As yellow leaves fall down between the pages of the book I read, I look up the sky that filters through between the spread of the trees. I sit on one of the benches in college, two years since I studied there last. The sights I see, the surroundings, are ever the same, yet so different.
If I close my eyes I can picture the familiar faces milling around campus, amidst these familiar surroundings. How is it that human life is so transient where as the things around me stand transfixed, a witness to the journey? Perhaps they undertake a journey too, maybe these very things that stand transfixed in their existence have changed as well.
A moment in time is an amalgamation of the people and their surroundings, all intertwined together. Their existent together makes for that very instance. When I look at the trees that have stood here all through, in my presence, outside my presence, I realize that they have changed. The leaves that they shower on me are not the same I walked on two years ago. The yellow leaves that the wind brings my way have a different rustle to them. The buildings and classrooms are inhabited by a different set of people. How could they ever be the same?
Reminiscing comes easily to me and it is reminiscing about the small frivolous bits that makes me feel most nostalgic. It isn’t the grand bash that I miss or the day I got my result that I think about. It’s the walk down the road that leads to college that I want resuscitate , it’s the pages of the book I read while bunking class that I want to browse through again, it’s the laughter of my friends, that I want to hear, as I picture myself running away from mocha the resident college dog.
All through life people yearn for those big moments. A supreme accomplishment or that much sought after accolade won, that we could narrate to our grandchildren someday. But really, it is the mundane little things we disregard in the very instant of their occurrence, that we seem to remember two years hence. Believe me, it’s all about the song you hummed while driving to college, the flutter of the heart at an inadvertent gaze, the folding of jeans to wade through puddles and sharing that hot cup of coffee on a cold winter morning
You made me miss college :( Bitch. Although I must say that "the fluttering of the heart at an inadvertent gaze" does not apply to me cos the only guys we had around were the janitors, the admin staff and at most, the roadside romeos hanging outside college.
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