Fleeting Glimpses of the Few Last Memories - Part 1

29th March, 2007

The appointed day has come at last… five long years become history today… a history that exists only in our memories… a history that is known only to us… a history that is at once beautiful and gruesome, wonderful yet terrible, inspires love but is still hated…!

The last day of college life… the last day of exams… the whole batch seemed to have gathered in front of the college – including the people who usually scamper off to the nearest hang-out places as soon as exams end, the people who usually flee the scene before the inevitable “re-evaluating” the paper begins (this category includes yours truly! I hate it when my batchmates start discussing what the right answers are/should have been – I mean, who wants to write the entire exam all over again?!)… even the ones who usually finish their two-hour papers in an hour’s time…! Given the fact that our exams ended at 6 pm, and that most of us hadn’t been sleeping well for the past few days, courtesy the exams, that’s saying quite something! Perhaps it just showed that in spite of everything, we still cared for the small things in life!

We were moving on… on to a new phase of our career… on with life…

We were leaving a lot behind… our friends… our carefree life… our favourite hang out places…

It was truly not sinking in yet… some of us are settled in life… some aren’t… some know where they would be in the next few months… some aren’t sure about the next few days! It still felt like the ending of any other year, when the reassuring feeling of coming back for yet another year at Symbi filled our hearts, and the only promises exchanged were the ones of meeting up and keeping in touch in the holidays!

But it was different this time, and the air of finality was everywhere… our eyes were filled with anticipation of the uncertain, sadness of leaving our identities behind, anxiety of creating a new one in the big, bad world… shouldering new responsibilities, not only of charting the growth of our career paths and making our families proud, but also of living up to the name and reputation of being a “Symbi-ite”!

The heart still refused to believe that its time to bid adieu… the mind stopped the many tears from rolling down the cheeks… we promised a lot – to ourselves, to our college, to our friends… and wondered silently, which of them would life let us keep?

As of now, though, we all had our own plans made – surprisingly enough, they all sounded quite similar… Plans to enjoy the last few days in the city of Pune… to take full advantage of our carefree student-life that can never be replicated… to eat, drink and be merry… to revisit all those favourite haunts which are etched in our memories forever… to create a “few last memories” to cherish forever… to exchange the last vows of keeping in touch!

30th March, 2007

Revisiting the past days… reliving the old times spent together… creating few last memories to be cherished lifelong… catching up on whatever we’ve missed… yes, that was the plan…

Words never stopped pouring… feelings rebelled… hearts refused to stay calm… we wanted to make up for lost time… we wished the night could last forever… and yet, all good things do come to an end…

Food and drinks couldn’t befuddle us, eyelids heavy with sleep couldn’t deter us, the uncertainties of the future lying ahead couldn’t dampen us – we wanted to enjoy every minute, every second, every moment… and we did.

Some things are best left unsaid… our feelings of the night fall into that bracket!! I just wish it could last longer…

31st March, 2007

For the first time, this new realization dawned on me – leaving college does not only mean bidding farewell to friends from my batch… it also means an imminent parting with all those people who are part of my precious memories at different points of time in these five years here… juniors, friends from different streams of life, people who’ve helped me in times of need and adversity…

It is difficult to say which incident in particular triggered this feeling… perhaps it was the whole of the evening… an evening in which a few of my juniors wanted to create those “few last memories” that we all are craving for at this moment!

At ordinary times, there would’ve been nothing remarkable about the outing – a normal movie-n-dinner plan… but this was different… because my juniors’ meant this to be a personal farewell to me! Different, because all throughout, that air of finality still hung about us… every moment we enjoyed together was precious, because we knew that these were parts of the “few last memories”…

Once again, reliving the past… revisiting the old times spent together… and lastly, promises of keeping in touch…

And once again, the helpless yearning for the night to last a little longer…

1st April, 2007

Yet another addition in my collection of the “few last memories”… this time, with another set of my juniors! You could call it an outing, a picnic, a religious trip – could’ve been anything, but who knows better than I that this trek up the Parvati hill to visit the Temples there, the royal lunch at Sukanta, the whole morning in fact, was also meant to be one of those “few last memories”!

Not that it diminished the enjoyment of the trip… no, not even one bit… in fact, it perhaps enhanced the flavor more… and most importantly, it threw up some very memorable moments…

The journey, the exploration, the laughter and the companionship, the enjoyment and the merry-making… in a few days, they’ll no more be a part of my life… they’ll just become memories… such a sore realization!

When the sumptuous lunch at Sukanta got over, I had the same pit-feeling in my stomach – couldn’t it last a bit longer…?

Fleeting Glimpses of the Few Last Memories - Part 2
Fleeting Glimpses of the Few Last Memories - Part 3