There Is Only The Past
- Madhukar Dama
- 14 hours ago
- 24 min read
Prologue: The Illusion of Time
We speak of past, present, and future as if they are three separate lands.
We imagine the past as gone, the future as unborn, the present as alive.
But look closely. What we call “now” is already past by the time we notice it. What we call “tomorrow” is only a guess, built from yesterday. What we call “new” is only old, reshaped.
Time does not have three parts. It has one: the past.
It alone exists.
It alone moves.
Everything else is illusion.
This book is not an escape from that truth. It is an entry into it.
—
Chapter 1: The Disappearance of the Present
We speak about the “present” as if it is real — as if it is the ground we stand on. But the closer you look, the more it slips away.
Think about the way you experience a simple clap of hands. The sound reaches you after it travels through the air, enters your ears, and is processed by your brain. By the time you hear the clap, the event has already passed. What you call “now” is already late.
Modern neuroscience confirms what ancient thinkers intuited: the human brain lives with a delay. Our nervous system takes milliseconds to gather, process, and translate signals into experience. By the time you register a sight, a touch, or a sound, it has already happened. The present is an afterimage.
Indian thought has long hinted at this. The poet Bhartrhari in the 5th century wrote that time “devours” every instant as soon as it arrives. The moment you say “now,” it is gone. Even in daily speech, we feel it. A train leaves at this moment — but by the time you say it, the whistle has already blown. A child takes a first step — but the instant you clap in joy, it is already the past.
The so-called present is like a drop of water evaporating before it touches the ground. It has no independent existence. It is the past, caught in motion.
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The Farmer and His Field
Consider a farmer in Vidarbha, waiting for rain. He looks at the sky, searching for signs. When the first clouds gather, he feels it is the “present.” But every decision he makes — sowing, plowing, waiting — is based on memory. He knows the soil because he has touched it for years. He trusts the monsoon because he remembers how it came before. Even his hope is stitched from past patterns.
The field in front of him looks fresh, new, immediate. But it is not. The soil is centuries of river silt. The seed is generations of saving and passing down. The rain itself is the recycling of ancient water. What he sees as “now” is nothing more than layers of past stacked on past.
The present field is the past in bloom.
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The Student and the Exam
Think of a student preparing for exams in Pune. She sits at her desk, surrounded by books. Every answer she writes tomorrow will come only from what she memorized yesterday. Even her anxiety is not about tomorrow — it is about not having studied enough yesterday.
Her so-called future — results, career, life — is simply the past repeated, arranged, projected. If she passes, it is because of what she already learned. If she fails, it is because of what she did not. Nothing new enters. The exam is only the past, taking a new shape.
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The Disappearance of “Now”
Science tells us this. Stories show us this. Everyday life confirms it.
The present is not a thing. It is not a moment you can hold. It is not a stage on which you act freely. It is only the continuation of everything that has already happened.
The farmer does not stand in the present — he stands in accumulated past.
The student does not live in the present — she lives in memorized past.
You and I, as we speak, are not creating a fresh present — we are repeating and reconfiguring past words, past thoughts, past experiences.
What we call “now” is only past, dressed up in immediacy.
—
Chapter 2: The Illusion of the Future
If the present is nothing but the continuation of the past, then what is the future? Most people believe the future is open, fresh, and unwritten. But when you look closely, the so-called future is nothing more than the past stretched forward.
We think of it as possibility, but in truth it is only projection. Like a film reel, the scenes ahead are already contained in the frames that came before.
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The IT Engineer in Bengaluru
Walk into a café near Electronic City. You will see a young software engineer planning a start-up with his friends. They talk of “the future” — of apps that will change the market, of technologies that will shape tomorrow.
But each of their ideas is built from what already exists. Cloud computing, machine learning, digital payments — none of this is born out of thin air. It is the past work of thousands of coders, researchers, and failures, stacked one upon the other.
Even their dream of “something new” is a remix of the old. The app they imagine will draw from existing models, borrowed codes, and known user behaviors. The so-called “future technology” is nothing more than past technology rearranged.
What they believe is a leap into tomorrow is simply yesterday projected with polish.
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The Politician in Delhi
Now think of a politician giving a speech before elections in Delhi. He promises development, prosperity, safety, and jobs. His entire campaign is wrapped in the language of the future. But look deeper:
His promises are built on yesterday’s failures.
