Me but not wholly me....

I do not know how other authors feel about their writings but always I have a strange sensation when I read something that I had written some time previously. That sensation is heightened when the writing had been done in the close and abnormal atmosphere of prison and the subsequent reading had taken place outside. I recognize it of course , but not wholly , it seems almost that I was reading some familiar piece written by another , who was near to me and yet who was different . Perhaps that is the measure of the change that has taken place in me.

So I have felt about this book also. It is mine and not wholly mine ,as I am constituted today; it represents rather some past self of mine which has already joined that long succession of other selves that existed for a while and faded away , leaving only a memory behind.

Jawaharlal Nehru
Preface of the book ‘The Discovery of India’

Not that I've ever lived in an environment close to being in prison ...but I was thinking about the same thing , it's kind of “the end of an era” point for me right now… every year ,for the past few years, around this time I embark on a ‘big’ journey ..last year it was my India trip after two years , the year before it was from Wellington to Tuscaloosa and prior to that ,Udipi to Wellington…. This time around the shift isn’t going to be as drastic as I imagined ( at some point of time I thought my options consisted of either Mississippi or Southern California :) ) …

Anyway a few days ago I chanced upon my student id card from 2004 … it was from my NZ college and the photograph was from three months before my arrival in NZ , when I was still in India.I realized that I had changed fundamentally from the girl in the picture …now I think …

Would she like me ?? If I had to use one word it would probably be ‘No’, just because I truly believe I was a better person then.. ( I wonder about the series of events that led from that to this..) …

Would she appreciate where I was at this present moment ???? Maybe yes , it’s definitely not what she wanted, but it’s beyond her wildest dreams(at that point…she has had wilder dreams before and after that time period ) ….

I wonder what will happen in the future..When I read these blog entries and see my (then) old id cards... how will I answer those questions?

Personally I feel they serve as good self improvement tools and reality checks :)

On a side note.... I've decided that one characteristic to figure out if I can truly get along with a person is when a phone conversation isn't a chore...