A Remembrance of Rosebud

Today I'm writing from a pub, having a beer in the afternoon, instead of my usual Americano or Earl Grey.  On the large projection screen in front of me, they are showing a live telecast of badminton matches from the Australian Open. 

I used to play a lot of badminton during my school days but I found that I was better at soccer and table tennis. Me and my buddies would scour the entire town for available badminton courts: in public parks, kampungs and schools--anywhere that we could string our net, without raising an ire. 

We liked to play early in the morning, sacrificing sleep. And because all the courts were outdoors, wind was always a major disrupter. But the cool and the stillness of morning air was just perfect for badminton.

We usually played doubles because that was the only way to ensure everyone got a chance to play. I also preferred the more fast-paced doubles game. Childhood and teenage years were a lot of fun; friends everywhere within cycling distance. Every year-end school holiday was a month-long outdoor carnival of games and adventures.

Perhaps the opportunity to grow up like that is forever gone now: a childhood untainted by television, video games and social media.  Those halcyon days of innocence and wonder; of excursions into the jungle, of getting ourselves lost deep in a maze of rubber trees, of climbing guava trees and chomping on its delightful bounty, of rapturous hide-and-seek games under the moonlight, shrieking with our childish delight to the annoyance of neighbours.

I always feel that it is a blessing to have that core of innocence, or at least its memory, in the depths of my soul. My days now are spent in front of multiple computer screens, solving issues far removed from anything in nature--lambda functions, automatic scaling groups, api keys and HTTP headers. The replicants in Blade Runner cling on to their implanted memories as a kind of proof of their humanity. Who can forget Rutger Hauer's now iconic dying scene in the movie, where he uttered these immortal lines:

“I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain"

If such a thing as a soul exists, I know at its core, it is infused with our cherished childhood experiences.   Everything we later experience as adults is tinged with its mood and colour. They anchor us and re-orientate us whenever we are lost. 

If we lose the child within,  it is akin to losing our souls. I also see the evocations of childhood wonder in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's opening line of One Hundred Years of Solitude, which makes it the most poignant opening of any novel that I've read:

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

I too remember many distant afternoons, full of joy and innocence when I discovered a world full of intriguing mysteries and promises.

I'm not sure why I feel a sudden nostalgia for my childhood here in this stifling pub, filled with techno-music blaring in the background. But it is strangely comforting to be able to reconnect with it. The sight of Lee Zii Jia playing badminton was a Proustian moment that had triggered these memories. 

My childhood, real and imagined, all the books that I had read and the movies that had made deep impressions on me, they all defined who I am, and my path ahead.

No, I'm not facing any existential crisis like those replicants of Blade Runner or Colonel Aureliano Buendia, but I see memory as something that's critical to our identity, the catalyst for the unrelenting pursuits of adulthood.  And like Citizen Kane in the acclaimed Orson Wells movie, perhaps, deep down inside, we all have our own personal Rosebuds.