Writers Jam

memories are not gentle. they do not sit quietly in the corners of the mind like obedient passengers waiting for their names to be called. they wander the corridors of a moving train, knocking on doors that were never locked, slipping into compartments uninvited carrying the weight of cities I never arrived in, faces I never touched long enough, words that died on the edge of a throat. i see them in the blur of landscapes that rush past the window: the same fields repeating themselves as though time is a loop and my journey is only a circle where arrivals disguise themselves as departures. every suitcase i tried to forget still waits on some conveyor belt of a half-abandoned station, its handle rusted from my neglect. inside: the smell of a letter never sent, a pressed flower turned to dust, an echo of laughter that turned bitter when repeated. i walk past them with heavy steps, pretending i don’t hear the faint rattling of zippers, the muffled voices asking to be opened. the train halts but i do not step out. the platform is filled with shadows silhouettes of people i once loved and could not keep. they wave as though greeting, but i know it is farewell. they do not move closer. they do not leave either. they linger in the smoke, half-real, half-imagined, like postcards written in invisible ink. i want to discard them, leave them stranded with broken clocks and rusted benches, but they board again. memories always find a way. they slip beneath doors, crawl through cracks in the window, hide in the folds of a coat i thought was new. i tell myself perhaps the next station will be kinder perhaps there will be silence instead of these clamoring ghosts pressing their tickets into my hand, each one stamped with a moment i cannot return to. but the train keeps moving into a darkness without stations, a tunnel where no one waits, where even light forgets its direction. and yet i keep yearning for what i do not know. perhaps for a station where memory surrenders, where suitcases unfasten themselves and the wind scatters their contents across fields that do not ask for names. perhaps for a silence that feels less like absence and more like home. but i suspect such stations are only illusions, drawn on maps by those who never traveled. so i remain: a passenger in transit, neither arriving nor leaving, carrying the weight of windows, suitcases, shadows, faces an entire nation of memories that never chose me but refuse to let me go. and the yearning, ah, the yearning is endless. it is not for destinations but for release, for the mercy of forgetting, for the sweetness of silence after the last whistle fades..i left the city i grew up in, and in that departure i felt the weight of entire lifetimes pressing down on me. who knew that leaving a geography could feel like amputating a limb? streets, classrooms, cricket pitches, dimly lit mehfils all of them still pulse inside me like phantom pains. perhaps that is the cruelty of memory: it never leaves when you ask it to, and it refuses to stay silent when you beg it to. every time i feel like an outsider in this new place, i turn back to the ghosts of my school life. i once cursed those classrooms but now they look holy, almost cathedral-like, because they remind me that i belonged somewhere once. childhood laughter still clings to me; my friends’ voices are stitched into my ribs, and when loneliness claws at me i hear the echo of our cricket games as if the sound itself could save me. even the nights under weak streetlights with coaching friends feel like lanterns i carry through the dark corridors of my present. and then there are the ones who taught me unity the friends who made sure no one was left behind. they gave me more than i deserved, more than i even knew how to ask for. strangely, in this vast, shifting world, i have found another kind of belonging in people i have never touched: strangers on screens who carry my storms as if they were their own. people call these connections illusions, but sometimes illusions prove more faithful than the tangibility of passing days. to those who gave me joy, i hope life rewards you with small mercies: extra packets of maggie masala, laughter that does not ache, sunlight that lingers longer in your window. to those who left me scars, i grant you nothing not even the dignity of remembrance. it is 12:44 a.m. as i write, and home feels unbearably far. once i argued with a friend: is home a place, or can it be a person? i said yes; he said no. perhaps the truth lies elsewhere: home is neither brick nor single face but those rare spaces where our trembling feels safe. i have moved cities before and felt nothing. but leaving my sister my only witness, my anchor for fourteen years has undone me. she is not just my sibling; she is the archive of my existence, keeper of all the versions of me i have buried. to leave her is to abandon a part of myself. so to the future i write this: if you have any kindness left for us, bring sunflowers to our gardens, bring light that does not flicker, bring a peace that feels like waking in a daydream and realizing you never have to leave it. memories do not sit quietly. they ride the train with me, slipping into compartments uninvited, carrying cities i never reached and conversations i never finished. every suitcase i tried to forget waits on a rusted conveyor, full of letters unsent and laughter gone bitter with repetition. the train stops, the platform fills with half-real silhouettes of people i once loved they wave, and it feels like goodbye. i try to leave them behind, but memories always find a way back: beneath doors, through cracks, in the collar of a coat. still i keep yearning not for a destination but for a mercy: a silence that is more like home. i left the city i grew up in and felt something amputated. streets and classrooms pulse like phantom limbs. yet in the ache i find small lights: friends who stayed, strangers on screens who became anchors, and the memory of a sister who holds my whole story. if the future can be kind, let it bring sunflowers and steady light a daydream you don’t have to wake from.