Describe a phase in life that was difficult to say goodbye to.
There are those days of the past, which we get reminded of upon a certain condition, for example when we eat something and feel the same pleasantness spreading through us that we had felt one fine day in the past. Now, a lot of factors go into reliving that feeling again, as it is with most things in this unnecessarily complex adulthood, so it is very difficult to ascertain that when it might happen again and thus like I always tell people, savour that moment like it would never come again.
Then, there are those days of past, which we recall a lot and it’s always there somewhere in the mind but we know it cannot happen again, for example, sharing our thoughts about things among friends in class during lunch break and talking about everything related to slowly discovering the wide world out there, through the innocence of childhood and the excessive excitement of learning something new, no matter how less significant it might have seemed later.
As you must have understood, if there is a phase of life that was difficult to separate from, it was hidden in my childhood. I particularly love that part of my life, every thought, every fleeting moment, each unique feeling. I wish there was a hard disk to store it all forever directly from the mind.
In particular what I miss is my friends calling out, which I did for them as well. It was something that developed on its own. Whenever we went out to play, the two or three of us who met on the playground went around, calling everyone else to come out and play. I was usually among the one called out the most because of my book reading and gaming hobbies which made me lose track of time.
The difficulty of this phase started as we grew, all slowly going to higher classes in school. The playing in the evening became much lesser, the calls had become scarce. Some days I would just walk over to the playground wondering if something had gone wrong.
The playground friends disappeared in their own worlds, but I made new ones, at the coaching centre where I went for help with a few subjects and the school friends who like me had grown enough to travel farther with their bicycles or on foot. Friendship in this phase is unique because this is where you truly begin to understand it, the calling out came again. The circle may not have been as big as the one in the playground, but the bond was deeper.
There are moments in this phase when one wonders, maybe this will be it forever, after all we are going to school, about the same time we might spend in college and a bit more or a lot more in offices, but we will be here in the evenings right? Calling each other out to come out with spare change and later earned income in pocket for a sandwich and cold coffee.
No, it was not forever, at this point of life it is not even a surprise. Now I am well aware of the fact that things do end and it has made accepting it much better, much better than being too tired after office or college to meet that friend or staring at the roads waiting for the one who matters to come by. For those wondering, yes, we had mobile phones, they were expensive though, but we were more in tune to things happening in their natural course.
Everything is fine now, it has to be, otherwise how would life keep moving ahead. But I would be lying if I said sometimes when I walk or drive around, I don’t see two high school students from the past riding their bicycles to the next experience.
Written by Anuran Chatterji
Early Morning Memories 