His slogans are recycled phrases used decades ago.
His “vision” for tomorrow is stitched from old models of governance.
Even when he says “we will bring change,” he is bound by what has already been tried and tested. The bureaucracy, the economy, the laws — all are rooted in structures created long ago.
The crowd may cheer for a new dawn. But the dawn is nothing new; it is the same old sun rising again.
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The Family’s Hope
In a small home in Lucknow, a family saves money for their child’s education. They speak of the child’s “future.” They imagine a career, a better life, stability.
But every detail of that imagined future comes from the past:
The father remembers his own struggles and wants to avoid them.
The mother recalls the missed chances of her youth and wants to correct them.
Even the child’s dreams are inspired by what he has already seen — a neighbor who became a doctor, a cousin who works in IT.
The so-called “future” of the child is nothing but the family’s past, extended forward with hope.
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Science of Projection
Psychologists call this “projection.” The mind cannot imagine anything outside its stored experiences. Every dream borrows from memory. Even when we invent fantastical worlds — flying cars, talking machines, immortality — we borrow pieces of the past and rearrange them.
The “future” is not a blank canvas. It is a shadow cast by the past.
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Why the Future Feels Free
Why, then, do we feel the future is open? Because unlike the present, which slips away instantly, the future always stays just out of reach. It is the carrot before the donkey — visible but never real. We chase it, not realizing that the string holding the carrot is tied to our back.
The future comforts us. It lets us believe that change is coming, that freedom is possible, that the weight of the past can be escaped. But the truth is harder: the future is nothing but the past in disguise.
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The Illusion Exposed
From the engineer’s start-up to the politician’s promises, from the family’s hopes to our own private dreams — all futures are extensions of memory. The future does not exist independently. It is the projection of the past.
When we plan tomorrow, we are only stretching yesterday’s lines forward.
When we hope for change, we are only asking the past to arrange itself differently.
When we dream, we are only reweaving what we already know.
The future, like the present, has no independent life.
—
Chapter 3: Memory as Existence
If the present disappears the moment it is noticed, and the future is only the projection of what has already been, then what holds everything together? Memory.
Memory is not just a record of life. It is life itself. Without memory, nothing exists.
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The Person Without Memory
Imagine a man in Mumbai who loses his memory in an accident. He wakes up in a hospital bed, unable to recall his name, his family, his work, or his past. The doctors speak to him. His wife weeps beside him. But for him, these are strangers.
What is his life at that moment? Empty. Not because his body is gone, but because his memory is gone. Without memory, there is no self.
This is not only a tragic story; it is proof. You are your memory. Without it, there is no “you.”
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Memory in Families
Step into any Indian household. Look at a wedding album. The family gathers, pointing at photographs, retelling the stories of the day. “This was the day the power went out during the reception.” “This was the song she danced to.” The event itself is long gone, but the memory keeps it alive.
What we call family is not just people living together. It is shared memory. The grandmother’s story of migration. The father’s story of struggle. The mother’s story of sacrifice. These memories bind generations. Without them, the family is just unrelated individuals under one roof.
A family is a storehouse of past, passed down in words, rituals, objects, and silences.
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Memory as Culture
Now look at a wider canvas: India itself. What binds a nation of so many languages, castes, religions, and geographies? Memory.
The Ramayana and Mahabharata are not just epics. They are collective memory. People who have never met share these stories as if they are their own. A child in Assam and a grandmother in Kerala may live different lives, but they both know of Rama, Sita, Krishna, and Arjuna. The memory is collective, and so the identity is collective.
Festivals are also memory in practice. Holi is not just colors, it is memory of spring returning every year. Diwali is not just lamps, it is memory of darkness overcome. Independence Day is not just a flag, it is memory of freedom hard-won. Without memory, these are just random dates on a calendar. With memory, they are the nation itself.
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The Science of Memory
Biology agrees. A tree grows because its cells “remember” how to divide, shaped by DNA — the memory of countless ancestors. A child learns to walk by trial and error, but once learned, the body “remembers” the balance.
The brain itself is nothing but a network of memory. Every new experience is compared to what is already stored. Recognition, learning, even love — all depend on memory. When you recognize your friend, it is not the present that tells you who he is, it is your memory of his face, his voice, his smell.
Memory is the very mechanism of being.
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Forgetting as Erasure
And when memory is lost, existence is erased.
