Nostalgia...

Nostalgia is a funny thing: it comes back and hits u in the face when u are least expecting it. But it is also a warm-cold feeling in ur tummy, a tingling sensation in ur heart. It reassures you of your past yet roots you to your present. It brings back old memories and enmeshes them to your moments- creating a kaleidoscope of time and longing, of hits and misses and of things goneby and things yet to come...
When I woke up this morning (ok afternoon) I was stunned to find the power in our building to be gone. No electricity, No water, No computer. The entire campus had taken a step backwards into the good old days devoid of the might of electricity. In a strange way it reminded me of Home. Of my hometown - Dhaka. It was a very common phenomenon back there. Every now and then we would have power outage for abour 7-8 hours. In Dhaka we were well-prepared for it-- stock up on books to read in the absence of tv and the internet, fill the buckets in the bathroom with water, fill the water filters with drinking water. In London this unexpected power outage caught me completely off-guard. I thought I would die of thirst; I had cold bread for breakfast (ok ok Brunch)and couldnt have tea becoz I use an electric kettle to boil water, I was scared with the early nightfall (about 5 ish) how would i spend my evening and night given i dont even have a torchlight.
But of COurse I needn't have worried so much: This is England, not Bangladesh. Power came back within half an hour, after reminding us of our excessive dependence on electricity (electric cooker, Electric kettle, fridge, lights, warm tap water). In an odd way I was also thinking of the New York blackout of 2003.
Like I said nostalgia jumps in front of u as suddenly as a deer on a highway when u r driving at 90 miles per hour. But it was a nice fresh dosage from the mundane routine of daily student life. Now that I have my computer running and I have done the daily ritual of checking all my e-mails, reading the newspaper back home, facebooking, IMing, I must go back to my studies.