Recently when I was traveling with a Bus, I happened to hear an interesting conversation. The conversation was in native language and people were sharing jokes. The articulation of those jokes was wonderful and really hilarious. The situations and circumstances that guy was sharing were quite local but they had ethnic taste which may not be available anywhere else. Those dialogues were unheard, never recorded or documented ever and I am sure, will never get recorded/archived.
That time, I realized the value of the lost timeless moments. Sometimes I think the kind of childhood I (for that matter, my generation) enjoyed, may not be available to the current generation. Those small pleasures like making a paper boat and let it flow in the rainwater and running behind it wherever it goes, the pleasure of being half-naked and running around in the rain-water, sitting along with my mother in a chilled winter night in the kitchen besides "chullha" and blowing the air on fire with an iron pipe ("phoonkni"), sleeping on a "charpai" in a summer night on a village street and so on.
Some of it is lost and some will be lost in the coming time. Nobody will know those small pleasures ever. Similarly, ever wondered how people in India or for that matter anywhere in the world used to live before 500 years ago. What were their circumstances, living styles, problems, limitations and small pleasures they lived for. Nobody knows how the court of Akbar really looked like at that time. How he looked like, how he behaved, what about his Navratnas and things like that. We may cherish the celluloid version of Akbar's life but in reality the situation and circumstances could be entirely different. Whatever is documented are praises for the invader or emperor. The real social scenario and behavioral aspects are lost somewhere which can never be tracked now. So you know what, many of those timeless aspects are lost forever.