A person with dementia may sit among family but feel alone, because memory has collapsed.
A language that is not spoken dies, because its memory chain is broken.
A community that forgets its history becomes rootless, unable to stand firm.
This is why societies guard memory so fiercely. Libraries, temples, mosques, museums, songs, rituals — all are vaults of memory. Without them, life would dissolve into meaningless fragments.
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Memory as the Only Reality
We speak as if the past is gone. But the truth is the opposite: only the past remains. The present is too fleeting, the future too imaginary. Memory is what gives weight, continuity, and existence.
You are not living in the present. You are living in memory, carried forward.
A family is not living in the present. It is living in inherited memory.
A nation is not living in the present. It is living in preserved memory.
What is remembered exists. What is forgotten disappears.
—
Chapter 4: Change as Rearranged Past
One might object: if all is past, then where does change come from? How do we explain new ideas, inventions, revolutions, births, art, and discovery? Isn’t the new proof that the past does not trap us?
But when we look closer, even change is nothing but the past shuffled, recombined, and rearranged into a different shape. The substance never escapes.
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Bollywood and the “New” Film
Every Friday in Mumbai, the posters shout of a new release. Crowds rush to see something fresh — a new love story, a new thriller, a new comedy. Yet, strip away the makeup, and the storylines are echoes:
A hero’s struggle against odds.
A family’s bond tested by circumstance.
A love forbidden by society.
From the mythic tales of Shakuntala to the blockbusters of today, the same themes return. The faces change, the costumes modernize, the music takes new instruments — but the structure is inherited.
The “new film” is not born out of nothing. It is the past retold with fresh paint.
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Indian Innovation
Think of India’s technological rise. Bengaluru is called the Silicon Valley of India. Start-ups claim to create “disruptive” change. But every so-called innovation builds on layers of past discoveries:
The IT boom rests on English education policies seeded during colonial rule.
The smartphone revolution rests on past work in electronics, satellites, and telecommunication.
Even UPI, India’s digital payments miracle, depends on old practices of trust in local shopkeepers and family-based credit systems.
What appears as sudden transformation is actually a long memory of work, failures, and adjustments, crystallized into a new form.
Innovation is memory rearranged.
---
Politics and Revolt
Even revolutions are not outside the past.
The freedom struggle in India was seen as the dawn of something utterly new. But its fuel was centuries of past: the memory of exploitation, the stories of resistance, the lessons from earlier uprisings like 1857.
Even Gandhi’s nonviolence, which seemed radical, was stitched from older threads — Jain ahimsa, Buddhist compassion, the Bhagavad Gita’s call for self-mastery. What was seen as a “new method” was actually the past, selected and applied differently.
After independence too, each “new government” promises change. But bureaucracy, corruption, and hierarchy — all are shadows of older systems, merely adapted.
Revolt itself is memory exploding.
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The Science of Recombination
Biology makes this truth sharper. A newborn child feels like the arrival of something completely new. Yet, the child’s DNA is the sum of ancestral codes. Generations of past collapse into this one body. Even the child’s features — the shape of a nose, the curve of a smile — are echoes of long-dead relatives.
Creativity itself works the same way. Psychologists show that what we call “new ideas” are combinations of past memories, surfaced in unexpected patterns. The mind cannot imagine outside its archive. Even in fantasy, the dragon’s wings are borrowed from bats, the fire from volcanoes, the roar from lions.
Nothing arises outside memory.
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The River of Change
Stand on the banks of the Ganga in Varanasi. Watch the river. No water drop is the same as the last. It flows, shifting endlessly. Yet it is the same Ganga, the same channel, the same current carrying sediments of millennia.
Change is like that. It feels like movement into something else, but it is the same past rearranging itself, flowing into new shapes.
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The Myth of the “New”
The myth of novelty comforts us. It makes us believe we are not bound, that tomorrow can break free of yesterday. But the deeper truth is firmer:
Every new film is an old story retold.
Every new technology is old knowledge refined.
Every revolution is old memory unleashed.
Every new life is ancient code reborn.
The “new” is never born outside the past. It is only the past, reshaped.
—
Chapter 5: Why This Truth Feels Heavy
When you tell someone “there is only the past,” the first reaction is denial. People cling to the belief that the present is fresh, and the future is open. This denial is not accidental — it is necessary for how we survive.
