Edited by Antara Joshi
A couple of days ago, I tripped and fell on the steps to the infirmary. I’ve tripped there once before, in my first year. I didn’t fall face-first then; you were beside me and caught me just in time. I got up, nursing the bruise on my chin, thinking, I miss having you beside me.
I’ve realised I tend to miss places more than people. But college is different, right? Every day now feels like a blur of memories that I’m creating and missing all at once; a winless fight to slow down time, hold fine sand in the palm of my hand. It’s not yet time to leave, but I can’t help but think—almost. It is almost time to leave.
I’ll miss the slopes next to the sunken field. Before they put the wooden benches there, I would lie in the grass, soaking in the quiet winter sun. Nowadays, I sit on one of the benches and talk to my mother on calls as I watch the sunset.
I’ll miss the tree with the purple blossoms. I once sat under it with my first-year roommate and counted every new petal the tree shed.
I’ll miss the fuel zone coffee and the rice dish from THC that I’ve ordered so many times, the bhaiyya doesn’t even ask me what I want anymore.
I’ll miss the sound of rubber-soled shoes slipping and squeaking on the wooden floor of the MPH when people are playing late-night badminton matches.
I’ll miss the bleachers, where I had my first kiss, and where I go to cry nowadays.
So many other things—cricket and football match screenings in Takshila, the yellow sofas at the end of the library’s first floor, the stairs to the basement under the library, the stone benches opposite the tennis court, the rose bushes next to my residence hall, the nights of dance and music in the open amphitheatre, all-nighters at the skybridge, long conversations at Reddy’s, watching the sunrise from AC02, my roommate’s mushroom plushie, the remnants of a dead conversation being dragged out to last a moment longer—memories being made, memories being pulled and stretched, memories being changed.
Somewhere on some red brick of some wall of this tiny campus, it has two tiny scrawled initials, one a little higher than the other—evidence of a drunk bet being won by one, lost by another. Room numbers that never belonged to me are etched into my mind deeper than some of my own. I lost an earring in one of those, and I never bothered to look for it. I imagine it still rolling around in a dusty corner between the bed and the desk, or the cupboard and the wall, in the same room, now occupied by a third set of people since I dropped my earring there. There is a Blu-tack heart on the inside of the desk in one of these rooms; I’m sure it has hardened by now, just as I have.
I wish for these remains to outlast me—I tell myself that no one will notice the tiny lettering on the edge of desks I’ve occupied in classrooms, and scrub it clean. I imagine the pictures being unerasable from a laptop that wants to lose them. I pray for the tiny, scrawled lettering to become resistant to any erosion. I think of someone stepping on the earring I once lost and letting it stay where it was instead of tossing it out. I hope the remains remain.