Faded Memories

History. Slowly but surely that’s what everything becomes. I had graduated from high school five years ago. I had taken my school memories for granted. I believed that they were always going to be there as a part of me, my identity, forever etched in my memories.  But my belief was met with colossal disappointment. A few minutes ago I was browsing through Facebook and on my homepage I saw a link of our school’s ex-students association. Pictures commemorating teacher’s day had been posted. I clicked on the link hoping to take a trip down the memory lane. I was grief-stricken and disbelief washed over me. I don’t intend to offend my ex-teachers or my fellow batch mates. But I am going to get candid hereafter.

 I recognized the faces; they were omnipresent in the school corridors. I remembered them walking down the corridor with important papers in their hand or hurrying towards a class. But shockingly couldn’t recall most of their names. The picture of an old lady with white hair was so familiar.  Yet I couldn’t recall her name. This was the case with most of my teachers except for a few whom I remembered due to some reason both good and bad. Slowly realization dawned on me. Time didn’t stand still for the past five years. I have moved from school to college to university. I went through numerous changes, acquired more knowledge about the world, gained new experience, moved to an alien city, made new friends, and carved a niche for myself. But somehow time had stood still for my teachers. They still go to the school every morning, take class after class, teach the same subjects, and inculcate the same values in their students. Each year they guide new group of students. But the essence of their lesson remains the same. We are the ship. They are our sailors. They guide us, lead us and prepare us to face the unknown ocean called life where we will be met with lashing waves or deathly calm. Physically I have grown from being an awkward and shy teenager to a woman who is prepared to swim in the ocean in quest of that magical island where dreams come true. Whereas their beautiful faces have been assailed by wrinkles, their luscious black hair now has specks of grey in it. In the intervening time my head had been filled with innumerable data ranging from Chemistry, college, new friends, career, journalism, travel.

The older memories gathered dust and were moving towards decay when I got a cold reminder- How can you forget something as integral to you as a person? How can you forget those people who were everything for you outside of home, whom you desired to please, whose acknowledgment you so much craved? How can forget the people whose appreciation had at a point of time made you so happy that you jumped in joy for the entire day and disapproval made you miserable for days at end? So I picked up the old memories, dusted them off and neatly arranged them. My head is filled with visions of classrooms, the ubiquitous chalk, duster and blackboard, the smell of new books at the beginning of each academic year, the wooden benches on which we were forever scrawling messages, an inheritance of sorts for our classroom descendents. We may be gone but out names would forever remain carved on those desks and posterity would further add to it. Those benches are likely to be gone and replaced by new ones them but we like to believe that they are still there with our names carved on it and will be there for a long time to come. It’s a way of permanently attaching ourselves to our beloved alma mater. So we live in denial because in our sad times these memories bring a smile to our lips. And our teacher’s preside in the classrooms filled with the mementos of the ancestors. With the gradual passage of time our children will replace us in the same classroom. Some of our old teachers will remain to guide them through the same path but most will have taken leave by then. It difficult to admit but by our twenty-fifth reunion many would have crossed over from this mortal world. All that would be left behind would be memories. Memories in the form of pictures, notes, old textbooks and those images involving little classroom incidents, spoken words which altered the course of our lives, words of wisdom which comforted us in our distress which were never captured in camera but have a photographic presence in our minds.

I do not know how to give a beautiful ending to this write-up. All I can say is the words came straight through my heart and I do not want to give it a picture perfect ending with ostentatious words or pseudo-expectations. Life is imperfect but we still chose to live it. Similarly memories however perfect or imperfect forever remain with us. As we grow old some of the old memories start to decay no doubt. But there will always be a feeling of familiarity when we come face to face with them. We might feel jubilant or petulant. But feeling is what matters. It confirms that the past holds a place in our present lives.