Memoir of an Everlasting Memory

This story is based upon true events. I hope I have done justice to the ten-year old mind of a child. Adltya..If you ever read this..Please forgive me.. 

I was always bad with phone numbers. Infact, I was always bad with anything to do with digits.  Imagine then, how could I memorize a 10-digit phone number. And I am talking of an age when no one had even heard of cell phones (Yes! Believe me, there was this time). So we kept a diary to maintain a phone book, interesting right? I didn’t have any though. So it was amazing that somehow, even after 4 years, I could summon up his phone number.

I had lived at my nani’s place for 6 months when my father had been transferred. So it felt like home coming when I went there again for winter vacations. But there is this thing with all nanis. They want to pamper you; they will spoil you because they have the constant habit of believing that we are thinner than she had last seen us. So what they would do all day is cook and make you eat. Now this kind of treatment where you are virtually treated as a prince feels good for a few days but after that it really gets annoying, more due to the fact that your stomach starts to revolt agonizingly. It was after those few days of lazing around and killing flies that I decided to call him.

My home town is Muzaffarnagar. It is a small district in Uttar Pradesh. Back as a child when I lived there, it defined the whole world to me. All my relatives lived there and I hadn’t seen anything beyond its borders then. I went to the best school in Muzaffarnagar. Not that it mattered much to me being all of just 7 to 8 years old. But I suppose it really mattered to mummy papa who always wanted to give me the best education possible. My dad got transferred and I spent a year or so first at my aunt’s and then at nani’s. I don’t remember having many friends at school but there was one I remembered all my life – Aditya Gupta. He was my best friend.

It had been 4 years since I had met him and the memories of childhood were weak. In those vacations when I remembered him, there was nothing much I could recall about him except that he was very good looking and intelligent. The only fact that I could hark back to was that we always used to sit together. We never met after school, we never went in the same rickshaw, we never invited each other to our birthday parties and I don’t think we ever shared our lunch either. But still he was my best friend. And miraculously, that day feeling extremely out of place at my nani’s, I could summon up his phone number. I dialled.

What would you actually say to a guy you haven’t met for so long? Does he even remember you? I was a little unnerved before calling him. What would I talk about? There was nothing to say except do you remember me.

His didi picked it up first and then put Aditya on the call. I was relieved when he said that it was obvious that he remembered me. He seemed genuinely happy to hear from me as well. So we decided to meet the other day. He gave me his address and we talked long about old times. I was surprised to find he still remembered so many things. That’s when I knew that among friends, there is always something to talk, to remember and to cherish.  

I told nanaji about him and as it turned out he knew Aditya’s father through some common friend. His father owned some cloth showroom in the main market, nana told me. He promised to drop me at Aditya’s house while going for work.   

I have always enjoyed every ride through the streets of Muzaffarnagar where you are sure to see outbreaks of some unusual fights. I loved it whenever I crossed my old school. It was still pretty much the same, tall and beautiful. I liked watching posters pasted all over the walls across the streets. And I simply adored the crowd mongering the streets. The love for your home-town flows in your blood, I suppose. Even after living there for years I just could not stop but wonder at its diversities.

It didn’t took us long to find his home. Aditya was waiting for us outside. He looked pretty much the same, I thought, except the fact that he had grown taller than me, I noticed. Nana told me that he would pick me up in the evening and so I bid him farewell. Aditya seemed genuinely delighted to see me. We shook hands. He led me inside.

Aditya was the youngest in the family. He had an elder sister and a brother. His house was furnished like all medium class families in the town. But it struck me how clean and orderly everything was. Some teddy bears neatly placed on the diwan, the wind-chime melodiously chiming in the background. I could hear the sound of television coming from the bed-room. But the most beautiful thing I found was a bird balanced over a stick in mid-air. I also saw a pendulum clock sitting in the corner of the room, its pendulum making periodic motions. I must admit that I was a little nervous at the prospect of meeting him after such a long time but Aditya made me feel at home. His mother came into the drawing room, smiled at me and said, “Hello Beta!”

It was déjà-vu like I had never experienced before. I had heard the same words before, the same voice but not the same face. Suddenly the memories of years long ago came back to me...

I remembered the day when Aditya and I were standing at the school gates. Me, waiting for the rickshaw and Aditya, waiting for his mother to pick him up. His mother had come first and I remembered even then how graceful and beautiful she was. She had walked upto me, smiled and said, “Hello Beta!”.

