I need to be motivated from time to time to keep going. I know this for a long time. But the thing is I can't motivate myself. If I try to motivate myself by motivational books, watching videos, or consuming any kind of media that encourages me to get out and do the thing I want to do, it doesn’t work. It simply doesn’t. Motivation has a very different relationship with me. I can be motivated by someone. My mother and father have motivated me to do certain things. She has motivated me enough to do things that I would have never done. People can influence me.

At this moment I lack a bit of motivation to go ahead. There is no one here to do it. I am left with the only option to do it myself. I am not going to say to myself things like 'Yes, you can do it, you have it in you', and all that. I will only remind myself that I don't have any options. The only thing for me to do is to keep going, be on the lookout for something that can make me understand the situation I am in, and take the necessary actions accordingly.

It was enough to push myself to the scooter. I start it and get back on the road. This particular area has some huge trees that provide good shade on the road and the premises. Under this shade, as I speed up, I feel the small tinge of cold air. A shiver runs down my spine. I might have lost my focus on the road for a teeny tiny bit. I finish this shaded area at a slower speed and speed us as soon as the sun hits me and makes me warm.

As soon as the college premises get over, the land belonging to the Central Tuber Crops Research Institute starts. They have a very large area on both sides of the road. From here one will not get the extent to which they stretch. Once when I had come for a walk exploring the various by-lanes of our colony, we ended up taking one that leads to this road. It traversed through the boundary of the land owned by them. We figured out it belonged to them when we saw a wall that was almost my height. I could see the land under cultivation. There were long sections of plants being grown. They had deployed a sprinkler system to water the entire area. Soon we came upon a building that looked like a guest house or a facility for training people. It was indeed their guest house and their training center. Along the other end of it, they had their living quarters. I remember telling her how awesome it must be to live in a tight-knit community like this. I am sure most of the employees of the institute would be staying in the colony. As such, they would be knowing every person and kid belonging to the community.

I have lived in these kinds of communities for most of my life. It was only after my passing out of college did mother decide to shift to an independent house. Community living is a great thing. I would recommend it to anyone, especially ones with young kids. The bigger the community, the more it is easier to find like-minded people.

Since mother was a working woman, we were forced to move cities when she was transferred on other assignments to the different offices spread out in the state. For almost fifteen years, we moved from one flat to another whenever it was needed. Community living offered lots of benefits. I was really happy about it because I would always find someone who would go on to be a good friend. There would be ground and some provisions to play for the young ones. We would play football, cricket, volleyball, and badminton depending on the mood and the number of people present. Sometimes our friends would come from outside. We know them through common friends. They would join us to play. It was always a merry bunch. Petty fights and arguments would occur among us but that was okay. It was all part of the game. We fight one day and forget about it the next day.

We were young and wild. After we had finished playing, we would all sit and talk all kinds of nonsense. It was also a time when we were entering adolescence. We would talk all kinds of shit and discuss everything we wanted to without many hindrances. In almost all the groups I had been in, the age band would be seven years or more than that. I was never the eldest one of them. I mostly fell in the middle. It was awesome being in that space. We would prick our ears to hear all the stories the elder ones had to share and also found it amusing to join with them to pull the legs of the younger ones.

In one of the communities I lived the age gap was ten years. I was in the lower half of it. I was like thirteen or fourteen back then. The smallest was ten. He was my neighbor. His elder brother was three years older than me. He was a great guy. I have immense respect for him. I don't know much about them now. I lost contact with them when they moved away two years later to their own house. Mom was in touch with the uncle and aunt. We even visited their house once. After that, I have seen aunty in some marriage functions of my mother's working group. She worked with my mother in the same department but had a different assignment.

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Back then there used to be power cuts for half an hour in the state during the summers. This was to cut the load and save electricity. We looked forward to it. When the lights went out, we would all gather at our meeting point. There we would either sit and talk about something. Mostly it would be the elders doing the talking and the younger ones like me listening. We didn’t have anything to say. We listened to all that was discussed and kept them in our heads. They were aware we were young and didn’t do any dirty talking. Maybe they might have done it using double meanings and codes. The talks were mostly gossip and nonsense but interesting enough to kill time.

