By Wangkheimayum Bhupendra Singh
As I sat on my balcony, environed by the afternoon breeze, looking over the far horizon, where the Baruni peak meets the winter sky, my mind drifted off on its own to the past, moving fast across cities I had been to, rivers I had crossed, skies I had flown over bringing back the faces I had met and known but long lost as life’s pages turned. Then my mind stopped at a certain point, and I couldn’t help but smile at the memories from long time back.
Some time back, a dear old friend had shared with us this photograph on a social networking site, igniting old memories among many of us friends.
The old picture, taken of our class in MPS way back in the early 1990’s, ignited a chain of thoughts that particular afternoon, breaking the monotones of an otherwise dull afternoon and encouraged me to write this.
What made it all the more endearing was that it was shared on a platform – where almost all of those in the frame could see it and relive the past, share memories from what has long been forgotten and forsaken and most importantly bring back together old classmates.
The photograph took me back into time when the open fields were our only playgrounds before the TVs and the video games replaced them, and I could safely assume that it ignited the same feeling of nostalgia among my former classmates.
It took me back into the time when we were still concern with what our mothers must have loaded our tiffin-boxes with and with whom to share them and less with what we were going to learn in school.
I sat and remembered of the times when we still had the energy to run across the grounds until our faces turn a crimson red and fold our hands to drink with all cares forsaken from the common water tank.
Life started off pretty simple. I was once a toddler my parents told me. You ran after the butterflies and tried to catch the rainbow and your own shadow, my mother smiled remembering my early years.
From the vague memories I could still remember, I made friends with the toad, tied a piece of cloth around my shoulder to become the super hero that I dreamt of becoming one day and protect my limited world from my imaginary villains.
“And then one fine day you went off to school and came back with a bag full of queries and dreams; that was when your life became intense and demanding,” mama sighed.
According to mama, with each passing year, my queries became more intense and difficult to answer until it became almost impossible.
Now that I am looking for answers on my own and working to realise my dreams, how I wish to be a toddler again when I was oblivious of life’s seemingly unreasonable demands.
Life could be pretty harsh was the first of many advices my parents offered me and my brothers and sister.
“Time and tide waits for none” was the second or so.
Preparation for my life ahead had begun the day I was born and lay on my mother’s lap as she sang my first lullaby.
Nevertheless, school was where I learnt a lot and where I met them all… where we met our first best friends and for many their first innocent crushes… and a few were even lucky enough to have found their soulmate.
Coming back to my memories, a decade and a half has passed since we shared the same fear for exams, exchanged class notes, shared pakoras at the canteen, etc. And like the many friends who had grown apart for long and came face to face once again we dreamt on to have a get-together, see what we have all missed out from one another’s life.
We sure had made plans to meet, set a date, a venue where we could all be once again the child we can never be again.
The plan is yet to see the light of day but nonetheless the photograph had already done its bit and ignited the desired camaraderie among us long lost friends and we continue as of today to meet as much as we are allowed to meet online.
This means that now many of us are in touch and are involved in frequent and long indulgences in a series of group and individual chats on the internet on a daily basis as if on a mission to catch up for all the lost time. The chats are often long and many a time just a friendly banter but at times it does wander into interesting topics.
This time around we started off with inquiring about one another, how life has been treating us, unlike in the past when we were finger led by our parents and teachers into the classroom.
To cut a long story short I would quote a beautiful song of The Carpenters’ “Yesterday Once More”, one of a few personal favourite “All my best memories come back clearly to me, some can even make me cry, just like before. It’s yesterday once more.”