VIRTUAL REALITY

Clearing closets and bookshelves has always been daunting but a wistful task especially if it is being done after years together. It so usually happens that you chance upon a lost ear ring in the closet or some little tits-bits of mindlessly scribbled papers, a long forgotten diary in the bookshelf in which you used to make your day’s schedule but never followed or may be slam-books and greeting cards which you received in school and colleges and held so dear to your heart that you meticulously preserved them in the corner of a shelf where you can take a look at them every time you would feel this urge to hold your childhood sweethearts and friends close to your heart. No doubt holding all these silly tiny tokens of love, friendship and innocence in your hands takes you years down the memory lane, fills you with an utter feeling of nostalgia so much so that you want to defy the deeds of time and jump right back into the picture of the days goneby that’s playing in your mind that moment.
I had a similar experience yesterday. Only that it was not a closet that I was clearing but my desktop PC. The desktop PC which I abandoned about two years back is now adopted by my Dad. And, off late Dad had been asking me to look into why it has started to respond too slowly. Who was to tell Dad that it was because of the junk left by me in it over the years? So finally yesterday I settled my ass in the chair in front of the monitor and negotiated the virtual labyrinths I hardly bring my mouse pointer to these days. I kept on burying the pointer into a thick crust of files and folders within folders with more files within folders till the time I finally reached the core through the mantle. This went on for a while and I reached the landfill where I presumed most of the clutter would be found. The folder named “Ragini’s Documents”. As expected I could find files and files of unused notes, documents, multiple copies of a single music track, watched and unwatched popular and not so popular movies. I started pressing the delete button one after the other…songs were the first to go, then the movies. Then it was time for the desolated Word documents. As the pointer was throwing up the delete bullets like a machine gun my finger paused at a file named “Journalism Diaries”. The title got me curious so I opened it up. I realized it was a word document I had created when I had just entered Journalism College. This was supposed to be some sort of a log where I thought I would write down all my good and bad moments for the next three years. Though it never went beyond two pages and that too it didn’t contain what it was conceived for. But after reading a few lines I realized it might just become my most cherished and prized possession. It might sound bizarre when I mention that what got me choked reading were nothing but a few saved and copy-pasted “long scraps” of the only person who has a whole article dedicated to him in this very blog. It had never occurred to me once then that this would seem so special and precious years down the line when I would have lost touch. I read it twice and kept in a separate folder not knowing what to do with it.
I carried on for a while removing the mess before I moved on to “Ragini Pictures”. I guess it would have been on national television by now that Ragini would die of heart attack if she loses this folder of hers. :-D. So I thought I would just have a glance at this one and skip it. But well…I certainly couldn’t restrict myself to a glance. This was the pictures folder after all. The glance turned to a long drawn stare when I saw full sized images of a portrait of myself, a painting made specially for me and both of them gifted online. And then, some cute little “Winnie the Pooh” friendship posters which I received in school and had scanned them so not to lose them to time.
It was like the time had stopped for a while and dragging me by hand into those uncomplicated moments. Don’t know what is this power that photographs and gifts carry that seems to pause the constant tick-tocking of the clocks. For a moment the present seems surreal ; it’s only the past and past you want to go to. As I kept thinking and looking at all these “gifts” I wished they were not virtual but for real. I wanted to hold them in my hand, caress them and fondle the unconditional sentiment they carried with themselves.
Of course it was not meant to be. So I collected them all in a folder and mailed them to myself. This was my way of stopping and preserving the moments that were virtual but not even a wee less cherishable