Friendship Memories

Gaurav Ojha

Just like the ship sailing away from the harbor that melts out of sight at the horizon, many of the friendships we have encountered and experienced in our life also fade away, and with every departure a hope remains of seeing each other again. However, somewhere in our hearts, we get this uneasy feeling that perhaps we will never see them, and those enthralling relationships of our past shall never gather and glue together again.

And, as we turn the pages of our memories, the question remains, where are these friends now? Are they still those free-spirited dreamers, poets, philosophers, thinkers, and magic weavers—lost, confused, entrepreneurial, romantic, passionate, revolutionary, and reckless beings? Have they made it in their life, or else have they lost their magic somewhere on the way? Once in a while we may see them on social networking sites, but it doesn’t make much sense; things have changed, our life has indeed fallen apart, and we have lost each other on the way. But the faces of those friends remind us that life is about making memories for you and for others.

Our unforgettable friendships from the past are impossible to recreate, and now when I pick up my guitar to strum the strings, it just seems impossible to bend the notes with the same excitement as I did once while making music with my friends. Music carries a special note of nostalgia for me, and some songs are too close to my heart, but my favorite is Bryan Adams’s Summer of 69; the song carries special memories for me.

Whenever I listen, the song takes me back to those youthful days of innocence when we thought of ourselves as invincible and unbreakable. Some of us were struggling in a band; maybe we didn’t practice that hard. Some of us sketched circles and lines on text pages, imitating either Picasso or Dali, and others were busy reimagining themselves as poets, entrepreneurs and philosophers. We were all dreamers, hopeless romantics, revolutionaries, and pretenders back then, and while we were sharing our lives together, we were also making them into memories.

As the song keeps on reminding me, it was about few summers. We have all but fallen apart as we hung on to our regular jobs, usual compromises, life’s commitments, locked inside fixed clogs of personal and professional responsibilities, and lousy routines. Those days are indeed over, but we departed with the experience that the life moves on and nothing really lasts forever. I wish I still have that courage and passion to live on, find new friends, and weave dreams again, but without those days to remember, my life would always be a bit emptier. Those days of fire were indeed the best days of my life for all the best memories.

(Ojha is a faculty member specializing in communication, critical thinking and research at various educational institutions in the Kathmandu Valley)

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