Déjà Vu of the Ordinary

It's 4 o' clock on a Sunday afternoon. Sun streaming in through the windows on this mildly pleasant summer day. Hardly a person on the streets, but the young boy's playing cricket in the driveway. A few birds chirp, almost pleading for the sun to set. Things are quiet, the house is silent. I'm reading in the balcony, in glorious perspiration. I've been here before, I know that. I've done the same thing seven years ago.
Seven years on; for the better or worse only time will tell, but seven years nonetheless. Through crushes, through September 11th, through two board exams, three years in the United States, girlfriends, vacations, internships, Pete Sampras AND Roger Federer. And I remember the goddamn sunshine? The birds on a summer afternoon? The young boy playing cricket? Is it just me? Or have I been through this several times over?
I cannot relate to any of the things that I just mentioned in any way whatsoever. I cannot live them again. I will never go that way again, but the sunlight, the birds and the young boy, it's almost as if they never went away. I've lived with them all this while, it's all the same, so many years later. I'm comfortable, they reassure me. All's right with the world.
Why do I feel this way? Driving down roads you've driven over for 20 years, why should that give you any kicks? Doing the things you used to do day in and day out for 5 years, how come that matters so much? Weren't they just ordinary things? What's so great about the little insignificant things?
The traffic in Delhi, taking a rickshaw to the grocer's, going to the same barber shop you've been going to for 15 years, playing tennis on courts you've seen since you were 9 years old, going to eat ice cream at India Gate, and just putting your bed on a Sunday morning. This is the stuff that dreams are made of?? Really!
Memories are of the ordinary, I'd have them any day over the more "happy" moments in my life. Our lives are essentially happy in the ordinary. We don't need to have great things happen to us all the time, for these don't stick. They are few and far between, and are great while they last, but they just as soon can turn into the bad. Like Scott Fitzgerald, we "close out our interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men." The constancy of the ordinary though, is what keeps us going, and this is what we want to relive. We're indeed lucky to be able to relive the ordinary, however perverse this pleasure. This is who we are, and this is what we like. Isn't it lovely?