But it wasn’t the same face I had seen just some years back. Her face was now pockmarked, there were dark circles under her eyes, her complexion had become dark and she wore a cloth around her head now. Two things that hadn’t really changed were her smile and the young twinkle in her eyes, I noticed. I wish I could remember something else about that scene except that how desperately I had wanted to ask Aditya the reason why Aunty looked ill, but couldn’t bring myself to. Instead she asked me how I was and how I was doing at school.

Mind is a cruel animal. It is like a chameleon, playing tricks on you, changing colours to deluge you. Sometimes it wouldn’t let you recall the second past and sometimes it would give back to you memories that you didn’t even know existed. Sometimes you would spend hours researching on a thesis and the idea wouldn’t come to you and sometimes while sleeping it would give you that same idea as a dream and when you wake up you wouldn’t remember the dream or the idea. Mind can be a cruel animal.

We children went up on the roof and played cricket for a while when didi called us all for lunch. We were served rajma and naan. The food was delicious and for a moment I forgot the rotis my nani cooked. The whole family was there and we joked for a long time. Aditya kept coming up with all the stupid things we used to do at school. It was amazing how Aunty remembered the ball dance where I had participated.

I was wearing a green suit with a bow-tie I had borrowed from my cousin. I was standing in the first row with a girl in my arms. Aditya was also there besides me in the second row. I looked at him and he gave me a thumbs up. I remember feeling jealous of how good he looked in that matching black suit. The dance was about to begin when Aditya’s mother came and gave him a kiss on the cheeks. She then saw me, planted a swift peck on my cheeks and said best of luck to both of us. The music began...

After lunch, Aunty took some medicines, so I knew that she was ill. It made me feel terrible that she had to do all the work inspite of being unwell. But Aditya reassured me that didi had also helped but he avoided the topic as soon as I asked what really was wrong with Aunty.

I had come to meet just my friend but somehow, I found myself analyzing the whole family with my ten year old mind. The way they saw each other, the laughter on their face but the sadness in their eyes as if waiting for a long-impending doom. But then it was just a ten-year old mind discerning the facts.

It was a day well spent. In the evening nana came back to pick me up and I said farewell to the whole family not knowing when I will get the chance to meet them again.

I don’t remember how much time went by after that one day. May be a year or two, I was sitting at my home reading news paper on a Sunday morning when I noticed a story. It’s very rare that news papers publish stories but then, when there are no terror attacks, no actress getting murdered or no scams over politicians, I think they have no worthy news to publish.

The story was about a boy and his mother. It told of their early memories together. It told of all the happy times they had had together, of all the times they had cried together, of the times she had told her bed-time stories, the times they had danced together, of the times when they sang together, played together. It told of a bond greater than God Himself. And it told of the time God himself became jealous of such unending and selfless love. It told of the time his mother suffered tumour, of the time when she lay in bed dying and he could do nothing but see his mother dissolve in the nothingness of time, of the time when he saw her first hair falls, of the time when he saw her getting whiter every day and of the time he saw his brother setting the ashes of his mother into Ganga. By the time I finished the story, tears had welled up in my eyes. I could relate to so many things, could associate myself to so many things. Doesn’t every son feel the same belonging to his mother? But one thing that kept haunting me was the signature below the story - Aditya Gupta, Muzaffarnagar.

It is wrong being a kid. We are not sure of our self being, waking up every morning just to learn from whatever we see and feel around us. Kids don’t get to make decisions, they look for someone to make it for them. And what if a time arrives when a kid has to make a decision? Will he chose to call his best friend when he hears of his mother’s death or would he just let it go, creating in his minds a yet another sad memory. 

I couldn’t summon the courage to call Aditya or to comfort him in any way. I knew I had no words to console him and somewhere inside I even wondered if he would even care. So I decided to create in my mind a memory of the beautiful day where I actually saw a woman and her son laughing away the approaching death. Aditya and me, we havn’t talked since that one day.

Sometimes, I remember the pendulum in his drawing room and the irony of how life moves on, the time goes by, while the pendulum returns to the same position with each tick in the hour. And in times like these I wonder if Aditya had grown up much faster than me.

The thing about beauty is that besides being a joy forever, it also lasts forever. One day walking by a store I saw a plastic bird perched over a stick and bought it. I had learnt to respect life.

I still remember him. I remember his mother. And there are so many ways you remember people. I chose not to remember her as the fragile ailing lady I met on that day but instead, as the woman who had cheered when I won the cricket match with her son, as a woman who was courageous in the face of death and as the elegant lovely lady who had once walked upto me with a twinkle in her eyes and said, “Hello Beta!”.