Life Lessons In Traffic...

I came home to Mumbai for the holidays on Friday and my first thought on entering the city limits was about the endless traffic that would plague us for atleast the next 3 hours (it is ironical really, that it takes only 3 hours to get from Pune to Mumbai but yet another 3 hours to cover the length of the city to reach home!). I was proved right as very soon we were engulfed in the famous sea of traffic so typical of Bombay but what I hadn't realised was that my memory was extremely faulty. Having lived in Bombay for 5 years before moving to Pune last year, I would have thought that I would be used to all the noise, heat, pollution and endless wait by now but surprise, surprise nothing was quite the same as what I remembered. Now there could be 2 reasons for this, one being that indeed things had changed, maybe the traffic situation had worsened, there were certainly many new routes that I didn't recognize but then again there was nothing drastic to explain the feeling I had, of complete alienness even when looking at familiar landmarks. The other reason which is definitely more interesting is that the human mind always frames the things that it wants to remember in the brightest of hues and hence I could only recall in isolation the demerits of road travel in Bombay without actually connecting it to the present situation. Since this thought hit me about halfway through the journey, I thought (pun intended) that I should carry it forward to see where it goes. It occured to me that things in the past have a way of seeming larger than life. We always feel that the good times were better than they actually were and the bad times worse than they really were. It's only human to do so, to paint memories in whatever shade we see fit because we are biased either towards or against the situation. There is a lesson to be learnt from this: we should never consciously try to recreate a situation where we have been happy for we will inevitably feel betrayed by the fact that it doesn't match the memories that we have of that place and time. And since we wouldn't ever want to recreate a disheartening situation, let me assure you that it only seems worse because we are potrayed as the victim and that automatically awakens the dramatist in us all. So the point is that times will change as surely as the seasons, just let life take it's course and don't try to go back for if we do then we will only end up disappointed. Let go of anything that pulls you back and take the first step forward, it may be painful at first but it is worth it. Life goes on and you can't possibly stand still, you can try of course but the likelihood of you falling flat on your face is very, very high. Think about it...Till then I bid adieu.