Down that road again...

I happened to find a CD of my friend's fotos. Fotos used to be backed up in CDs those days. 2009. The third year of my college. The first month of the academic year. I grinned and laughed at the fotos and videos. And narrated in my mind, the specialness, the story behind each click to the person I tell all my stories these days. And when I finished, I quietly slipped back the CD to its original place. No sharing on facebook. No. Im too selfish to share these memories in public. Ofcourse, those fotos captured all the three batches of students studying at the campus then, the most important events then. But yet these are mine, my friend's on whose camera these were captured and other friends of our circle - parts and characters of our combined, entangled stories.
After I kept the CD back, something hit me. I paced about restlessly in the house. There was no warning. I tumbled and fell ingloriously, down the well of memories. I started speaking to them and the characters in them. I started missing them. The abandon. The youthfulness. The innocence. The carefree laughter. The dazzling confidence. The intimate safety and security  of friendships, of friends who weren't just friends, but family. The blushes and ecstasies of newly found loves...  I whispered weakly to myself, "Don't go down that road again, Chandni. You will get swallowed..." The present contrasted violently with my inner world of memories. I was hammered with spasms of pain. Of the person I was. Of the person I would never be again. Of friends who drifted apart. Because life became so different, complex, practical, and yet simple and clear - because you see, the paths ahead were illuminated for us, and they didn't happen to meet. Because, we grew up. We had to. Of those special ones who ceased to be special. Because they simply disappeared from life. Or differences that became irrevocable. Or simply because the need for them dimmed - in the face of other adventures.
Some I have left behind, and some have continued the journey with me. And I do suspect that some of the latter 'some' will be there till the end.
I particularly missed one friend. And why would't I? Can there ever be a replacement to that friendship? I realised with shock how much he had meant to me. Of what he had given to me in life. But now? He can't go back to the same him then. Neither can I. But dear one, my deepest good wishes follow you. May you find fulfilment and happiness in your path.  

Whatever happened to this pack of grinning, smiling, singing, dancing, fooling crackpots? I know what happened. Life happened to them. And what about those three years? We lived them, didn't we? We truly lived them. Gosh, we did, we did, we did...

Cheers, to the good old days!

- Chandni