I never believed it before, when my parents told me that everything changes jarringly and often after school is over, which seems like a naïve notion already now that I am in my second semester of college. But it did! My life right now is so different from what it was only a semester ago, let alone last year or the year before that.
There’s a certain staticity that came with school life. The friend group I had in sixth grade was the friend group I graduated with, though of course there were ups and downs as we grew further apart then closer than ever. We painted our nails in nonsense shades in the summer before seventh grade and did it again just before our final board exams. When we got together and grew reminiscent, we would often say Nothing has changed with us even though it sounded so nerdy and sappy, because well, we were.
When I talk with people at college about our schooling or the places we grew up in, when we say that we wished we could go back—we (as I have noted talking to like, five people) don’t want particular people or particular places or infrastructures. I agree that this might not be universal at all, or be pretty niche in fact, but it does resonate fully with me. Beyond everything, I am now craving the familiarity and comfort that came with living in the same place for seventeen years. I can map the layout of my house from memory, down to where all the furniture is and what is stored inside it (this would be so much fun to do actually…). All my comfort eating places are within walking distance from each other, and this was where my mom would take me when I used to be staring dead-eyed at my textbooks before exams. I can track the trajectory of my childhood years with ease and detail staring at a Google map of my neighbourhood.
What I also mean is that yes, my friends (by nickname), Soumya who really doesn’t have one, Tammanniya, Maggi, and Stu Lil were places of familiarity and I do really miss that aspect—but you can’t miss a feeling of sameness if you didn’t like it. I don’t at all mind how in our final years we barely got together in person but when we did it was a continuous echo of I’m so tired I can’t move and whatnot; I’m so happy thinking of how nice it was not having to exert energy into appearing likable and just existing with people you like despite everything. I love how in the first week of lockdown we called like, three times promising to be in touch throughout and then promptly did not talk for three months at which point someone was like, what the fuck are we doing we need to meet right now and rectify this. I love and miss my hours-long calls with Soumya where we knew everything about each other, and kept making plans, but ended up just staying in and talking the whole time. At Meghna’s last party before all of us left, how we played beer pong, did our third (fourth?) treasure hunt, and had the same amazing chocolate fondue and cheese dip station as always. When Tamanna and I sat down and painted for like 3 hours after I was sure I had failed my final maths paper—I still have those papers (I think) (somewhere). When I finally met Stuart’s cats (!!!) and they hissed at me but were still adorable and we went out and made fun of each other (I disagree with his statement, still stand by mine).
It's hard letting go, and I don’t want to. It’s harder to accept that the people you considered yours are far away and have much lesser time for one another. That said, meeting all of them again, despite being changed in tiny ways by college, they still belong to you in some way, for every fraction of time you spent together. I was recovering from my bout of viral when I came to Mumbai in January, and Soumya was tired from her rigorous travel, and we had an exact two hours to meet and catch up, and we covered so much ground, much more than I would have covered studying any subject, and at the 1.5-hour mark, we were like, what do we talk about now that we have gone over the basics… and it struck me that earlier, we knew each other’s basics, as much of a rudimentary revelation this is. Whatever conversations we had after that were just nuance and extra knowledge like Hey I was going down the steps and I saw this toad or Which of us is better at drawing a straight line? We might not get that again, and that’s okay because we are still going to keep seeing each other, and though we may regret the distance, it’s ours to bypass.
Any love letter to my school days won’t also be complete without Shloka and Namrata—I love you, you’re the coolest, please grow wings or develop teleportation technology so I can hug you at the earliest!!
I want to say many more things but they are too personal to write on the world wide web, so I will call my friends and tell them that instead, despite the fact that I’m daunted by how much we don’t know about each other now. And there’s so much wishful thinking to indulge in, but for all I have no clue about—I hope we continue to find ways to be together.
Crying at the club rn
CALL ME