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The Escape of “Living in the Moment”
Modern India, especially its cities, is filled with workshops and gurus teaching “live in the moment.” Posters in Bengaluru cafés read: Be present. Forget the past. Don’t worry about tomorrow.
But is this really possible? Sit in meditation, focus on your breath. You are told this is “the present.” Yet even your breath is past — the air entered your lungs seconds before you noticed it. The technique itself is borrowed from centuries of tradition, carried to you through memory.
The very idea of “living in the moment” is built on a long history of practice. It is not an escape from the past; it is another form of carrying the past.
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The Obsession with “Bright Futures”
Families across India sacrifice for the “future” of their children. They save, they plan, they dream. Coaching centers in Kota are filled with students preparing for IIT, NEET, UPSC — all in the name of future success.
But what is this so-called future? It is only a projection of what has already been valued: prestige, security, reputation. The “future engineer” is shaped by the memory of yesterday’s engineer who got a stable job. The “future doctor” is imagined because yesterday’s doctor was respected.
The dream of the future is the recycling of past ambitions. Yet it comforts parents to believe they are sending their children into something new.
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The Fear of Being Trapped
Why do we resist the truth that only the past exists? Because it feels like a cage. If everything is past, then where is freedom? Where is possibility? Where is the chance to break out?
The middle-class worker in Delhi wants to believe he can start fresh tomorrow, leave behind debts and failures. The farmer in drought-hit Marathwada wants to believe that next year’s rains will bring a different fate. The young woman in Chennai wants to believe that her career will take her to new horizons.
The belief in the fresh present and the open future is what keeps people moving. To tell them “there is only the past” feels cruel, like shutting the window of hope.
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Memory as Weight
The reason this truth feels heavy is because memory itself is heavy. Each of us carries a vast archive — not only of our own lives, but of generations. Our habits, fears, desires, and limits are not ours alone. They are inherited.
The caste system is memory hardened into society.
Language is ancestral memory carried on the tongue.
Even taste — why one prefers spicy food in Andhra, or sweets in Bengal — is memory coded into culture.
We are walking memory vaults. And that weight is difficult to acknowledge.
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The Comfort of Illusion
Illusions protect us. The illusion of the present lets us feel alive. The illusion of the future lets us feel hopeful. Without them, existence would seem unbearable — like carrying a mountain with no promise of putting it down.
This is why the truth of “only the past” is so often hidden, ignored, or denied. It is too stark, too raw.
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But the Weight Is Real
Still, denying the truth does not erase it. The past does not vanish just because we look away. It shapes every breath, every word, every act. Whether we acknowledge it or not, the past is the only ground we stand on.
Facing this truth is heavy. But it is also the first step toward clarity.
—
Chapter 6: Freedom in Understanding
At first glance, the statement “there is only the past” feels like a sentence of imprisonment. If everything is past, then what choice do we have? What meaning does effort carry? Why do anything at all?
But this despair arises only when we imagine freedom as escape. True freedom is not the absence of the past. True freedom is clarity about the past, and the power to shape how it continues.
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In a village in Karnataka, a potter works with clay. The clay is ancient — river silt deposited over centuries. It carries the memory of floods and mountains long eroded. The potter cannot escape this clay. It is all he has.
But within the clay lies infinite form. A cup, a lamp, a bowl, a statue. His freedom is not to reject the clay, but to mold it. The past is the clay of our lives. Freedom is not about leaving it behind, but shaping what it becomes.
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The Musician’s Raga
In Hindustani classical music, every performance is bound by a raga. The raga is centuries of tradition, rules, and patterns — the weight of past musicians. The singer cannot escape it. Yet within those rules, she is free to improvise endlessly.
The past gives the structure, the grammar. Freedom lies in how she bends it, how she colors it, how she makes it her own. The same is true for life. The past sets the frame. Freedom is the art within the frame.
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Science of Neuroplasticity
Even neuroscience supports this. The brain is shaped by past habits, experiences, and memories. But it is not a rigid machine. Through neuroplasticity, the brain rewires itself — but only by working with the circuits already there.
A child who has struggled with math can improve only by building on what little foundation exists. A stroke patient learns to walk again not by erasing the past damage, but by redirecting memory patterns around it.
Freedom is not in wiping the past clean. It is in working with the pathways the past has left.
