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Nostalgia, Timelessness, and Humanity
Agratifying recollection of an era when paper soaps could be found on long-distance train journeys, office spaces saw fax papers, and rotary dial telephones were considered “valuable” communication devices, Devashish Makhija’s postscript “Kaalia” (EPW, 27 November 2021) made me revisit Koji Suzuki’s introduction to Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s Abandon the Old in Tokyo (Drawn and Quarterly 2006), where Suzuki writes:
Agratifying recollection of an era when paper soaps could be found on long-distance train journeys, office spaces saw fax papers, and rotary dial telephones were considered “valuable” communication devices, Devashish Makhija’s postscript “Kaalia” (EPW, 27 November 2021) made me revisit Koji Suzuki’s introduction to Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s Abandon the Old in Tokyo (Drawn and Quarterly 2006), where Suzuki writes:
We often think of nostalgia as a charming and generally positive feeling. Ice cream and beach are nostalgic things, as are home cooking or the smell of babies … They are nostalgic because while they recall the past, they represent an uncanny timelessness … They are not simply memories, they are the evidence of our humanity.
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