A Walk To Remember

Today for no reason, I had a long evening walk, visited the roads/temples/parks pertaining to my childhood memories. Hyderabad is a kind of place where the humidity rose so high in the summer that walking out to even get the mail would make a person feel as if he needed a shower. While I walk, I was just thinking about these Twenty six years of my life. “Twenty six” years, , I think sometimes, and despite my own acceptance of my age, it still amazes me that I haven’t been warm since 2002. Life especially is not easy to explain and I felt may be a person can get used to anything if given enough time. It was never the rip roaring spectacular I fancied it would be, but neither have I burrowed around with the gophers. The optimists would call this as challenge and the cynics would call it as problem. But the path is straight as ever, but now it is strewn with the rocks and gravel that accumulate over a life time. I somehow feel that my days are spent like an old party balloon; listless, spongy and growing softer over time…….thinking all these I suddenly realized that my cell phone was missing from my pocket…Ahh…! “Not Again God”..i thought to myself….I was totally frustrated and amok(as I always loose it), and starting searching the way I just walked for some time and after a furlong walk, I realized that I should make a call and I had no other option but to look for a public telephone booth….wait…..”Telephone booth”…I just mulled ….!!!

”OMG! I recalled this term perhaps after ages”. Then I again thought “Why is that phone in a box?” It seemed so funny that I was almost into oblivion about this. I’ve had some major life experiences in phone booths: calling my parents when I was in hostel, having endless discussions with my college friends, also receiving collect calls from my friends (we got away with that a bunch of times until an operator broke through and said “I know what you’re doing!” and cut us off.). And suddenly I realized that there are only 2 proper phone booths left in my area. So I found myself imagining what it must feel like to be one of those phone booths, once so central to people’s lives, but now on the verge of extinction.

With a sigh, I felt it all come back to me. I close my eyes and the years began to move in reverse, slowly ticking backward, like the hands of a clock rotating in wrong direction. As if through someone else’s eyes, I watch myself grow younger. I see my hair changing from brownish black to dark black, I feel the wrinkles around my eyes begin to smooth, my arms and legs grow sinewy. Lessons I have learned with age grow dimmer, and my innocence returns. I used to pass through these roads innumerous times, but, never ever I felt this kind of feeling which I had today.

The same phone booth which was once crowded with people as the night approaches, watches with dispirit as the people who once used it suddenly start passing it by, pressing ‘tiny cell phones’ to their ears. Remember the days when phone booths stood on almost every street? If you had to make a call, you'd step inside the little booth, lift the phone off the hook, check the start time, check for the tariff rate, push the buttons, and hear it ring? And in the quiet of the booth, you could call your grandmother, or let the office know you were running late, whatever and in the mean time watching people waiting in the long queue, who would be desperately awaiting their turn.

The once proud and happy phone booth is stood alone and empty, unused and dejected. Now no more long queues near the telephone booth, no more waiting’s until late night just to make calls so that it would be cheaper by 50%. I imagine the phone booth saying these days, “I’m a phone booth! I used to be really important!”

“I should come back to reality now”, I thought to myself and immediately jumped into the sweet telephone booth, closed the glass door and ringed my cell number only to realize my mom speaking the other end answering that I forgot it at home

Well, it was indeed “A Walk to Remember”.