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The Indian Example: Social Reform
Consider social reform in India. When B.R. Ambedkar fought against caste oppression, he was not free from the past. He was born into it, shaped by it, scarred by it. He could not erase centuries of memory. But he reshaped its continuation. He gave new form to old pain through law, activism, and education.
The past was heavy, but his clarity gave him freedom.
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The Shift of Understanding
When you believe in the illusion of the present or the future, you are deceived. You waste energy chasing what does not exist. But when you see that only the past is real, you stop running.
You begin to ask:
What memories am I carrying?
Which of these do I want to continue?
Which of these can I rearrange, retell, reshape?
The past cannot be erased. But it can be redirected. That is true freedom.
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Freedom Defined
Freedom is not escape.
Freedom is not the invention of something from nothing.
Freedom is the deep understanding of the past, and the skillful shaping of how it carries forward.
The farmer cannot escape his soil, but he can choose how to plow it.
The musician cannot escape the raga, but she can choose how to sing it.
The society cannot escape its memory, but it can choose how to retell it.
When you see this, the weight of the past does not crush you. It becomes the material you work with.
—
Chapter 7: The Universal Law
We have seen how the past shapes individuals, families, societies, and nations. But the truth does not stop with human life. It runs through the universe itself. Everywhere you look, the past alone exists.
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The Stars in the Sky
Step outside on a clear night in Ladakh. The stars glitter brilliantly. But none of them exist as you see them. The light reaching your eyes left those stars years, centuries, sometimes millions of years ago.
Every star in the night sky is past light. You never see them as they are. You only see them as they were. The entire universe, as visible to us, is memory. The sky itself is proof that only the past reaches us.
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The River’s Flow
Stand at the Ganga’s edge in Rishikesh. The river flows, carrying fresh water from the mountains. Yet what you touch is ancient. The drops have been rain countless times before, evaporated, condensed, fallen, carried, recycled.
The river is not “new” water. It is old water, endlessly reshaped. Even its course is memory — centuries of carving through stone, of floods and retreats. When you place your hand in the river, you are touching the past, moving.
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The Forest’s Growth
Enter the forests of the Western Ghats. Each tree looks alive in the present, growing toward the light. Yet each leaf is memory of a genetic code written by ancestors. The soil that feeds the roots is memory of fallen leaves, decayed bodies, ancient rains.
A forest is not present life. It is layers of past life nourishing itself forward.
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Civilizations as Memory
Look at India’s cities. Delhi is not just a capital; it is memory stacked in stone — Mughal walls, colonial roads, modern glass towers. Varanasi is not just a city; it is memory of rituals repeated for millennia, ashes flowing into the same river.
Every civilization is built memory. Ruins are its bones. Myths are its breath.
What we call “modern India” is nothing but ancient India rearranged, rebuilt, renamed.
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The Body as Past
Even your own body is past. Every cell is the outcome of unbroken ancestry. Your heartbeat is the rhythm of millions of years of evolution. Your very skin carries the memory of the sun that burned your ancestors, shaping its shade.
What you call “I” is the past walking, breathing, speaking.
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The Universal Principle
This is not just philosophy. Physics agrees. Every effect is the continuation of a cause. Every cause is the residue of earlier causes. Nothing is born out of nothing. The law of conservation tells us: matter and energy do not vanish; they only change form.
The new is always the past, rearranged.
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A Chain Without Break
From the stars above to the rivers below, from forests to cities, from the smallest cell to the largest galaxy — all is past. The so-called present is its continuation. The so-called future is its projection.
Time is not three parts. It is one unbroken chain called the past.
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Chapter 8: Living with This Truth
To see that there is only the past is not to lose meaning. It is to gain clarity. Illusions fall away, and what remains is raw, solid, real. Life is not about escaping the past, but about working with it wisely.
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The Individual: Living with Memory
Take a young man in Hyderabad, frustrated with his habits. He says: “I want to start fresh.” But there is no “fresh.” His habits are memory etched into his body. The only way forward is not to erase them, but to reshape them — slowly, with new repetitions, new memory.
When you realize this, you stop waiting for a magical new beginning. You begin where you are, with what you carry. Real change is patient work with memory.
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The Family: Choosing What to Pass On
A family in Chennai celebrates Pongal every year. Some rituals feel outdated. Some are joyful. Some are empty repetitions. If the family sees clearly that all tradition is memory, they gain freedom: to keep what nourishes, to drop what suffocates, to reshape what carries forward.
