Yes those were my Salad Days when I was green in judgment
HARISH MONGA DIDO writes from Singapore
Everyone has memories of the past times and the human brain is such a hard disc which will never go out of space. Though one may not exactly know the date and time, as the data is preserved by the computer, the mind does keep in one corner of the mind a bunch of countless memories. Such memorable moments are refreshed when you happen to be mugged with some similar event or while reading certain literature, as a matter of coincidence.
Youth is a tender age and everyone enjoys to its full capacity according to his ability and capacity. One is least bothered about the outcome and consequences even if the incident happened in one’s life are neither deliberately, intentionally or you can say, purposely. But once you reached the top during the young age, there is no place left to go but there is definitely sideways which takes you to the old age.
Nobody knows this better than Khushwant Singh, a renowned Sardarji, who yanked Indian journalism out of its Victorian corsets with a judicious blend of soft porn stories and off-colour jokes, to which I too have the contribution of four jokes in his compiled joke books. Really, those were the young days when the jokes used to be cracked on every one or the word depending upon the situation and befitting to the discussions going on especially with reference to inexperience enthusiasm, idealism, innocence or indiscretion that one associate with a young person.
The other day I came to know that ‘Salad Days’ is a Shakespearean idiomatic expression meaning a youthful time until I had gone through the newspaper clipping of 1969 – without mention of the newspaper.
‘Salad days’ so far as my curiosity to know about this goes like this that it is used to refer to the days of carefree innocence and pleasure of our youth or you can say, refer to the time of material affluence in our more mature years, when the pressures of life have begun to ease – something akin to the golden years. But it is definitely related to the former according to Shakespeare when he used the green-eyed monster in Othello, as green indeed is the colour of lovers.
Frankly speaking, I too recollect the one incident of my ‘salad days’ of the 70s when first time, I met one Marathi girl through a pen-pal magazine in Pune. I addressed the first letter as Dream Karve – Sapna being her name and presented a box of gifts and now I feel that the green of salad leaves, which are invariably short-lived, is an obvious allusion to youthfulness, as I don’t have any contact with her.
In those days, I might be expecting of the main course after the salad which usually comes but unless you are really old, you can often attribute your errors to inexperience and get away with it. Though for many the salad days extend far longer than when the days were a salad, really those were my ‘Salad Days’ when I was green in judgment.
Anyhow, the telling of salad days is fine but it will be tedious to reach the desert of this many-coursed life but one’s salad days, despite being transitory, definitely keep you refresh, when you go back to those days.