In Pursuit Of Memories
The fifth edition of our newsletter takes you along on a roller coaster journey across various possibilities and realities nearly within reach, fueled by books, movies and the power of imagination
Greetings dear dreamers
Welcome to the fifth edition of The Abandoned Dreams Collective!
It started with music, as it so often does. Or maybe it started with books and the lives discovered within them and it was music that gave cadence to it. It was the song Love Story from the eponymous movie (no not the superior song of the same name that I’m talking about this time. Yes even I’m surprised) that my class learnt in school. Much of the song’s lyricism seemed heavy handed and over-saccharine, even to my highly impressionable preteen self but one word nestled within it caught my attention - and I wasn’t the only one transfixed by it.
Shehrebanu and I had been best friends since third grade and now, with the word ‘imagining’ as a noun - discovered through this song, we had a new shorthand to describe the flights of fantasy that the books we devoured took us on. Now, that thing we did in our heads that we couldn’t really describe, that no one really understood felt more real, more legitimate.
Its been years now since she and I passed notes to one another scribbled with vivid details of what-ifs within our imaginings or walked the tree shaded grounds of our school talking a mile a minute with rapt attention to the different worlds created by our imaginings but we’re still connected through them. Today, in our fifth newsletter, she writes about how hers have evolved over the years from childhood, taking her towards the life she’s built and beyond. Here’s ‘In Pursuit Of Memories’ by Shehrebanu Nooruddin
In Pursuit Of Memories
Once upon a time I dreamed of fantastic worlds that existed in the starry skies. Of marshmallows growing in the grass, milkshake rivers with flavoured flowers. A world made of cheese. In this world, you could break off pieces of bread floating in the air and dip them in pools of melted cheese. Walk on clouds made of fluffy cotton candy, and eat icicles dipped in strawberry sauce.
These were fed by an ardent love for all things Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl.
As time passed and my interests developed, I started to dream of having a twin. I would walk in random places by lakes and in forests and imagine coming face to face with her. This was inspired by my love for Jessica and Elizabeth, and the close relationship only twin sisters could share. A relationship where we could read minds, share the wildest of ideas and have the best of times together.
One fine afternoon my cousin and I sat on a pair of swings and designed “twin robots” that could go to school instead of us. It was a sophisticated idea, full of quirks and custom actions, sentences and an emergency button which let us operate the robots in case we needed to personalize interactions.
Slowly, interests started varying even more, dreams blurred into imaginings. These were inspired by books, stories and myths. They were vivid, beautiful and colourful.
Now, when I travel alone, I dream of cities.
Ever since I can remember, I have loved to look at buildings and wonder about the lives of the people living in them. A scene from a movie where they zoom into the protagonists walking along Times Square in New York gave birth to this dream. The feeling of seeing new places through different lenses on the screen fed this dream. When I became an architect, this love deepened, and more new lenses opened up for me.
I wonder, what are the relationships that one could develop with different cities? City lights, city streets, skyscrapers and bridges, and especially the nooks one finds while allowing oneself to get lost in a city.
A restaurant tucked into the bustling streets of Manhattan where I made a new friend, a bookshop under a banyan tree in Mumbai, a bakery in Trastevere where we had the best cornetto and the makeshift shops in dynamic streetscapes across the world make up some of the most memorable visuals.
A building under construction in Ho Chi Minh city, where bricks had been piled up beautifully just to be stored, a van transporting bananas in Karachi - all arranged together in circular natural patterns, and a ladder leading to the sea on Worli Seaface are some of the accidental moments of beauty I stumbled upon - and have stayed with me.
Would each city I visit have a special story to tell? What will I find, when I go to places I have only seen pictures of.
Pictures don’t do justice to places, I prefer words.
Words have the magical ability to allow us to imagine.
We can imagine details and colours and textures that images steal away from us. We can imagine scents, sounds, and conversations and encounters.
A year ago I discovered the world of Korean dramas. Initially I wrote it off as absurd to watch a show in a language I didn’t know, dependent only on subtitles and stories of people I didn’t recognize. But as I started to watch, and got drawn into it, I discovered cultural similarities and a fondness for the language. I was hooked.
I found myself dreaming of exploring this strange faraway land, one with so much history, futuristic technology and a love for fried chicken. I remembered learning about Seoul being the worlds’ first smart city many years ago in an environmental education class in primary school.
In our textbook, we had a chapter on Seoul, it had a few pictures and a few paragraphs about technology, cleanliness and law and order. And maybe there were more interesting stories, a video our teacher showed us in the multimedia room - and this awe that the existence of this ‘smart’ futuristic city inspired in a class of thirteen year olds stayed with me for years.
So one day in a dream, I found myself flying to Seoul.
I was flying first class, of course and Lee Min Ho, from The Legend of the Blue Sea was on the seat in front of me. He was to give me a guided tour of the city.
When I get there, I wonder, will I be able to fly across the streets? See the Namsan Tower from my personal flying pod? And can all the seasons merge into one? I want to experience the summer and the winter.
If time travel were a possibility, will I get to experience the era of the Joseon Dynasty they keep raving about in the shows, or will I be limited to museums. Are museums in Seoul any good?
Contemporary art! It must be different there, it must be gooood.
I can’t wait to explore Korean grocery stores. And stationary stores. I wonder if they have American Korean yogurt drinks in Korea.
What will the streets of Seoul smell like? They eat a lot of sea creatures, will they have good aquariums? I LOVE a good aquarium in a city. Especially one with possibilities of sighting a mermaid.
I imagine this wonderful alien city, with zip zap zoom public transport. I imagine holograms popping up, and being able to walk with me as I walk around the city.
I imagine running into people I have seen in their dramas, and I imagine they will recognize me as an old friend.
It is nice, this imagining. It is only the beginning.
-Shehrebanu Nooruddin
I look forward to seeing you again next week with a new story.
Much love and many dreams
Nirmitee
The Abandoned Dreams Collective