Ringing Out the Old

I realised only now that it's been two weeks since my last post. How could I not blog for two weeks?

Then again, I haven't really blogged since....,well, I don't remember. It may also be the exam hangover -- for the lack of a better word -- which prevents me from writing.

All these days, my life's been pretty irregular. Reading books, surfing the Net and spending "quality time" with the family kept me engaged and made me forget blogging.

[In an earlier draft of this post, I wrote a lot of stuff on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Then, bless my unlimited wisdom, the title of the post made me aware of the fact that I was writing about something different. Then I deleted all that I had written and started afresh. What a brilliant(ly bad) blogger I am! No?]

On the 8th of this month, I woke up at 8:30 in the morning. The morning filled me with a new kind of joy (the joy of the marriage mentioned in the last post) and refreshed me. I could not but be gay (yep! The Daffodils is one of my favourite Wordsworth poems.) as this was the first morning after ages which didn't greet me with the tension for the Board exams.

Little did I know that ten minutes later I would be overcome with a sadness for the very reason which gave me joy. When I went near my study-table I found my parents gathering all my books of IX- X in a corner.


Father was removing all my text-books and stuff from my shelf (he wasn't throwing it away) and carrying it away to our library (which is located elsewhere in our house). He was "freeing" my shelf for other books to occupy them. I must tell you that I haven't yet got "other books" i.e. textbooks of XI. Why read them now when I have so many other "other books" i.e. stories to read? So my favourite fictions occupy the shelf now and will continue to do so, at least, till I am admitted to class XI, probably in June. But that's not the point. Lemme get there.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I'd actually feel sad to part with my text-books of IX-X. For two years, those books frightened me and almost enveloped me like an octopus.Before my exams all I wanted was to get rid of them as soon as possible.

Then why did it hurt me when I was getting rid of them? Why did I feel sad when I realised that I'd never make notes of the pages and underline important sentences? Did the books anyhow became a part of me without my knowledge or realisation? Was it that I started loving them while disliking them?

These are the questions which I asked myself for the past few days.

Another question bugs me: Can I actually avoid these feelings ever in my life? You don't have an answer, do you? Nor do I.

I know that we must "Ring in the new/ Ring out the old." But doesn't this ringing-out-the-old gives us the "grief that saps the mind," sometimes? Oh, we have to ring that out too.