what memories we have clung to, what we have chosen to discard on the way, that will decide the altitude of our flight eventually. what we discard is what we don’t deem important but what we retain through the filter of our understanding , perception and experiences is what remains .

think about it.

till next time

take care