“I like revisiting, at certain times, spots where I was once happy; I like to shape the present in the image of the irretrievable past.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

Often we end up realizing that we feel really connected to certain places after losing touch with them or after travelling or settling somewhere far away from them. Like the bus stop where you used to sit for long hours waiting for the bus that takes you home after an abnormally hard day, or like the park bench where you sit for hours reading and writing, or observing people walking their dogs or even the kids chasing each other. And it’s natural that we romanticize our school days and college days after growing old and boring, and sitting on our verandah porch, in a way, only to reminiscence our past.

But this article is not just about those big places, those places where we have spent hours, often finding and losing our selves. This is also about those places, those landscapes where we haven’t been to that often but still holds a great impact over our lives. This is about those places which are taken for granted at the moment when with its loss, we come to know of their real value.

This is about that one tree you used to sit under when everything in your life was falling apart, and sitting under that tree, you knew, sooner or later everything will turn out to be alright right once again, this is about that one park bench where you realized you can’t depend on others for your happiness, that before you go searching for joy through other people, you have to learn to find it within yourself.

By some absurd work of emotional connectivity, these places, these particular landscapes impact us more than we can phantom, they leave behind a scar, a stain on us (our memory) which though along with the time might seem like it is fading, it will eventually return with a sting of longing for what once was, and the comfort that was lost.

In a way, if we look at it in a certain perspective, we are truly experiencing our life only when we experience both the inner and outer worlds, we are truly alive when we connect ourselves with the deepest darkness's inside us and the varying shades of life’s aesthetics around us.

“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche.
― Herman Hesse, Bäume: Betrachtungen und Gedichte

Sometimes, its not just ‘people’ who deeply influence us to be who we are, sometimes it is also the places — like the house we grew up in, the streets we played in, the terraces we flew kites or failed trying to do so. And at times it could be temples where we would go to find solace in that serenity, and it could also be the places that were in fact meant to mould us into suitable citizens — schools.

To everyone who has experienced school life, at some point in their lives, they can’t help but point out the fact that they indeed miss their days of innocence, sitting in the last rows of the classroom, secretly sneaking in the wafers and snacks your friend hid behind his books, knowing there is a gang out there waiting to snatch away his food. And even after he discovers a clean and empty snacks box, he will just accept it and laugh it off knowing if he had done the same with any of the others, they would laugh it off too.

When it comes to the childhood memories, one misses a lot of aspects of their lives, from school days to holidays spent with cousins, the unity that came with the innocence of the age and the ignorance towards the grownup world, and an animated understanding of things in the surroundings, a jovial interpretation of everything that’s happening. The mindset that looks at life as a game. But when it truly comes to nostalgia, we miss some places as much as we miss our younger selves.

School — An Unforgettable Nostalgia
The tree under which students gather to have their lunch after the power cuts in classroom, the resource room which is also a makeshift medical room where students pretend sick and bunk all the afternoon classes, the backyard playground with twin trees so close to each other, one can easily see themselves growing up as they won’t fit to pass through those trees as they grow older, the bicycle stand where you gather with your friends and have long discussions on all the unproven scandalous stories of people who have nothing to do with you in actuality.
The classrooms of your favorite juniors who look at you like an elder brother, and the computer lab where you spend your physics hours listening to music instead of being in your respective classrooms. The gardens where there are no flowers, but with friends and playmates, everything seems more brighter and colorful.
The corridors where you were sent to stand in for not completing your assigned home works, and the trees and squirrels you stare at without any regrets or shame because you’re not standing there alone, your default gang of defaulters are out there with you. And the widow, that one window that faces the school entrance and from the moment you enter your classroom you keep looking out, nervous and anxious — wondering, waiting for the person you were looking forward to see that day. In the moments like these, that window becomes a portal that brings peace and joy to your soul.

School Bus — An Abundance of Serendipity
You don’t get to decide who you sit with, you don’t get to plan out how your life turns out by the end of the day, you get to learn that nothing is stable, and you can’t always have the window seat on the row. Sometimes you don’t want that journey to end, and sometimes you feel like you can’t survive another minute of that journey, sitting with six others in a seat that should lawfully only adjust four people.
The early morning waiting in your street corner waiting for the school van to show up, and the dogs that bark at you or the cats that run past you, the old man who notices your abnormally huge watch against the lean structure of your hand and asks you what the time is.
The kids who huddle up in the back seat and play along with you, and in that moment you forget of all your heartbreaks and backbreaking assignments, the squeaking seats that seem like they might fall apart any moment as the driver rides ahead into potholes and speed breakers, the sound speaker that is hell bent on making your music listening experiences as chaotic as possible.

Houses — The Hard-hitting Beginning
Some would have lived all their lives in a single home, and some would have shifted into multiple houses, to those who constantly move, the feeling of home, the safety and peace might mainly depend on the people they live with, but to someone who has live in and grew up in a single house, their attachment to the place is far more deeper and intangible.
Our home is the first place where we learn to walk, to talk, to look at the world and understand it, more than these physicality's, it is in our home where we find our first comforts and separate our discomforts.

Random Places — The Goodbye Memory/The Last Sighting
Some places hold an abnormally high significance to you, and one of the many reasons is because, they are the goodbye sites, the places where we see our loved ones, people who are close to us, for the last and final time. In some cases, we might get to meet them again, and in some cases, that goodbye will be the last thing we’ll ever get to tell them. These places, for a very obvious reason hold a unique place in our hearts, we feel connected to them, not always in our physical realms as the flow of time will erode that place of our material memory, yet after years, with the deeply rooted memory still in our hearts, if we visit those places in future, and stand in the same place as we once did, sometime in our age old past, for one moment, at least for a second as our heart beats into that ancient memory, our soul will join hands with that age old memory, that old self of us…

~ C. Madan