For the frightening amount of screen time I dedicate to scrolling through my reels, still it’s no surprise to me that my most used app is Photos. On the way back to campus from my weekend spent in Delhi, in between rushing for classes, right before going to sleep, there’s never a moment too arbitrary not to be misusing my camera roll. There’s no feeling that consumes me more powerfully than the gut-wrenching, tear-inducing nostalgia evoked by probably any memory I’ve ever had – and (un)luckily enough, my camera roll of 25,000 photos and videos feeds me more than enough content to sustain this sentimentality indefinitely.
From empty chewing gum packs to handwritten letters to decade-old friendship bands, every item that holds the tiniest scrap of emotional value finds itself in my massive neon-pink “memory bag” that can never be massive enough to hold its contents; my nostalgia creeps out of my camera roll and sneaks into the corners of my cupboard back home. Each visit back home is accompanied by an hour-long scavenge through the beloved memory bag, reminding me of all the millions of lost versions of myself I’ve trapped in objects. There’s the Saniya who never wore pink etched into the pages of the ugliest diary I’ve ever owned, and the Saniya who received her first flower bouquet preserved in the oven-dried petals from it. The Saniya who was petrified of the prospect of not being perceived as intelligent, captured in the polaroid of my younger self; the Saniya who religiously practised Kathak for hours, written into the scratches on my ghungroos. Each memory is a puzzle piece that aligns to create an image of myself clearer than any other momentary snapshot of my selfhood. I rely on my memories not just to show me who I am in all my colours and angles, but to construct my identity through the act of remembering.
As much as I toil over feeling nostalgic about everything I’ve left behind, notwithstanding the time it occurred at, I realise nostalgia isn’t just a passive stroll through memory, but a kind of necessary labour needed to build my sense of self. Each time I revisit an old photo or object, I am not only reliving a moment but also reinterpreting it, deciding which parts of it matter enough to carry forward. The act of remembering isn’t about accuracy; it’s about curation. I don’t remember every detail of a childhood birthday, but I remember the sticky sweetness of chocolate icing and the way my best friend’s laugh cut through the noise. That choice – conscious or not – folds into my sense of self, as if I’m constantly editing and rewriting the story of who I am. In that way, nostalgia is less about being dragged backwards and more about assembling a self that feels coherent, a self that can stand in the present while clutching onto the fragments of the past. I may not be the Saniya who dedicated a chunk of her weekend to learning Kathak thadkas anymore, but I am the part of her that holds dance, art, and creativity closer to her heart than nearly all else.
Of course, I’m not the only one doing this work. On a larger scale, entire cultures run on nostalgia. Nations lean on selective memory, weaving “golden ages” or “simpler times” into the fabric of identity, the way I weave chewing gum wrappers and ghungroos into mine. Collective nostalgia offers comfort and belonging, but it also tells a carefully edited story – one that often forgets the messier details. Just as I preserve the photo where I’m smiling and not the one where I’ve burst into tears, societies decide which histories to commemorate in statues and which to erase in silence. Remembering, whether personal or collective, is never neutral; it’s always shaping identity, always deciding what deserves to be carried forward.
And so, maybe nostalgia is more than just a futile longing for something that’s lost – it is a tool we can use to build the identity we want to sustain. While I’ve learnt to let go of the frustration at feeling my never-ending nostalgia, I’ve also realised to let myself feel enough for the moment I’m living now, so maybe I can be nostalgic for a newer memory someday. Maybe the point isn’t to try to return to the girl in those photos or the dancer in those ghungroos, but to keep noticing how every memory, even the smallest one, has been shaping me into someone new all along.