Instead of being prisoners of memory, they become gardeners of memory — choosing which seeds to sow into the next generation.
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Society: Retelling the Story
A society, too, must live with its past. India carries the weight of caste, colonialism, poverty, and conflict. These cannot be erased. But they can be retold. Education, reform, and public debate are ways of reshaping memory — deciding how it will continue.
If society accepts that all is past, it stops chasing false “new beginnings” and instead learns the art of retelling — carrying forward what strengthens, refusing what poisons.
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The Practice of Awareness
Living with this truth is not abstract. It is practice.
Before reacting, pause: Am I repeating an old memory?
Before planning, ask: Which past am I projecting forward?
Before celebrating or mourning, see: This moment exists only as past unfolding.
This awareness is not heavy — it is liberating. It allows you to see patterns, to understand why you act, why society repeats itself, why nations recycle the same mistakes. And with that clarity, you gain power to reshape the continuity.
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The Beauty of Acceptance
To see that only the past exists is not to see life as dead. It is to see life as continuous. Every river drop, every child born, every word spoken is past carrying itself forward into form. The miracle is not in escape, but in transformation.
The past is the clay. We are the potters.
The past is the raga. We are the singers.
The past is the soil. We are the farmers.
When you live with this truth, you stop waiting for freedom outside the past. You begin to work within it, patiently, consciously. And in that, you find the only freedom that is real.
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Closing
The present is continuation of the past.
The future is projection of the past.
Therefore, there is only the past.
To live with this truth is not despair. It is clarity. It is responsibility. It is freedom.
The past is all we have. And it is enough.
—
Epilogue: The Gift of Seeing Clearly
When you finally see that there is only the past, a quiet strength enters your life.
You stop waiting for new beginnings that never arrive.
You stop fearing the future that never exists.
You stop clinging to the present that never stands still.
Instead, you see life as one long stream of memory — shaping, repeating, transforming. You accept that you are not outside the past, but inside it. And then you learn the art of living: to work with what has been, to shape what will continue.
The past is not a prison. It is the material of life itself.
It is the soil, the seed, the water, the sunlight.
There is only the past.
And in knowing this, we are finally free to live.
Dialogue: There Is Only the Past
The setting is simple. A group of seekers sit with Madhukar in a shaded courtyard in Yelmadagi, late afternoon. Birds call. Dust floats. Tea is shared. The talk begins slowly, almost carelessly, but deepens, spirals, and sharpens over hours.
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Seeker 1:
Madhukar, you keep saying: There is only the past.
But I don’t understand. I am sitting here, breathing, listening. Surely this is the present?
Madhukar (smiling):
By the time you said “this is the present”, it had already passed. Your breath, your sound, your thought — all were already behind you. You are living in memory, not in a frozen “now.”
Seeker 2:
Then what about the future? Isn’t it open, waiting to be written?
Madhukar:
Future is just past stretched forward. Look at your own plans. They are not new. They are echoes — your education, your habits, your fears, your ambitions. When a farmer in Gulbarga plants jowar, is the crop “future”? No, it is repetition of centuries. The soil is memory, the seed is memory, the rain cycle is memory. The harvest is the past continuing.
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Seeker 3:
If everything is only past, then are we trapped? Nothing can change?
Madhukar:
Not trapped — shaped. Clay remembers every touch of the potter’s hand. But still, the pot can take new form. Change comes, but not from emptiness — from rearranging memory.
Think of language. You speak Kannada because your tongue carries the memory of your parents’ speech. Can you suddenly start speaking Japanese, “fresh”? No. But with time, repetition, and exposure, your past memory can be reshaped to hold new words. That is change within the past, not outside it.
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Seeker 4:
Then what is this thing people call “living in the present moment”?
Madhukar (laughing softly):
A beautiful slogan, but impossible. You can only live in the continuation of the past. When a musician strikes a note on the veena, you call it “now.” But what you hear is vibration that has already left the string. Even awareness itself is late. Your brain registers a sensation milliseconds after it happens. “Now” is a shadow of “just before.”
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Seeker 1:
But Madhukar, if there is only the past, then isn’t life heavy? A burden of endless memory?
Madhukar:
That depends on how you look. Memory is weight, yes, but also nourishment. The mango tree in your courtyard is standing on centuries of memory in the soil. Without that past, there is no sweetness.
