Pritam's Blog
Memorabilia
I noticed there were two bikes in the garage. So, I asked dad if the older one still worked.
“Takes time to start off. But yeah, it works,” he replied.
“Why don’t you sell it now that you got a new one?”
He thought for a moment, as if hesitating, before answering, “Your mother got me that one…”
I couldn’t help but smile.
I came back to my room. My old table has a drawer where I used to keep my ‘precious things’ back in my school days. I felt like going through it.
In an era when we need Facebook to trigger our memories, it was amazing how a certain conversation with my dad brought back so much of the buried past.
Rummaging through the drawer, I realized it wasn’t touched at all in all these years. Even I didn’t bother to open it when I returned home. Untouched memories from more than a decade back.
Among other things, I found a small box and I opened it. There were folded pieces of paper - pages torn from my school notebooks where she had written my name or anything else, maybe those FLAMES thingy - basically, her handwriting.
I remembered how after high school, I sat one day and went through all my notebooks to find where she had left her handwriting. I had torn those pages carefully and saved them in this box.
Who knew it at that time that those scribbles and doodles we were making in each other’s notebooks would serve as precious memorabilia in the future? I guess I did. And I guess I inherited it from my dad. Of course, his bike and my pieces of paper are not the same, but the sentiment behind saving them is…
Next moment, I felt a bit guilty about it, for thinking about the first love of my life with such fondness.
But I remembered what Pallabi says, “You loved her. It is a fact. It was a phase of your life. And just because you love me now doesn’t mean all that happened before I came to your life was a lie. You will remember things. You might even feel good about remembering them. And it’s absolutely OK.”
I realized she was right. And I realized how blessed I am to have her in my life. Like I always say, her love sets me free…
I closed the box and kept it back in the drawer. I saw my wallet on the table. A big fat wallet. No, it’s not full of money. Most of its content are scraps of paper, bus tickets from my visits to Pallabi, restaurant bills, and the likes.
I guess I haven’t changed.
I hope I don’t have to go through these things one day to remember her. I hope I don’t have to remember her at all…
I dropped a message to her, “I love You…”