by Kalpanaa Misra
Germany, December 2013.The twinkling of fairy lights on Christmas trees proliferating all over public spaces transports me in a flash back to the Germany of the 60s. I was growing up in a country whose pine forests gave birth to fairy tales set in dense woods, from Red Riding Hood to Snow white, from Hansel and Gretel to Sleeping Beauty. Frankfurt airport is an apt threshold for my entry to this country of my early childhood. My infancy is inextricably tied up with Germany.
This hub of air travel, once the byword for up-to-date modernity, fascinating in its slickness, is different now. There’s a certain gentle shabbiness to it compared to shiny new Indian malls and renovated airports. I’ve visited newer airports in other parts of the world. I’ve waited in larger airports than this. And just as I compare places in different geographical locations, I compare the same place visited in an earlier decade, or century. I have a flashback to the time when I was a regular, traipsing through this airport twice a year with three small daughters and an enormous doll called BoyBoy. This could make me sad for a lost era, for a Germany more prosperous than it is now. Instead I am delighted with a German people that absorbed their East German brothers and sisters despite what it did to their economy. On a personal level, I can enjoy the peace and comfort of solo travel as opposed to Mamma travel, which is harrowing. Yes, onlookers are ecstatic with the cuteness overload and even Mamma is carried away by her own motherliness, efficiency and tolerance but the sheer physical exhaustion of round-the-clock care for three traveling divas and their mascot BoyBoy is not something I would willingly subject myself to again. I look on with the admiration that once used to come my way, at unkempt mothers in bright inelegant clothing, a child strapped to her front, its arms and legs akimbo, a baby bag strapped to her back, wheeling a pram and dragging a bag. I assure you, this is not a good flashback. You can’t romanticize travel with kids. It makes for hilarious tales which we laugh at now. Only now. Having one traveling diva knock her apple juice into the baby bag with all its contents was hardly a riot at the time. Nappies, medicines, bibs and the mandatory change of clothes all swam in a sticky lake of apple juice. At the time I told myself I should have zipped up the bag and not kept it open. Now I lie down on the floor laughing at the memory.
The tingling scent of pine will always have a buoyant effect on me and there will never be a time when I am not transported to childhood by it. Fairy lights, chocolate Santas and candles remind me of feel-good times. Cocooned times, being taken care of, loved, home as a haven from the more menacing aspects of existence. Imagined threats to happiness never really encountered.
Today nothing has changed about the aroma of cinnamon or the soft glow of candles and they evoke the same sensory feelings but not quite the same emotions. Being older does that to you, you know life isn’t as safe or as comfortable as you’d been led to believe as a child. The scent of baking apples can’t hide hard realities and when those aromas evokes memories of simpler happier times you realise that it’s just your body reminiscing. The well-loved scents of childhood make you feel as though your ship has come home but you know that’s not entirely true.
As I get off the plane my eye catches sight of an immense TV screen. I stop in my tracks, shocked – “Nelson Mandela is dead,” I say out loud. A blonde man stops beside me equally jolted whipping out his phone to take a photo of the television screen, recording for posterity his first reaction to the unsettling news. I experience another flashback to when I briefly met Mandela and shook his hand at the premier of the film ‘Gandhi,’ awestruck by this giant amongst men.
Christmas is no longer a time of year when things are magically righted; the enchantment associated with Christmas is tarnished slightly. People die, lovers break up, betrayal, accidents and cancer can happen at Christmas too. Santa Claus can’t take away your troubles, you just learn to live with them, aware that sometime soon (or maybe not so soon) they’ll be sorted out. I channel the Law of Attraction, I struggle to believe in my prayers and it’s always harder at Christmas because, thanks to those happy childhood associations of enchanted Christmases with dancing snow flakes and sparkly tinsel we expect Christmas to be a time of happiness. As a child, I would look forward to some harmless, cartoonish, skidding pedestrians, anticipating the joy of watching people fall flat. Parents’ admonishments – ‘people get hurt, break their legs – it isn’t nice to laugh at them’ somewhat dampened our sense of humour, turning every giggle into a guilty pleasure. As we grew up we brought different dimensions to snow as disillusioned adults around us grumbled about the aggravation of winter tyres, coupled with the vexation of black ice. And the bright shiny stuff that is tinsel, that caused your eyes to sparkle as a three-year-old, is now flashy and tasteless. I suggest you time-travel to your younger self and notice again the prettiness of snow, the humour of black ice and the glamor of tinsel and you’ll recapture some of the fascination you had with Christmas.
The truth is, life is what it is and you can use the power of your memories to be transported to an age of innocence. Alternately you may rail against the passage of time and bemoan the difference in the now and the then. The power of your flashbacks and memories are immense. It’s how you use them that’s important. Albert Camus wrote, “Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.” Your memories and flashbacks are what they are, it’s your associations with either pain or pleasure that turn them into something that gives pleasure or pain.
Kalpanaa Misra is a writer. She blogs at http://kalpanawrites.blogspot.in. Her twitter handle is @kalpanapster.
