Linda Linda Linda (Nobuhiro Yamashita, 2005)
In seventh standard, a girl once confessed to me that she liked me. I’d had crushes before but I figured this simply was something you had until it passed, like chickenpox. But soon after I was made aware of her feelings I remember wanting, nay, needing to reciprocate. I was indecisive then as I am now so having dithered for a week I finally told her I liked her back. By then she said she liked another classmate who had just lost his mother. Of the fortunes of my classmate I thought, insensitively, how convenient. Later that night both my parents waltzed in back from work, and I stared at these thieves whose every breath robbed me off my chance.
I was crestfallen, even though I could not fathom what I might’ve done had she responded with the affirmative. I lived in the suburbs and I thought the point of school was to be first in class. At most, I thought this confession meant that we’d hang out together during recess. I understood little of the mechanics of a kiss and holding hands was out of the question — my teachers lived in the same building as I did and my mother taught at a college nearby. High risk, low reward I presumed.
As I leave the screening of Linda Linda Linda, I think back to that day. Until now it’d been singed in my memory as my first ‘rejection’. But a new vista seems to have opened up in my memory. I remember that soon after the aforementioned rejection I rushed for Marathi tuition class after which I hung out with a couple friends moaning about, well, Marathi. Later that evening was basketball practice where I’m sure I ran my heart out and, in all likelihood, scored a grand total of zero points. And after that, I ran back to play a game of cricket in my building where I’m sure I scored a good half century and celebrated the milestone as any garden variety Sachin would. In between all this I dedicated serious hours studying Pokemon (Indigo League), Beyblade, Justice League, X-men: Evolutions, Hey Arnold, The Wild Thornberrys, Rugrats and Filmore until I heard that key jingle and the doorknob shimmy open announcing the arrival of my dear mother who’s life, I’m happy to report, I indeed cherish.
Linda Linda Linda reminds me that there’s so much that can and does happen in a day. But when we’re young, there’s so little time to essentialise some master narrative out of all this bustle. As kids we wear each moment like our favourite t-shirt, forcing into it our big little lives even as it tears at the seams. And we yell and screech and bray and bawl from moment to moment with disregard for either fore or hind sight. Everything is water of a duck’s back.
My life might’ve slowed to a predictable pattern and I’ve taken enough quizzes online to confirm my personality. But I want to agitate my memory, swirl it with resolve for my next swig, so I may remember everything I ever was and I ever knew I could be.