Autumn Nostalgia

In a burst of autumn cleaning, the blog gets new fonts and a brilliant new header, sourced from here. I could not identify the photographer from the link mentioned in the post. Therefore, anonymous thanks are in order.
If some copyright is violated, I would happily take the picture off. Or, give credit.

A picture like this evokes memories of old times.
Of time spent in Maddox Square. Of haggling for books near Gol Park. Of gazing at antique film posters in the lobbies of dilapidated theatres.
Basically, it smells of nostalgia and we all know what a sucker I am for that.

On a personal note, there is a reverse nostalgia when I see my baby cousins as adults and find it difficult to reconcile with my memory of them as infants or at best, little boys and girls.

My kid cousin (who is closer in age to being my niece!) now talks about Arthur Miller's The Crucible. She finds the play unbearably tragic and rejects my suggestion to watch DDLJ to lift her mood. She sternly tells me to read it. I am so speechless that I am unable to tell her that I did - at her age. Which was twenty years back and that has kind of dulled the impact.

Another cousin (on his way to becoming a lawyer) shares his thoughts about Monginis cakes, Old Spice, floppy drives and New Empire Cinema. I did not even realise that he was old enough to watch and remember an ancient film called Mohabbatein. And here he is, pointing out that some things don't change in Calcutta. Apparently, people still play chess under Gariahat Flyover. Wow - I thought that's something only I would notice.

This tells me that I should be careful. I cannot generally blabber about SRK and WWF with my cousins and get away with it any longer.
But it also tells me that the conversation is going to be very interesting in my old age!