'I spoke for love...!'

Over Cups and Cups of Coffee! ☕

14 July 1998 💛

#memoriesfromdiaries 💕

Whenever I take some time off to look into my past diaries, it really feels like I am hit by a giant wave of nostalgia!

14 July 1998

Also, I've had this quaint feeling that - days and hours of our good ol’ past, come to life with such vivid ‘reality of re-presentment’ [to quote Lamb] whenever we flip through these - our pages past through ages past!

As such, diaries then, help give a kinda permanence to our past!

To borrow and to re-phrase T. S. Eliot’s lovely line,

Through our diaries we revisit and relive the ‘pastness of the past, and also of its presence!’

In this regard, Katherine Nelson says, and I quote,

The rise of both the novel and biography in the 18th century reflected this emergence of individualistic world views.

Both are based on individual life stories and thus depend on real or fictional versions of autobiographical memory.

Prior to the 18th century literary forms were basically oral, meant to be read or recited aloud, often in groups.

Novels, however, are usually read alone, thereby encouraging the individual reader’s identification with its characters, “reliving” the events with them.

Other printed forms, emerging at about the same time, included diaries and individualistic autobiographies.

These written forms of a person’s own life (ongoing or retrospective and reflective) transformed everyday personal episodic memory into a retelling of a life story that was at least sometimes meant to be shared, if not with the world at large, then with a later version of the self.

Coming back,

till last hour we had class on this day!

We had been allotted one hour each week for Literary Activities, and it was called the ‘Literary Club’ Hour!

Prof. PMK [P. Mohan Kumar Sir] was in-charge of this hour.

This hour always proved a great stress buster for all of us - that came in after a series of serious hours - a lovely hour in which we used to unwind over a string of joyous literary activities like Debating, Oratory, Elocution, Dumb Charades, etc.

On this particular day, we had a debate on the topic,

‘Love’ Marriage or ‘Arranged’ Marriage’?

I spoke for love, while Carter spoke for arranged marriage! 😍

Wherever the term ‘duo’ is mentioned, it could connote to mean my dear buddies Wes & Prabhu!

Nights after dinner time, we used to sit on the soft, silky grass in the cricket ground, under the moonlit sky, and talk to our heart’s content, over cups and cups of coffee! 😋

Well, we usually took our tumblers with us for dinner, to have coffee to our heart’s content, post-dinner, and yes! until the study bell rang at 8.30 pm sharp, we used to relish our moon-time big-time! 😍