Your body carries scars, habits, genes — all memory. But it also carries resilience, wisdom, immunity — also memory. Past is not a prison. It is your raw material. The question is: what do you shape with it?
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Seeker 2:
Can you give an example from daily life? Something ordinary?
Madhukar:
Look at driving on Indian roads. The so-called “present” of a driver is not present. He reacts from memory. Red light means stop — memory. Hand raised means give way — memory. Even the honk is coded memory of past patterns. Without memory, you cannot survive even one minute on the road.
And the “future” of traffic? Same chaos, because the same memory keeps replaying, unless some new discipline is introduced, repeated, and becomes new memory.
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Seeker 3:
So when people talk of “reinventing themselves,” it’s a lie?
Madhukar:
It’s a misunderstanding. Nobody reinvents from zero. You only rewrite your memory slowly. A smoker doesn’t suddenly erase ten years of habit. He replaces it — with chewing ajwain seeds, with deep breathing, with new rituals. Over time, those repetitions become new memory, new past. Reinvention is not magic. It is memory work.
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Seeker 4:
Does this idea apply to society as well?
Madhukar:
Of course. Take India. We say we are “a modern democracy.” But what are we? Ancient caste memories, colonial memories, independence struggle memories, economic reform memories — all layered and walking. Every election, every debate, every conflict is the past speaking through new microphones. Unless memory is consciously reworked, society just repeats itself.
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Seeker 1:
Then Madhukar, what should one do, if there is only the past?
Madhukar (leaning forward, voice softer):
First — see clearly. Stop chasing the false “present” or imaginary “future.” That chase wastes life.
Second — recognize the memory at work in you. Ask: Am I acting, or is my father’s voice acting through me? Am I choosing, or is my fear of yesterday choosing for me?
Third — work with memory like a craftsman. Shape it, refine it, let go of what rots, keep what nourishes.
That is all. You cannot step outside the past. But you can become conscious potter of it.
---
Seeker 2 (after a long silence):
Madhukar, it feels both heavy and freeing. Heavy because everything is already written. Freeing because I see I can rewrite, even if slowly.
Madhukar (nodding):
That is the paradox. Life is nothing but the past moving. Yet in becoming aware of this, you hold the chisel. You cannot invent marble. But you can carve.
---
The courtyard grows darker. A lamp is lit. Nobody feels like leaving. The dialogue has not ended, but slowed — like the past itself, flowing into the night.
YOU ARE THE PAST
childhood—
you open your eyes
and already
your mother’s face is waiting
the lullabies are not new
they are her mother’s lullabies.
you think you’re learning
but it’s only memory
wearing your size.
teenage—
you walk with friends
talk like you invented rebellion
but your anger is old
your father had it
your grandfather too
just different shirts
different streets.
even your love songs
are repeats
on the radio.
college—
new city, new freedom.
but the hostels smell the same,
the cheap canteens,
the boys smoking on staircases.
your notebook fills with words
that poets wrote before you were born.
every exam
is the past testing you again.
job—
you sit at the desk,
call it career.
the office hums with computers
but the grind is the same
as the typewriters.
your boss
is yesterday in a new tie.
your salary
pays for the same rice,
the same rent,
the same sleepless nights
your parents knew.
marriage—
you call it a new beginning
but the rituals drag you backward—
same fire, same chants,
same promises recycled.
you fight and make peace
just like the houses next door.
even your laughter
is borrowed from old movies.
parenting—
your child holds your hand.
you feel fresh joy
but you repeat
your father’s warnings,
your mother’s bedtime tricks.
toys change,
stories don’t.
the “future” you dream for them
is stitched from your old cloth.
middle age—
you buy land,
build a house.
the walls are straighter,
the paint brighter,
but it’s the same dream
your grandfather drew in the dust.
you call it achievement.
it is inheritance.
old age—
your hair falls,
your back bends.
you think it is new pain.
but you have only joined the queue.
the doctor prescribes
what he prescribed yesterday
to the man before you.
memory fades
and you realize—
you were memory all along.
death—
your family weeps.
they perform rites
as their fathers did.
your photo on the wall
will look like theirs.
your name
is just another layer
on an endless past.
---
the whole life
paraded as present
marketed as future
but only the past
changing clothes.
you are born in it,
you walk in it,
you die in it.
there is no escape
only repetition
only the past
rolling forward.