Sometimes if we were all in the mood we would play hide and seek. Because of all the flats surrounding the area, it was never so dark as to feel scared. It was a comforting darkness of sorts, not the one like yesterday night. That was horrible. This wasn’t. I know that I will be subject to horribly dark nights from now onwards. Without any form of lighting, the nights will be the darkest. My only respite would be when the moon is up and the sky is clear. Yesterday I couldn’t spot the moon. It might have been a new moon night. I don't know.

The game of hide and seek was awesome. It was full of surprises. Mostly the elders would conspire to make one of the younger ones the seeker cause they like to hide. Most of the time it was my neighbor, the younger one, who would be the seeker. I knew it was all some sort of scheming from the elders. They liked to pick on him. His elder brother wouldn’t say anything but then he never joined in the conspiracy. He would remain calm and see how things proceeded. Sometimes when the younger one would complain and make a ruckus of him being the seeker again and again, he would take over from him and resume the play.

The games would last for a long time. In the thirty minutes, we hardly ever played more than two games. In the vast area, it was challenging to find them all. But it was fun. I too became a seeker a couple of times. That night I realized it was not that easy. I failed in both games that night. It felt bad. I think I felt what that chap would have gone through in all the times he was made the seeker. It was always better to hide and not be the seeker.

I feel like I am playing this game on the biggest stage ever. I have the whole city to maybe find someone like me whom I have probably never met in my life. This must be the grandest version of them all. I have vehicles to traverse the city and the surroundings and unlimited time. Maybe it does not confine here. Maybe the whole world is involved in this. A hide and seek game taking place on a planet scale.

I don't know how to process this thought. I like to play hide and seek. It is a fun game for kids and teens. I can still play it with kids and even babies. There is no age restriction to it. If you are to bring a group of like-minded adults and bring out the kid in them, they would finally come forward to play it. But the way it will be played might be different. It will not be like the ones we played when we were young.

I can play the game if I know the other participants. They would have been people I know or have interacted with. At house parties sometimes there would be this one new person to come into the group. It takes some time for us to be comfortable with him and vice versa. Once the comfort is established, playing hide and seek or any other game with him would never pose an issue. When we part for the night, it would be as if we have known each other for a long time. He has become a part of the group.

If this is a game, then the rules have been changed. Why would anyone want to change the simplest of all rules? To make it more interesting? I don’t know. The game is interesting in itself. Why would you want to bring in a change in it? Why the freshness?

Maybe they are tired of the original version. Maybe they are trying out something new, something different. Hasn’t it gone a bit too far? Having unlimited time is not fair. We play the game with the feeling of it ending at some point. When we fail to seek out the last player, we admit our failure and call him out to start a fresh game. There are plenty of places to hide and plenty of scenarios to come across. Everyone wants to experience them.

As a child, we want to explore all that we can. We are curious. There is an unquenchable thirst in us to learn and experience new things. The world becomes our playground. We are mesmerized by everything in it. There is excitement. This fuels us.

This brings about a small smile on my face. A gentle one. I had gone back in time to those good old days. I do it from time to time. I relive my childhood memories. It is not a mental condition. I just like to do it. Neither am I trapped in the past. The past is gone. It will never come back to me. It can’t be relived through time travel cause I want to be back in time in that same situation. I don't want to revisit it. I want to relive it. And there is a hell of a difference between the two.

The only thing I have left with me now are my memories. Memories of Anna, my parents, my brother, my friends, and my near and dear ones. Memories of the moments with each one of them. They are all beautiful, even the ones that felt painful or saddening at that moment.

A moment will bring in all the emotions about that event as you live through it. As soon as it becomes a memory, it is stripped of emotions. You cant relive them anymore. They are in the past. And things in the past can only be revisited.

With all the time I currently have, I can visit them one by one hoping they provide an impetus to go forward with my life.