Yesterday

Wisdom, we are told, lies in letting go. "But what if it is memory that makes us who we are? What if the past is the only place we can hope to find our future?"Surjeet Singh asks these questions in a tremulous voice. The farmer turned 80 last year. His frail frame looks delicate, but his reflexes are razor sharp, his witticisms are lucid, caustic. Singh lives in a small town on the outskirts of Jammu. Singh is well known in his neighbourhood. His claim to fame: he carries an Indian flag wherever he goes!
Tri-colour in hand, he attends weddings and birthdays. He takes it to funerals. He carries it when he visits friends or relatives who have fallen ill. Last year, when he received an invite from the chief minister's office to attend a ceremony in honour of freedom fighters, the flag went with him to the auditorium. Singh and the flag are inseparable. "Because the flag is not a piece of cloth you unfurl on Independence Day and promptly forget," he says. "It keeps the memory of many sacrifices alive. They need to be remembered. They made us what we are today."
Some write off Singh's gesture as eccentricity. Some blame it on old age and the onset of senility. But Singh ignores the jibes. He is determined to proclaim his allegiance to the past. He believes that complacent Indians are badly in need of this reminder. His gesture, he hopes, will wake up indifferent citizens to the value of the priceless gift of freedom they often take for granted. "This is an antidote for those who have forgotten the struggle for our liberty. Thousands of people paid with their lives to win our freedom. If we allow that memory to die, there is no hope for our future generations."
There are places too that live seeped in memory. Pickled in the brine of lives lived, wars fought, loves lost, in another time. They can shatter your belief in the absolute quality of time and space. They jolt you out of your certainty because they are rooted in real time and space, but they also seem to have a life in other times, other spaces. They are tied to the present, but they belong to the past. Latitudes and longitudes anchor them on the cartographer's map. But they have the miraculous ability to break free at will, to shape themselves with memory's chisel and carve an image which matches no map.
So completely tuned into the rhythm of other times, other lives, they are a surreal mix of past and present. The past is not buried in musty archives. It lingers in the air like an old, familiar tune. It lives and breathes, it is flesh and blood. It lies in wait and bumps into you like a familiar friend when you turn the corner on a walk across town.
When I drift along the cobbled streets of Pondicherry, the sea breeze hums a tune from the past. In the heart of the city, the tall white columns of the Aayi Mandapam whisper tales of a 16th century courtesan. This memorial, built in the Greco-Roman style was commissioned by Napoleon in honour of Aayi who razed her house to build a much- needed water reservoir for the city. The story goes that three hundred years after Aayi's death, Napoleon's army quenched its thirst with the supplies from the reservoir. Moved by her altruism, the megalomaniac general ordered his men to build the memorial.
Matters of state are conducted at the sprawling Place Du Government (now renamed Raj Nivas). Once a center of colonial power, this 8th century building houses the legislative assembly. Pondicherrians smile when they point at the building, relishing the irony.
A stroll down Goubert Avenue which winds down the seashore feels like a trip in a time machine. At a prominent spot next to the promenade stands the war memorial, an ode to the memory of French and Indian soldiers who fought in the First World War. A statue of Francois Dupleix, former French governor of Pondicherry looms large further down the road.
Churches built in the 17th and 18th century in a burst of French missionary zeal also line the city. The Sacred Heart Church, Church of the Immaculate Conception, Church of Notre Dame. Under their high ceilings, sunlight filters in through exquisite stained glass windows. Echoes from the past resound in the heart of their gothic splendour.
At Karaikal, you stumble across a well-maintained cemetery located next to Market Street. Intricately carved headstones mark the graves. They house the remains of 19th century French officials, landlords and ordinary citizens. Death hasn't dulled their memory. There is a steady stream of tourists to the cemetery through the day. The graveyard is a familiar landmark, etched deep on the template of the city's daily life.
Colonial mansions built as far back in the 16th century are sprinkled across the city. Ivory coloured walls and spacious verandas, gardens in bloom. Like set pieces from a fictional world, they stand mutely behind gates painted a bright, burning yellow.
"I bought this house five years ago," says Dr Saravanan who owns a 17th century French villa. Born into a middle class family in Pondicherry, he won a scholarship to complete his higher studies at a French university. Now he heads the psychiatry department at a hospital in Paris. The doctor gets to spend his yearly vacation in the comfort of his villa. At other times of the year, he rents it out to friends or relatives.
As I take a guided tour of the house along with him, he tells me he has had a long love-hate relationship with colonial houses. "As a child, I looked at these villas with a sense of wonder. They offered me a glimpse of a magical past. I couldn't stop making up stories about them…"
Adulthood dulled the fascination as the villas began to remind him of the atrocities of colonial rule. But he thinks of memory as a double-edged sword. "A house built during colonial rule can remind of you of the wretchedness of our people who were oppressed. But owning one also makes me feel that old equations no longer hold true. Power changes hands. History teaches us that no empire is invincible."
Only a fool would cling to the past at the cost of forgetting to live in the present. But wisdom lies in learning the lessons the past offers. Without them, we would be fated to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.