A walk down the memory lane

After years, I don’t know why, but that day my steps turned on their own toward the college.

The gate was the same.
The walls were the same.
Only the colors had faded a little.

As I walked down the corridor, the sound of my shoes echoed too clearly, as if the silence was amplifying every footstep.
I stopped at the door of my old classroom.I stood there for a moment. Then I pushed the door open. It creaked softly—and inside, an empty room seemed to be waiting for me.
The benches were neatly arranged. Chalk dust clung to the blackboard. Sunlight from the window lay quietly across the floor.
Everything was still… calm…
as though no voice had lived here for years.
Yet strangely—there was noise inside me.
The same old noise.
Laughter. Whispers. Requests for notes. The rustle of turning pages…
All of it seemed to come alive again.
I stepped in quietly and sat on the last bench.
And then, from within that noise—you emerged.
Like an old photograph suddenly glowing in sunlight, you became clear before me. 

Your laughter. 

The way you lowered your head while speaking. 

The habit of brushing your hair behind your ear…... Everything just the same.

From the ceiling fan, the moving air carried that familiar fragrance of your perfume. For a moment, it felt as if time had paused somewhere and carefully preserved your presence.
Memories stretched and awakened.
You were sitting on the bench in front of me. Saying something. I was listening. Smiling. The whole class had filled up again—only for us.
Slowly, everything else began to blur.
Walls. Windows. Door…
All fading away.
There was only you...
And me.
A small world suspended between two heartbeats.
Then suddenly, the sound of the fan grew louder.
I blinked.
Everything vanished.
No you.
No laughter.
No noise.
Only empty benches, sunlight, and silence.
I was alone—
in an old classroom, with old memories.
And then I understood…
Some places are never truly empty.
We are simply late in returning.
And the truth was this—
there was no one there.
Just me… and my memories.
That was reality.
I sat there for a while longer,
warming my heart in the warmth of those memories,like a small patch of winter sunlight.
Slowly, time returned.
The sound of the fan, the breeze from the window, footsteps somewhere outside—
everything began to feel real again.
I stood up.
Took one last look at the benches,
at the blackboard,
and walked toward the door—
as if nothing had ever happened.
Outside, I gently closed it.
The same creak echoed again—
this time, emptier.
I turned and walked away.
But something stayed with me…
a faint feeling— that some emotions never die.
They simply breathe quietly behind old closed doors.
My steps slowed in the corridor.
And for no reason, an old ghazal(song) rose to my lips.
Softly, I hummed—
"Ages passed, yet your memory never really came to me,
But it’s not true that I ever forgot You._
I never had the courage to forget You,_
Even in distance, I was never really apart from You…"
And then I understood—
Some relationships do not walk beside us;
they walk with us forever ...... as memories.

Saturday, 7/2/26, 03:45 PM
Ajay Sardesai – Megh